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| POC president Bambol Tolentino and National Golf Association of the Philippines secretary general Bones Floro recap the Philippine team's Paris Olympics campaign. POC |
SAN JUAN, MM--It may not take long before the International Olympic Committee finally decides to reinstate boxing as an official sport for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
Philippine Olympic Committee president Bambol Tolentino said on Friday that World Boxing, a newly founded organization for Olympic-style boxing, is gaining significant traction nearly a week after the conclusion of the Paris Olympics.
"Malapit nang mag-50," Tolentino said during The Agenda Forum, a weekly press conference series held at Club Filipino.
"Fifty" refers to the minimum number of national federations that need to join a newly formed IF's charter for the IOC to officially recognize it.
Tolentino revealed that the Philippines is among the founding members of the WB, which once made official will replace the International Boxing Association as amateur boxing's IF.
The IOC revoked the IBA recognition before the 2021 Tokyo Olympics over various issues summarized by Tolentino as "bad governance," one of which was allegations of dubious judging of matches.
The Philippines won its first two Olympic silver medals in boxing, but both were products of what seemed like rigged outcomes favoring the eventual gold medalists.
The supposed beef between the IOC and IBA was highlighted again when the IOC allowed Algeria's Imane Khelif and Chinese Taipei's Lin Yu-Tin to participate as female boxers despite the IBA barring them from their events due to gender eligibility issues.
Khelif and Yin eventually won the gold in their respective divisions.
Tolentino then said that he proposed allowing the boxers to dispute a decision if they feel the judges scored it wrong.
"Dapat meron na kayong challenge and review kung tama talaga yung judging," the concurrent Tagaytay mayor added.
An independent body, the Paris Boxing Unit, was formed to oversee the Paris Olympics boxing event with the IOC no longer recognizing IBA.
However, some bouts still had controversial outcomes like the quarterfinal showdown between Carlo Paalam and Charlie Senior.
Senior won a razor-thin split decision over Paalam to deny him back-to-back Olympic medals, but the latter believed he should have won the bout.
Had there been a challenge, Paalam's camp could have asked for a re-scoring of the third round, which decided the outcome.
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