Spitting, urinating, cash in brown envelopes and black humour: these are but parts of the world of corruption in boxing. Fans can often immerse themselves so far into sport that jarring, insidious practices become normal and gradually less worthy of comment. Nowhere is this more obvious than in boxing, where allegations of untoward behaviour are as old as the sport itself. OTB AM spoke to two of its finest Irish practitioners, well-qualified in word and deed to illuminate corruption in the sport. Andy Lee and Eric Donovan gave us insights into the murky world of corrupt judging, and and nudge-nudge-wink-wink nature of financial practices.
From Athy and trained by Dominic O’Rourke from St Michael’s boxing club, Eric Donovan is well-versed in both the amateur and professional ranks. He has competed at European and World Championships, and is as yet unbeaten in the professional game.
“Watching [Broken Rings – the documentary into alleged corruption during the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil], it makes you feel sad that this is happening to your sport. It’s something that we all knew for many of years and experienced, but it’s never really came to public knowledge or the way it was in the documentary.”
As an example of the corruption in the sport, Eric told a story about a 2004 Olympic qualifier in Baku, Azerbaijan:
“Andy was after qualifying for Athens Olympic games, he was the only one on the team to qualify at that time, so the rest of us went to our final qualifier hoping to join him on the plane.
“This time they were splitting the weights in half, so half of the weight categories had a qualifier in somewhere around Western Europe and the other half of the weight categories were in the Eastern Europe and Azerbaijan [...] So I’m training and I’m trying to make bantamweight, which is eight and a half stone, and I’m absolutely killed at the weight, I really am. I’m drained out, and I’m saying to myself ‘I’m never making this weight again, ever.
“But I come down to the scales, the official weigh-in, in the morning, I’m .05 over the weight and I’m after training all the night before. Zaur [Antia] tells me ‘OK, let’s get the gear on you again and train’, so I trained, came back to the scales and I think I barely lost it, but it was kinda flashing on the scales so they wouldn’t allow it.
“Zaur hasn’t got great English or anything at this stage but he’s going for a walk and he’s trying to demonstrate to me to spit, keep spitting and hopefully, finally make the weight.
“I drew the Georgian in my first fight. It was four two-minute rounds that time. I had a great end, I always had, a really, really super end - really super fit. First round, I come back and I’m about 12 points down and I cannot understand how I’m 12 points down. It was literally a 50-50 round. So in the corner they just said ‘keep going, keep going, this guy’s looking tired.”
“In the second round, I’m again foot to the gas, and just bulldozing through him. I brought it back to about six points, think I was about six points down and after the 3rd round brought it back to three points and in the last round, I nearly had this guy stopped, but the bell goes and I lose by a point.
“I’m absolutely devastated, I think it’s a robbery, but sure nobody really cares, you’re kind of used to it at this stage and nobody’s saying anything.
“Then this Scottish official came over to the Irish team manager, who was the late Martin Power from St Saviour’s boxing club in Dublin, and he said ‘I’m really sorry about your boxer earlier on but that bell in the last round was rang twenty seconds short.
“So they put in a complaint and whatever protest, whatever it is, and they came back to me late that night and they said the conclusion is, or result is, that I have to fight him again tomorrow.
“So I’m 59 kilos now, how would I even make the weight category tomorrow. Anyways I couldn’t do it, it was impossible; we had to let it go. Then, the boxer who got the decision against me, the Georgian boxer, he pulls out of his next fight against an Azerbaijan. So he doesn’t even go and fight and the Azerbaijani goes straight on to, I think he just has one fight then and then qualifies for the Olympics.
“We kind of accepted that, you know it was the norm. You had no point in coming home and talking to people about that because you’d kind of be like ‘Oh, there you are making excuses again’. We’ve seen this with our own two eyes, time and time again.”
Eric also recounted a story from when he was a schoolboy in European qualifiers, where he was offered a bundle of cash by an unidentified man with an Eastern European accent after losing a match. Eric was the captain of the Irish team at the time:
“When I get out of the ring I’m crying, I’m inconsolable, some guy comes over to me, big suit, Eastern European, I think he’s Russian, I’m not sure, and he says “result, no good, no good. He opens his briefcase, takes out a wad of cash, and hands me around 300 hundred Russian dollars, or something like that.
“I thought it was Monopoly money anyway, but I was happy I got about 300 punts for it when I got home!
“I honestly think he felt sorry for me. He was probably heartbroken for me, to see me get ripped off band thought it would give me some sort of a lift.”
“The team manager took the money off of me straight away and Dominic O’Rourke [a club coach of Donovan’s in Ireland] said ‘what did that guy give you?’, and I said I think he gave me money. “Where is it?”, ‘Well the team manager took it off me’.
You can watch the entire interview with Eric and Andy in the video above, and tune into OTB AM weekdays from 7:45 on Facebook, YouTube and Periscope.
