THE OLYMPIC GOLD STANDARD
Mooney, the oldest member of the team at 25, looks back on his long- term association with his teammates and the pre-Olympics training camp as an education. “Those guys could’ve been professionals. That’s how good they were,” he said of his teammates. “Our bad fighters were good. That was the best education I could’ve had, being in the mix with those guys. They were talented and they had a lot of fights. I remember a guy interviewing us asking different people how many fights they had. Ray said something like, ‘Oh, 150.’ I told a fib. I had only 15, but I said, ‘I have 60 fights.’ “That’s how experienced these guys were. Ray was flamboyant, fast, classy. He was born to be who he is. Howard was a copy of Muhammad Ali. All of us tried to copy the great ones; some just copied better. Leon Spinks stood out. He would spar with John Tate in camp. Tate would hit him hard. Instead of crying, he’d spit and go right back at Tate. The
coach had to stop it sometimes because he would just beat the crap out of Tate. “These guys were just vicious,” Mooney continued, using an adjective he employed many times. “Just vicious.” And the team members, accustomed to success, set the bar high for themselves. Randolph, only 18 at the time, said the will to win was infectious. “The people there, Sugar Ray Leonard, Howard Davis, their attitude, their drive to want to be champion – we fed off of that,” Randolph said. “We all wanted to be the best we could be. And we supported each other, lifted each other up.” The Olympic results bear that out. The well-schooled Cubans had already begun to stamp themselves as the dominant country in amateur boxing. They led the medal table in 1972 with
five (three gold), actually out-medaled the U.S. in 1976 (8-7, with three gold) and then became untouchable between 1980 and 2004. The only exceptions were in 1984, when the Cubans joined the bulk of Eastern Bloc countries in boycotting the Los Angeles Olympics, and 1988, when Cuba again boycotted the Seoul Games in solidarity with North Korea. The U.S. won a single-Games record nine gold medals in L.A. and produced a number of great pros – including Pernell Whitaker and Evander Holyfield. Among the eight American medal winners in Seoul were Roy Jones Jr., Michael Carbajal, Kennedy McKinney and Ray Mercer. But those accomplishments are tainted by the boycotts. Indeed, no U.S. team, not even 1984, could touch the 1976 squad. The Americans had six fighters in the 11 gold medal matches on July 31 at the hallowed Montreal Forum, home of the Montreal Canadiens of the NHL. First up was Randolph, who outpointed
Michael Spinks, Leon’s brother, was the gold medalist at middleweight.
Future heavyweight champion Leon Spinks took home light heavyweight gold.
– did with Michael Jordan. And, unlike today, amateur boxers were relatively well known to sports fans, as many of their competitions – tournaments and dual meets against other countries – were regularly featured on network shows like ABC’s Wide World of Sports. Sugar Ray Leonard, the star of the 1976 team who would go on to become a professional icon, was a known commodity before he stepped foot in Montreal. The same could be said of the Spinks brothers, Leon and Michael, who also took home gold in the light heavyweight and middleweight divisions, respectively, and later won undisputed championships. The other gold medalists were lightweight Howard Davis Jr. and flyweight Leo Randolph. Bantamweight Charles Mooney won silver and heavyweight John Tate, who had the misfortune of facing the imposing Teofilo Stevenson in the semifinals, took home bronze. “The ’70s was maybe the best boxing
most outstanding boxer, had to beat Pryor and Thomas Hearns just to make the team. How experienced? The team members were well acquainted with one another because they had competed against or with each other in a series of national and international tournaments in the years leading up to the Games. Chuck Walker, the 1976 team’s light middleweight, said the team was ready to perform at a high level even before the training camp. “We were at the top of our games from the standpoint of activity in boxing,” said Walker, who many believe was robbed in his second-round 3-2 loss to eventual gold medalist Jerzy Rybicki of Poland. “We had the Pan American Games training camp the year before and many other tournaments. “None of us were in awe of each other. We sparred [one another] on a regular basis. I sparred Ray, Michael Spinks, Howard Davis. We really didn’t look at each other as great fighters at that time.”
era of the last 60, 70 years,” Schuyler said. “There were so many great fighters in the ’70s. I was so fortunate to cover boxing in the ’70s and ’80s. They were colorful characters. They made news. “People were more interested in boxing than they had been in a long time when Ali was around. I think that drew a lot of young men into boxing. Boxing was very popular at that time.” That was the backdrop when the 1976 U.S. dream team, led by head coach Pat Nappi, made its way to the University of Vermont in Burlington for a three-week training camp before the Olympics. The group was talented and experienced. How talented? Three medalists from the previous year’s Pan American Games failed to make the team, including the great Aaron Pryor. Davis, who would win the Val Barker Trophy as the Olympics’
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