THE WORLD Championships in Liverpool marked the end of an era in amateur boxing.
Kazakhstan supporters danced in celebration outside the M&S Bank Arena after seeing their country claim seven gold medals on the 10th and final day to finish top of the medals table after the first championships organised by World Boxing.
Top place was decided by the final round of the 520th and final bout.
Aibek Oralbay won it on four of the scorecards to edge out Jakhongir Zokirov for super-heavyweight gold, leaving Uzbekistan only one gold medal behind them with six, all in the men’s competition.
In contrast, for the first time since the World Championships were held in Havana in 1974, Cuba went home without any gold medals.
Erislandy Alvarez, Alejandro Claro Fiz and Julio Cesar La Cruz were their only medalists, claiming bronze at 65kgs, 50kgs and 90 kgs plus respectively.
That left Cuba at 18th in the final medals table and follows a disappointing Olympics in Paris last summer where Alvarez was their only gold medalist.
The flop in Liverpool left Cuban news websites screaming about the country’s “boxing legacy” being “shattered” and the sport being in “an unprecedented crisis”.
The site www.cubaheadlines.com wrote: “Liverpool 2025 will be marked as the World Cup where Cuba not only lost medals but also part of its legend.
“This is a blow that not only shakes the sport but also highlights the structural failure of a political and social model that is crumbling.
“Cuban boxing was a symbol of a country that boasted about its sports triumphs as a form of political legitimacy. Today, those glories seem like mere memories, and the reality is that the ring also exposes the crisis in Cuban society.”
The reality is that Cuban’s men’s boxers appear to have struggled to adapt since the amateur code adopted the 10-9 scoring system that is used in the pros.
Under the computer scoring system, Cuba won 35 gold medals in nine World Championships between 1993 and 2011. (They boycotted the 2007 championship in Chicago).
Computer scoring was brought in at the 2013 World Championships and Cuba have taken 16 golds from seven World Championships since.
Cuba have taken five golds from the last four World Championships, including the disappointment in Liverpool.
Alvarez, Fiz and La Cruz only lost narrowly in their semi-finals – to Yuri Falcao (Brazil), Sanzhar Tashkenbay (Kazakhstan) and iybek Oralbay (Uzbekistan) respectively – and on another day, they might have reached the final.
But for a country with Cuba’s history, they had a desperately poor Championships on Merseyside.
Cuba topped the medals table at eight of the first nine World Championships between 1974 and 1997. Their best-ever gold medal haul came in Finland in 1993 when they grabbed eight.
In total, Cuba have won 82 men’s World Championship golds, with La Cruz claiming five.
At 36 years old, he is nearing the end, but 20-year-old lightweight Luis Enrique Vinet Garcia looks a good hope for the future.
The United States are another nation who are struggling.
Without an OIympic gold medal in men’s boxing since Andre Ward in 2004, their medal hopes in Liverpool were hit by Omari Jones and Jahmal Harvey turning pro, but in Yoseline Perez they have a potential star.
It took Hsiao Wen Huang, 2020 Olympic bronze medalist and World Champion in 2019 and 2023, to stop the 21-year-old from Houston taking women’s bantamweight gold in Liverpool.
The 28-year-old from Taiwan beat her on a split decision. Perez’s silver was the only medal the Americans won.
Perez has had a big 2025. She has won three silvers and a gold from four international tournaments and will be a huge gold for Olympic gold in Los Angeles in 2028.
USA Boxing will doubtless be hoping having the Olympics at home will lead to a big drive from their boxers over the next three years.
LA 2028 was also very much the focus for Great Britain Head Performance coach Robert McCracken when interviewed before the World Championships.
After announcing a young squad for Liverpool, he pointed out Galal Yafai went to two World Championships without medaling before going on to win Olympic gold in Tokyo.
Nine of the 16 boxers Great Britain picked for Liverpool were aged 22 or under and one of them reached the final.
Teagn Stott became only the fifth British male to reach a World Championships final when he got through to the gold-medal match at 85kgs, but with cruiserweight not included in the Olympic weights in Los Angeles, he has a decision to make.
The same applies to Emily Asquith, who won silver for England at 80kgs in Liverpool.
Great Britain also had bronze medals for Odel Kamara (70kgs), Callum Makin (75kgs) and Chantelle Reid (70kgs).
Kamara and Reid were beaten on split decisions in the semi-finals and saw their conquerors go on to win gold.
Will Hewitt stunned Olympic silver medalist Munarbek Seiitbek Uulu (Kyrgyzstan) at 60kgs before bowing out in the quarter finals and there were promising showings from Alice Pumphrey (48kgs) and Damar Thomas (92 kgs plus).
They all had good support from the home crowd, especially towards the end of the championship.
There was non-stop noise during the Kamara-Torekhan Sabyrkhan semi-final on Saturday night.
Many decisions throughout could have gone either way – Boxing News thought Grainne Walsh deserved greater reward for her aggression in her quarter final at 65kgs, for example – but this was a World Championships that was short of scoring controversy, thankfully for the future of the sport.
The volatile Turkish coach caused a scene after his flyweight Buse Naz Cakiroglu was beaten in the women’s final having been similarly outraged after last summer’s Olympic final in Paris.
On both occasions, there was no real cause for his fury.
