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There are no prizes for guessing that boxing is one of the most controversial of Olympic sports.

Although the amateur boxing practised at the Games is a far cry from professional bouts, its critics still believe it to be brutal, barbaric and unacceptably dangerous.

Indeed, it is difficult to reconcile with the Olympic ideal a sport in which combatants aim to physically hurt one another.

That aside, the sport has also produced some of the great names in Olympic history.

The most famous of them is without doubt Cassius Clay.

Clay won the light-heavyweight gold medal in 1960. But as Muhammad Ali, he went on to become regarded by many as the most admired and dominant sportsman of the 20th century and was three times the heavyweight champion of the world in the days when the title meant something.

Ali's contemporaries Joe Frazier and George Foreman were also gold medal winners.

Frazier won his gold medal bout despite going into the fight with a broken hand, an ironic situation given that he had replaced Buster Mathis in the American team when Mathis broke his knuckle.

Floyd Patterson, Ray Mercer, Lennox Lewis and Michael and Leon Spinks were all Olympic champions who went on to become professional heavyweight champions.

Brothers Michael and Leon Spinks shared their Olympic experience, Michael winning the middleweight crown in Montreal in 1976 minutes before Leon did the same in the light-heavyweight division.

Boxing, in one form or another, is obviously the oldest form of combat.

It has also been practised as a sport for thousands of years. Boxing was a part of the ancient Olympics, with competitors wrapping their fists in strips of leather and fighting until one of them went down, or submitted.

Things became a little more serious in Roman times when metal studs were added to the gloves, and many contests continued until one boxer killed the other.

Thereafter, boxing lapsed as an organised sport until its revival by way of bare-knuckle contests in Britain in the 17th century.

Gloves were soon added and by the time the Marquess of Queensberry drew up boxing's first rule book in 1865 it had become popular in Britain, America and the colonies, and its popularity was spreading to Europe.

Despite this rise in popularity and the backing of Games founder Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the organisers of the first modern Olympics in Athens rejected boxing, saying it was a dangerous, ungentlemanly sport practised by the "dregs of society".

It was in and out of subsequent Olympic programs until 1920, when it was added for good.

Boxing would not be boxing without controversy, and Olympic boxing is no different.

In Paris in 1924 Briton Harry Mallin was defending his middleweight title. He was being soundly beaten by his French opponent but when bite marks were found on Mallin's chest he was awarded the bout, and went on to win the gold.

On that occasion the decision drew no reaction more serious than the ire of the partisan hometown crowd.

But other official decisions have met with more dramatic protests. In the Seoul Games in 1988 a referee was attacked by a South Korean team official after he deducted two points from the total of Byun Jong Il for headbutting.

Byun consequently lost the bout and the ring filled with South Korean officials. The referee, Keith Parker from New Zealand, required an escort from the venue and took an early flight home.

For his part, Byun refused to leave the ring after the bout, relenting only when organisers turned out the venue's lights.

He was borrowing a practice begun by his countryman Dong Kih Choh whose sit-in after losing a 1964 bout lasted 51 minutes.