Torrez had been hoping to become the first super heavyweight Olympic Champion since 1984. Instead, he became only the third American super heavyweight to win a medal of any kind.
The bouts at the Kokugikan, the country’s premier sumo venue, were among the last chances for the Americans to overtake China in the race to claim to the most gold medals. Before the last four fights began at 2 p.m. local time, the United States and China had each won 38 golds.
Earlier in the day, the U.S. women’s basketball team beat Japan to win its seventh straight Olympic gold medal, while the American cyclist Jennifer Valente won another gold in track cycling.
Sandwiched between Davis and Torrez’s fights was the women’s middleweight gold medal bout between Lauren Price of Great Britain and Li Qian of China, China’s last chance for a gold. Price won.
The boxing tournament was held against the backdrop of ongoing drama at the International Boxing Federation, or AIBA, which has been embroiled in numerous scandals well before the pandemic. Frustrated by the organization’s lagging pace of reform, the International Olympic Committee in 2019 suspended the organization because it failed to adequately address judging problems, ethics violations and allegations of corruption in the organization’s top ranks.
The I.O.C. created a task force to run the qualifying events and the tournament in Tokyo. Morinari Watanabe, the chairman of the task force, sent officials at AIBA a fresh warning last week.
“I will say for the future of boxing, if they do an injustice, it is done,” he told reporters. “If they do it the right way, there is bright future for the boxing.”