Boxing bouts fixed at Rio 2016 Olympics; investigation finds. Boxing bouts for medals at the 2016 Rio Olympics were fixed by “complicit and compliant” referees and judges, an independent investigation commissioned by the sport’s world governing International Boxing Association (AIBA) revealed. Richard McLaren, head of the investigation, said in a report released on Thursday that the first of three stages of the investigation looked into the refereeing and judging at Rio where controversial decisions in certain bouts made the headlines. “The seeds of this were sown years before, starting from at least the Olympic Games of the 21st century through the events around 2011 and London 2012,” McLaren told a news conference in Lausanne. There is no final figure on how many fights could have been affected. The investigation identified “in the vicinity of 11, perhaps less, and that’s counting the ones that we know were manipulated, problem bouts or suspicious bouts”, including fights for medals, McLaren said. The report added that senior AIBA officials used their power to select referees and judges and turned the commission, which was supposed to ensure they were assigned fairly, into “a mere rubber stamp”. The referees and judges who were selected generally “knew what was going on” or else were “incompetent” and willing to ignore signs of manipulation, and qualifying events for the Rio Olympics were used to filter out honest referees and judges, McLaren alleged.
