Cuba and the United States will be looking to resume their old boxing dominance at the Olympic Games when the bell rings here on Saturday.
Aside from being a rare chance for the two bitter ideological enemies to test each other’s superiority in the ring, they both have to restore battered pride which saw them finish without a gold medal at the Beijing Games.
Cuba suffered in Beijing from having several of their brightest hopes defect before the Games took place, although they still took home eight minor medals, while the Americans have fallen a long way since the legendary 1984 squad collected 11 medals of all hues.
It was perhaps the best ever assembled as names like Evander Holyfield (who didn’t win gold after being controversially disqualified in the semis), Mark Breland, Meldrick Taylor, Virgil Hill and Pernell “Sweet Pea” Whitaker all went on to be world champions after turning professional.
However from the high of that the Americans have slid further and further down the ladder and in terms of gold medals they have just one to show from the past three editions — present super middleweight world champion Andre Ward’s light heavyweight title in 2004.
The veteran of the American team will be 25-year-old flyweight Rau’shee Warren, who is the first US boxer to qualify for three Olympics and will be dearly hoping to make it past the first round for the first time.
The Americans’ best gold-medal hope, though, is the prodigiously talented 19-year-old lightweight Jose Ramirez, who is odds on to bring the United States their first gold at this weight since the legendary Oscar de la Hoya did in Barcelona in 1992.
Light welterweight Jamel Herring has had to do enough fighting out of the ring on two Tours of Duty in Iraq with the US Marines and the 27-year-old sergeant should easily cope with the rigours of three rounds here.
However, a first-round loss in last year’s world championships shows he has a way to go and he will need to dazzle here if he is to encourage promoters to snap him up when he turns pro after leaving the Marines this November.
His Marines coach Jesse Ravelo has given him as much encouragement as possible.
“He’s got everything he needs to be able to medal,” Ravelo told Newsday.
“He’ll have a tough time with the eastern European boxers, Ukraine, the Cuban, the German. But he has what it takes to beat anybody.
“I told him, ‘Your future is not making the Olympic team. Your future is to medal.’ That’s what promoters look at. If he wants to make it in the professional business, he needs to medal and do well there,” added Ravelo, who was US coach at the 1996 Games.
The Cubans for their part will be even more motivated by the death earlier this year of the legendary three-time Olympic heavyweight champion Teofilo Stevenson, who died aged 60 of a heart attack.
Chief among their hopes is light-heavyweight Julio Cesar la Cruz, who is aiming to make up for missing the 2008 edition because of injury.
“Everyone is ready to do better than last time and to get gold,” the world amateur champion told the BBC in Havana.
“I think we can beat our last result. That’s why we’ve been training so hard.”
Trainer Raul Fernandez, who has seen many of Cuba’s greatest boxers step into his ring, is convinced that this team will be returning with several gold medals.
“They are the new generation who are going to bring back gold,” he told the BBC.
“That affected us (the defections), you can see it in the results. It’s no secret. Some of our medal favourites left and we had to substitute them so we weren’t properly prepared.”
Old boxing rivals look to restore golden days
