By NAN Sports Editor
News Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Fri. Feb. 26, 2016: A new group of pro-athletes could become eligible to compete in this summer’s Rio Olympics if radical new proposals from the International Boxing Association becomes law.
AIBA President Dr Ching-Kuo Wu says the remaining barriers preventing full-time professional boxers competing in the Olympics are set to be abolished within a matter of months.
His comments come even though the qualifying process for Rio 2016 is already well underway. But the intention is clearly to change the rules in time to give each individual national federation the opportunity to select whomever they want in time to join the remainder of the procedure.
Under new rules introduced in 2013, professional boxers became able to go to the Olympics provided they had had fewer than 15 paid bouts and signed a short-term contract committing themselves to Aiba’s professional arm, APB. These restrictions are now set to be abolished in a move that will in effect end any differences between the traditional definitions of professional and amateur boxing codes.
