Beaten, crying boxer Angela Carini at centre of shock payment twist
Boxing’s gender furore at the Paris Olympics has taken its most dramatic turn with one fighter set to be handsomely rewarded.
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Boxing’s gender war furore at the Paris Olympics has taken its most shocking twist yet.
On Saturday (AEST) the International Boxing Association, which is not officially running the boxing in Paris, announced they would be awarding Italy’s Angela Carini a gold-medal style bonus.
Carini abandoned her round of 16 bout against Algeria’s Imane Khelif on Thursday (AEST) in just 46 seconds after walking to her corner following a big right hand.
Khelif is one of two fighters at the centre of the gender storm that has consumed the boxing competition in Paris.
Carini was left in tears following the loss and claimed afterwards she’d “never been hit so hard”.
One day later the Italian boxer dramatically backflipped on her stance and offered up an apology to Khelif as the storm raged on.
But in the latest twist to the scandal, the IBA are set to award Carini with a $AUD75,000 bonus in a move that pours fuel on the war between the boxing governing body and the International Olympic Committee.
The war ignited in 2019 when the IOC withdrew its recognition of the IBA and then in 2023 the IOC voted to expel the governing body of amateur boxing from the Olympic movement.
It was the first time in its 129-year history that the IOC kicked out a governing body.
The IBA disqualified Khelif and Taiwanese fighter Lin Yu-ting from last year’s world championships with IBA president Umar Kremlev saying DNA tests had “proved they had XY chromosomes and were thus excluded”.
The organisation didn’t go into more detail about the results and the sudden disqualifications as they cited privacy reasons.
The IOC however gave both fighters the green light to compete in Paris, a move that didn’t sit well with Kremlev.
“I couldn’t look at her tears,” Kremlev said.
“I am not indifferent to such situations, and I can assure that we will protect each boxer.
“I do not understand why (the IOC) they kill women’s boxing.
“Only eligible athletes should compete in the ring for the sake of safety.”
The IBA are also reportedly set to offer a financial sum to Uzbekistan’s Sitora Turdibekova who lost to Lin.
The IBA’s shock move comes after the IOC took aim them on Friday as they released a strongly worded statement condemning the abuse being hurled towards Khelif.
“Towards the end of the IBA World Championships in 2023, they were suddenly disqualified without any due process,” the IOC statement read.
“The current aggression against these two athletes is based entirely on this arbitrary decision, which was taken without any proper procedure – especially considering that these athletes had been competing in top-level competition for many years.
“Such an approach is contrary to good governance.”
As the storm surrounding the gender war rages on, Australian world champion Skye Nicholson has called out Carini and labelled her post-fight act as a “publicity stunt”.
The current WBC featherweight titleholder came to the defence of Khelif and Lin while applying the blowtorch to Carini.
“I feel like the thing that happened with the Italian girl was a publicity stunt more than anything,” Nicolson said.
“I just think people really need to, like, look at the facts and stop jumping on the bandwagon. Be a lion, not a sheep.”
Nicholson took aim at the misinformation being spread surrounding both fighters and pointed to their past of competing at the Olympics and world championships without any issues being raised.
“I’ve actually fought and sparred both of the girls. They were born female. They were born with an XY chromosome, which is the male chromosome, but they were born with female bodies, they have the physical attributes of a female,” she said.
“They have grown up as girls, as females, as women. They have competed as women the whole time. These are not naturally born men who have decided to call themselves women or identify as women to fight women in the Olympics.
“And while it is a bit of a grey area, I think the abuse and the power of the media, and people just jumping on the bandwagon without knowing all the details, is honestly horrible.
“These girls have represented their country on numerous occasions for many, many years now as female fighters, and they do not deserve this mistreatment. I think they have been so unfortunate to even be in the situation that they’re in and to get all this scrutiny as well.”
Khelif will return to the ring for her quarterfinal contest against Hungary’s Anna Luca Hamori on Sunday from 1:06am (AEST).
Originally published as Beaten, crying boxer Angela Carini at centre of shock payment twist
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