By Greg Beacham

Associated Press

FOR nearly a quarter-century, boxing has been the Olympics’ little embarrassment - the brawling, unpleasant relative you’d prefer to keep away from the biggest party of the year.

Judging corruption, financial woes, strange rules and the sweet science’s innate violence all have contributed to its image problem. While Anwar Chowdhry ran the International Amateur Boxing Association for 20 years, U.S. fighters were among many international competitors who simply assumed the system had an obvious, unspoken bias against them. They knew they wouldn’t get any break at any point in the Olympics, or any other competition for that matter.

“Even last year, you knew if you went to certain places in the world, there was no way in hell you could get a decision,” says U.S. welterweight Demetrius Andrade, who won a world championship in Chicago last year. “You just couldn’t.”

Olympic boxing’s best moments - such as Oscar De La Hoya’s run through the Barcelona field to earn his Golden Boy nickname, or the long line of brilliant performances by graceful Cuban champions - haven’t lingered in most fans’ minds.

The sport’s embarrassments were more plentiful and memorable, such as Jong-il Byun’s 67-minute sit-in ring protest of what he saw as corrupt judging in 1988, setting off a ringside riot in Seoul. There also were the jaw-droppingly bad decisions that kept gold medals from Americans Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr., among other deserving fighters.

IOC officials became frustrated enough with boxing’s questionable, arcane judging standards to freeze AIBA’s $1 million share of the Athens spoils in 2004 until the governing body promised to cleanse itself. Boxing also endured another round of calls for its banishment from the games for medical reasons.

Change came abruptly to amateur boxing in 2006 when Taiwan’s Ching-kuo Wu unexpectedly ousted Chowdhry for leadership of AIBA. Saying he intended to turn amateur boxing into “a transparent, dynamic and respectable sport,” Wu went to work on a bold slate of reform that has been greeted with near-uniform praise.

In the last 18 months, Wu has hired independent auditors for AIBA, revamped the widely reviled computer scoring system and established impartial rules for assigning referees and judges.

As the world’s top amateur fighters gather in Beijing, boxing’s rehabilitation seems to be progressing admirably. The embarrassing relative is sober, shaved and ready to join civilized sport - but the Olympics will be the biggest test yet for Wu’s revolution.

Count the American team among those who already are impressed.

“No. 1, the cheating had to stop,” U.S. coach Dan Campbell said. “The new people that are in place right now are going to great lengths to put everybody on a level playing field. As a coach with this young team, that’s what I need. If they hadn’t made the changes, we wouldn’t have had a chance.”

Many more fighters will have that chance at gold this summer, thanks to a shift in amateur boxing’s elite.

Stung by recent defections and hampered by a generational turnover, Cuba is headed to the Olympics with its least experienced team in decades. The Cubans won five of the sport’s 11 gold medals in Athens, but none of those five fighters will be in Beijing to add to their nation’s history of eternal amateurs winning multiple golds.

Three of those fighters - Yan Barthelemy, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Odlanier Solis - defected in December 2006, after two-time gold medalist Mario Kindelan retired. Guillermo Rigondeaux, the fifth gold medalist, and top welterweight Erislandy Lara were caught while apparently attempting to defect last year in Brazil, and both were dropped from the Olympic team as punishment. Lara escaped to Germany this summer.

“The thing we know about the Cubans is that they’re in a rebuilding stage,” Campbell said. “But we saw what they had to offer at the qualifiers, and they’re still a very good team. They’re going to always be, because it’s Cuba.”

There’s no mystery about Russia, the other amateur boxing superpower. Its team is a compelling mix of experience and dynamic youth, with strong medal contenders in nearly every division.

And though host China has a slim history in boxing after it was banned under Mao, a lively 10-man team will compete in Beijing, headed by dynamic 106-pounder Zou Shiming, a bronze medalist in Athens and the legitimate favorite for gold.