AIBA and Russian Olympic officials have released a statement in response to Michael Conlan, and it is derisory given the outrage that the boxing world has expressed at what happened in Rio on Tuesday.
Conlan accused the AIBA of being corrupt and the Russians of being cheats before he tweeted his frustration to Vladimir Putin, and his feelings were shared by what seemed like every single person who watched the fight, but no, AIBA and Russia are acting as if nothing unusual happened at all.
First up was the AIBA, who gave a statement that is difficult to take as anything other than condescending as they act as if Conlan is the only one kicking up a fuss.
Michael is a current world champion and he came here with high expectations. His disappointment is massive, we can all understand that. It's his personal judgment.
AIBA is striving for a fair, level-playing field. The idea is not to benefit one country towards another. These statements are foundless but he's free to have his opinion.
And then came Igor Kazikov, head of the Russian delegation at the Games, who gave such a bafflingly naive statement that we had to double check and make sure it wasn't a twitter parody account that came up with it.
The Russians are constantly being accused of something. Let's deal with these things in a dignified way.
There were judges sitting there, professionals who take responsibility for these things. Why is there this mistrust all the time?
Hmm... Whatever could it be?
Pull the other one Igor, it was an embarrassingly bad decision that a shocking amount of people saw coming a mile off. We weren't expecting any admission of guilt or anything like it, but that is so brazen that it is infuriating and will only escalate calls for change.
