Where are the US heavyweights?

For the first time in nine Olympic Games, the United States of America have no boxers competing for super-heavyweight, heavyweight or light-heavyweight gold.

No one in the latest 91kg+ competition that was brought into the games back in 1984. No one in the 81-91kg heavyweight where Deontay Wilder won bronze in 2008.

There is not even an American fighter in the 75-81kg light-heavyweight competition, won by Andre Ward, the nation’s last Olympic boxing gold medallist, in 2004. 

Go way back and remember Muhammad Ali (then Cassius Clay), Joe Frazier, George Foreman and Leon Spinks struck Olympic gold. After that, the likes of Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe and Antonio Tarver won medals.

In 2012, Dominic Breazeale – who was battered black and blue by Anthony Joshua in his IBF world title challenge in June this year – qualified for the London 2012 super-heavyweight contest but went out in the first round.

His team-mates, Michael Hunter (heavyweight) and Marcus Brown (light-heavyweight), suffered the same fate.

But with no American super-heavy, heavyweight or light-heavy fighters in Rio, their mere presence at London 2012 almost feels like an achievement.

By the end of Rio 2016, the three divisions together will have given out 108 medals since 1984. There could have been 27 fighters flying the Stars and Stripes in those last nine games, yet even when Wilder won his bronze medal in Bejing, he was America’s sole heavyweight representative.

The American big guns have been firing blanks for some time. At these Games, there is no one on the frontline in any of the three heaviest weights trying to inspire a nation that used to rule the boxing world.

Team GB certainly won’t win medals in all three divisions after heavyweight …

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