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« | Home | »

Angel Matos has a special message for Olympic officials

By Zach Arnold | August 23, 2008

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We’ve seen awful scoring during these Beijing Olympics in boxing (if you want to call it ‘boxing’ that you are watching there) and we’ve seen some controversial officiating in other combat-related sports during the games.

Well, a competitor finally lost his mind and decided that he had enough. Meet Angel Matos.

Matos is a Cuban taekwondo competitor who has been banned for life after attacking a referee who disqualified him for taking up too much injury time in his bronze-medal match.

Topics: Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 20 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |

20 Responses to “Angel Matos has a special message for Olympic officials”

  1. CapnHulk says:

    It certainly isn’t becoming of an Olympian to do such a thing, but that picture is hilarious.

  2. aesio says:

    He is an stupid man, that’s all

  3. Joshua says:

    So as it turns out, Ara “I only wanted a gold, so I’ll throw away the bronze” Abrahamian can’t even win the gold medal for being a jack@$$ and a sore loser at these Games.

  4. Fluyid says:

    “It certainly isn’t becoming of an Olympian to do such a thing, but that picture is hilarious.”

    I don’t know why it’s so, but it is. That picture is really funny to me, which probably reflects badly on me.

  5. O says:

    Joshua, maybe you should read the Court of Arbitration’s decision in the “Swedish NOC & Abrahamian v/FILA” case before posting more nonsense?

  6. Chuck says:

    Somewhere out there, John Mcenroe is having an orgasm if and when he heard of this story…

  7. Ivan Trembow says:

    There is no justification for this. Matos is no better than Gilbert Yvel now.

  8. The Citizen says:

    I think this is funny because at the end of the day, everyone wants to beat up the ref. A lot of the judging has been for crap in Tae Kwon Do, but I think it is always like that — sometimes it is just too hard to see from all angles.

  9. Fluyid says:

    It also looks like he’s scoring a competition kick. He’s all dressed up with his competition gear and such. It’s absurd.

  10. Steve says:

    I wonder what the Cuban government and the Cubans will do to Angel, if he decides to make it back to Cuba…probably on a plane right now,but probably not heading back to his homeland.

    Remember in the World Cup when a goalie missed his opportunity to glory? People excuted him in his country when he returned.

  11. Fluyid says:

    Yeah, that was somewhere in South America, during the frenzy of the World Cup, though. I don’t think Cuba gets as hyped about Olympic TKD.

  12. Ultimo Santa says:

    “aesio Says: He is an stupid man, that’s all”

    This is my new all-time favorite quote.

    I don’t give a flaming crap about the Olympics – primarily because it’s marketed as a global event that brings nations together, when it’s nothing more than a cash grab for massive corporate sponsors.

    The corruption has been non-stop in 2008: crooked judges, 8-year-old Chinese girls with fake passports, a murder on or near the Olympic compound that was all but covered up…the bullshit has been stacking up for weeks.

    Kicking a crooked ref in the face was probably well deserved given the circumstance and the garbage that’s been going on.

    And on a similar note, I can’t tell you how many times I wanted to jump into the Octagon and kick Steve Mazagatti in his stupid face for ruining one of the countless fights he’s refereed…I hope he gets KTFO one of these days after screwing a fighter.

  13. Skwirrl says:

    For whoever said he threw away the bronze….

    So what he has a gold from 2000. He doesn’t need their bronze. I’m sure he got alot more personal satisfaction from kicking that jackass in the face. I would. Hell if I was Nastia Luiken I’d have thrown my silver medal, (the one she got screwed out of the gold on), on the ground and spit on it when it presented to me then walked off during the Chinese national anthem. Half the events during these Olympics are dirty.

  14. Ultimo Santa says:

    Of course, striking a defenseless person is NEVER justified, anywhere, for any reason. I was being fesicious.
    Someone *deserving* to get kicked in the face is not the same thing as actually carrying out the act of violence.

    But I can understand Angel Matos’ frustration, and the frustration of many other athletes that have been bent over and screwed at Beijing 2008.

    The Olympics is one of the biggest rackets in the history of business: they pay athletes nothing (since they’re ‘amateurs’ after all) but make hundreds of millions from corporate sponsorships, TV deals, merchandise and everything else you can imagine.

    On top of that they look the other way any time someone who is providing them with revenue (China) wants to do something underhanded, or outright illegal.

    And the icing on the cake is that the word ‘Olympics’ itself carries so much credibility that they’re basically bulletproof. Any corrupt judging will be swept off to the proverbial back page, while things like Michael Phelps making out with a cute Australian swimmer will be headline news for weeks.

  15. Jason says:

    Anyone sticking up for this idiot is an idiot. If he’s competing in the olympic games, I’m sure he’s aware of the rules regarding injury time.
    The ref had to do his job, and that dumbass kicked him in the face for it. If I kicked someone in the face, I would expect to have charges pressed against me…period.

    The bottom line is, the guy is a total moron and anybody who sticks up for a moron is also a moron…

    I hope he has fun not having a job when he goes back to Cuba…

  16. SBC300 says:

    Matos violated every ethic of taekwondo and martials arts in general by using his skills on an unarmed man and should be banned for life from any sanctioned event.

  17. Ultimo Santa says:

    “Anyone sticking up for this idiot is an idiot”

    I don’t think you’ll find anyone on this board ‘sticking up’ for Angel Matos – we’re all intelligent enough to realize what he did was wrong.

    However – IF YOU LOOK AT THE ***BIGGER PICTURE*** and not focus on this one incident, it’s not hard to feel the frustration he and many athletes who have been screwed probably feel. Bad officiating (and at times outright assf*cking) of the athletes has been pretty widespread throughout Beijing 2008.

  18. Chuck says:

    All of this talk of Olympic screwing has brought back memories of the Sydney games in 2000, when in Judo at heavyweight Shinichi Shinohara got fucked by bad officiating. He should have gotten an ippon (literally “one point”, it’s how you win in judo) but instead two of the three judges (there are two minor judges and a main judge.) instead awarded a yuko to his French opponent, Dave Douillet. Douillet won via points, but Shinohara should have won by ippon earlier in the match. The third judge (Japanese judge) awarded ippon, rightfully so, to Shinohara but he was overturned by the other two officials. One of the worst screw jobs in Olympic history. Along with Roy Jones Jr., Evander Holyfield, Rocky Juarez, Michael Carbajal, etc.

    Screw the Olympics, BRING BACK THE GOODWILL GAMES!!!!!!!!!!!

  19. Gygax says:

    What are the chances we see Matos in a Dream/WVR ring in the future? I would say better than 50/50!

  20. Paladin says:

    Anyone who has ever competed can sympathize with poor officiating. It is part of ANY sport.

    But…

    When a fighter/athlete behaves in the manner Matos did, it does nothing other than injure our reputation as athletes, and makes us look more like thugs. Shame on Matos for violating the most basic ethic of the Martial Arts.

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