Los Angeles: Six more American boxers have qualified for the Olympics with winning performances at a qualifying tournament in Brazil, allowing USA Boxing to send an impressive nine fighters to the London Games.
Including three boxers who qualified last year, the US currently has the second-largest men's team headed to London. That's more fighters than any team except Australia, which will send a boxer in each of the ten men's weight classes, and more than traditional amateur powers Cuba and Russia.
Light welterweight and American team captain Jamel Herring was among the group that qualified this week at the Americas Olympic qualifying event in Rio de Janeiro.
"This performance from the team as a whole should be a message to the world that USA Boxing is still alive and kicking," Herring said from Rio. "If anything, I say we're getting stronger and have something to prove."
Herring left Rio with a bronze medal after losing his semifinal bout at the qualifying event, but had already qualified for London along with lightweight Jose Ramirez, light heavyweight Marcus Browne and middleweight Terrell Gausha. Two more US boxers qualified on Friday in the penultimate day of competition when heavyweight Michael Hunter and super heavyweight Dominic Breazeale won their semifinals.
‘Dream'
They'll all travel to London in July with three-time US Olympian flyweight Rau'shee Warren, welterweight Errol Spence and bantamweight Joseph Diaz, who all qualified last year at the world championships.
"It's like a dream," said Breazeale, a former quarterback at Northern Colorado who only took up boxing about three years ago. "Pinch me, wake me up."
