By STEVE BUFFERY -- Toronto Sun
The international amateur boxing association (AIBA) has gone to extraordinary lengths to flush out underhanded judges at the Sydney Olympics in September.

Spy cameras will be placed above the four corners of each boxing ring during the Games and above the judging stations. Every move the judges make will be recorded and monitored, and AIBA vows that any judge who commits a serious misdeed or is blatantly unfair in scoring a match will face expulsion and will be sent home.

'5% ARE CROOKS'

Canadian Amateur Boxing Association officials call the new system a breath of fresh air.

"If we had all honest and competent judges, there would be no need for any of this, including the computerized scoring system," CABA technical director Matt Mizerski said. "But we have about 95% competent and honest judges and about 5% are crooks The crooks have to be eliminated and this is one way of doing that."

Boxing at the Olympics has a dark history of corrupt scoring, with bloc voting and blatant home-town decisions, as was the case with current world light-weight champion Roy Jones Jr. at the 1988 Seoul Games.

Jones, now considered pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world, lost the gold-medal match to local favourite Park Si-hun, despite dominating the match. That decision, considered the worst in Olympic history, forced AIBA to implement a computerized boxing system which records the judges' scoring.

Each scoring blow is now recorded and if a judge is unfair in scoring a bout, AIBA officials can review what happened and bring down sanctions against the official in question. CABA was instrumental in developing the computerized system and Canadian boxers are considered masters at "fighting to the computer" in that they are taught how to maximize the system by stressing defence with the occasional offensive foray.

Now, CABA is pushing AIBA to post the scores of each bout after every round during the Olympics, thus eliminating the secretive signal systems each nation employs to relay the scores to its corner. An interesting sight at major amateur boxing tournaments is watching the frantic hand signals used to relay scores.

"Why keep the scores a secret?" Mizerski said. "As it is now, everybody's trying to steal the scores. They should just send this information to the corners after each round and get everything out in the open."