Today’s Video: Cuba’s prepubescent pugilists

In the world of Olympic boxing, Cuban fighters have dominated time after time. Greats like Teofilo Stevenson and Felix Savon have won gold though their careers were stunted by a ban on professional boxing on the island.

This year’s Cuban Olympic boxing squad has been more vulnerable than previous teams, however. For the first time in forty years, Cuba did not qualify a boxer in all eleven Olympic weight categories. Last year, a pair of highly-touted fighters defected while critics claim that the talent heading to Beijing is “young and inexperienced.”

So what is that makes boxing such a dedicated discipline in Cuba? The following 2007 video clip from the PBS documentary series “Wide Angle” looks into the “young athlete revolutionaries” who fight as “a duty” aside from personal glory:

Sources- Guardian UK, Xinhua, The Latin Americanist, YouTube