Siarhei Karneyeu lingered in the ring after his Olympic heavyweight loss last night, crying and shaking his head in disbelief after his clutching, holding opponent was awarded a narrow decision victory.
When Cuba's Jose Larduet fell victim to a similar decision about 15 minutes later, the Belarusian Karneyeu came back up the fighters' tunnel and intercepted Larduet on the way out of the ring, holding up Larduet's hand as the real winner.
Both Karneyeu and Larduet felt cheated by their opponents' clutch-and-grab tactics in the Olympic boxing tournament Sunday night, but amateur boxing's governing body disagreed.
After Belarus and Cuba both immediately protested the losses, AIBA swiftly conducted reviews Sunday night, rejecting both protests about 90 minutes after the last bout.
Azerbaijan's Teymur Mammadov beat Karneyeu on the tiebreaking countback despite blatantly holding Karneyeu, and Italy's Clemente Russo beat Larduet 12-10 with an awfully similar strategy to close the first round of quarterfinal bouts in London.
Mammadov and Russo are hardly the first heavyweights in boxing history to make up for their exhaustion or skill deficiencies by holding, but the referees in their bouts didn't deem the holding severe enough to penalize.
Their opponents strongly disagreed and their protests have significant precedent in a tournament that already has seen two results overturned when AIBA determined the ring official hadn't penalized blatant misbehavior.
