Better late than silver.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Roughly 36 years after he was robbed of an Olympic championship, Roy Jones Jr. tearfully accepted the gold medal from the man who controversially beat him \u2013 Park Si-Hun of South Korea.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Park, now 59, initiated the meeting by traveling to Jones\u2019 ranch in Pensacola, Fla., where he surprised his former foe by gifting him the 1988 medal. The sentimental reunion occurred over two years ago but is just now being released in a short video directed by Emmy-winning filmmaker Johnny Sweet.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There\u2019s hope this becomes a larger documentary on Jones.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Jones embraced Park, calling him \u2018my brother\u2019 in a touching reunion.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is crazy,\u201d Jones says while smacking his forehead and holding the gold for the first time.<\/p>\n
Park\u2019s 3-2 decision victory over Jones Jr. remains one of the most infamous moments in boxing history. Dominated from opening to final bell, Park benefitted from home cooking by judges \u2013 the \u201888 Olympics were held in Seoul, South Korea \u2013 as Marv Albert announced to the American TV audience, \u201cPark Si-Hun has stolen the bout.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Korea\u2019s Park Si-hun, left, delivers a left jab to America\u2019s Roy Jones, and goes on to win the gold medal of the final boxing light middleweight bout, in Seoul, South Korea, on Oct. 2, 1988. AP<\/p>\n
For 16 years, that light-middleweight fight represented Jones Jr.\u2019s last non-DQ defeat. He emerged as the pound-for-pound champ in professional boxing, carrying the middleweight divisions with flair, speed and victories over Bernard Hopkins and James Toney.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Following his Olympic disappointment, Jones Jr. occupied a short list of top-draw fighters alongside Mike Tyson, Oscar De La Hoya and Floyd Mayweather.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Park, on the other hand, felt ashamed by the victory and spiraled into a severe depression while fighting \u201csuicidal urges,\u201d according to an AP story in 2020. <\/p>\n
Park\u2019s victory, tainted by judges in his Korean homeland, caused him much distress.<\/p>\n
Park Si-hun, 33 years after winning Olympic gold against Roy Jones, turned the medal over to the American boxer.<\/p>\n
He declined opportunities to go pro and spent 13 years as a middle- and high-school teacher before returning to boxing as a coach.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was pretty quick for a middleweight, but Jones was at a different level,\u201d Park recalled to the AP. \u201cA boxer just knows whether he had won or lost a match. I thought I lost because I didn\u2019t put up a fight deserving of a win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over three decades later, Park flew to Florida to try to right the wrong with a gift of gold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The surprising scene occurred two years ago, caught on tape by videographers.<\/p>\n
\u201cFilming that scene felt surreal,\u201d Sweet, who also directed documentaries on Ron Artest and Michael Vick, told The Post. \u201cWas like watching history correcting itself in real time, especially since Roy cried the same exact way he did in Seoul when he didn\u2019t win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Better late than silver.\u00a0 Roughly 36 years after he was robbed of an Olympic championship, Roy Jones Jr.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":117398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,282,4963,65564,18838,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-117397","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-exclusive","12":"tag-olympics","13":"tag-roy-jones-jr","14":"tag-seoul","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/117398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}