(Reuters) -Roy Jones Jr has been handed the Olympic gold medal he was controversially denied in 1988 in an extraordinary act of sportsmanship by the South Korean fighter who beat him.<\/p>\n
Hall of Fame boxer Jones shared a video on Wednesday from two years ago that showed Park Si-hun visiting the American’s ranch in Pensacola, Florida to present him with the light middleweight gold medal.<\/p>\n
“I had the gold medal, but I want to give it back to you. It belongs to you,” Park said in the video through his son, who translated.<\/p>\n
Jones, who was overcome with emotion by the gesture, covered his face with his hand before saying: “Wow, that is crazy.”<\/p>\n
Their match at the Seoul Olympics remains one of boxing’s most contentious moments as Jones appeared to dominate the fight but lost to Park by a 3-2 decision that drew instant criticism and sparked enduring controversy.<\/p>\n
Despite losing the gold medal match, Jones was selected as the Val Barker Trophy winner as the best boxer of the 1988 Olympics.<\/p>\n
Jones went on to become a four-division world champion and is regarded as one of the sport’s best pound-for-pound fighters of all time.<\/p>\n
“In 1988, I was robbed of the gold medal in what became one of the biggest controversies in boxing history,” Jones wrote in his Instagram post.<\/p>\n
“By the grace of God, a couple of years ago, the man who won that medal made the trip from South Korea to my home to return it to me, feeling it was rightfully mine.<\/p>\n
“I hope you enjoy this moment as much as I did.”<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Editing by Ken Ferris)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Reuters) -Roy Jones Jr has been handed the Olympic gold medal he was controversially denied in 1988 in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":118761,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,84009,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-118760","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-olympics-2024","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118760\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}