On Friday the AIBA, amateur boxing’s international governing body, lifted a three-month ban that was imposed on USA Boxing just last week.
The suspension, which would have canceled all competitions and clinics until January, came after controversial comments belonging to former president Hal Adonis appeared in the New Yorker magazine back in June.
Among those comments published were references to the number of gay women in boxing and connections between sexual abuse and success on the amateur circuit, including that “when kids call me up, I say: ‘Let me ask you an honest question: have your parents ever hit you?’ If they say no, I say: ‘I don’t think you belong in boxing.’”
USA Boxing was also in jeopardy of decertification after the board retained Adonis as a member. He’s since been removed and president Charles Butler pleaded with the AIBA not to punish its 37,000 members for comments of the ex-president, saying that those types of remarks were “foreign to our membership.”
“Our members have dedicated their lives to helping the young men and women of our country get off the streets and change their lives for the better,” Butler continued in a letter to AIBA President Wu Ching-Kuo. “Many of these young men and women have become great American Olympic and world champions who are ambassadors for boxing worldwide.”
The AIBA complied with USA Boxing’s request, which means the U.S. will be able to field a team for the Youth World Championships in Armenia next month, but President Wu refused to lift the two-year ban on Adonis.
