The Irish bantamweight Michael Conlan, right, was surprised and angry after judges ruled in a unanimous decision that the Russian Vladimir Nikitin had won their bout.
RIO DE JANEIRO — A boxer for Ireland accused the sport’s officials of corruption after losing a bout against a Russian opponent at the Rio Games on Tuesday, reviving an issue that has long troubled boxing at the Olympic level.
The Irish boxer, the bantamweight Michael Conlan, said the judging in his quarterfinal match against Vladimir Nikitin of Russia was fixed. Nikitin was awarded a unanimous decision, but the public response to the verdict suggested that many observers believed Conlan should have won.
“AIBA cheats,” Conlan said in an expletive-laden TV interview after the fight, referring to the governing body for amateur boxing. He went on to say that the sport’s officials were “paying everybody” and that “they’re known for being cheats, and they’ll always be cheats.”
“Amateur boxing stinks, from the core right to the top,” Conlan said.
Conlan then suggested on Twitter that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had bribed judges to rule in favor of Russian boxers.
A spokesman for AIBA, Nicolas Jomard, said in an interview on Tuesday afternoon that the judges’ decision was sound and that he believed Conlan’s remarks could be attributed to frustration from losing an important match.
Conlan showed his disdain for the judges’ decision after his loss and then went on an expletive-laden tirade in a television interview afterward.
The judges for the bout were from Brazil, Poland and Sri Lanka.
“From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to go back with a gold medal to Ireland,” Conlan said. “Now I have to go back like a loser. I’m not a loser; I’m a winner. And today just showed how corrupt this organization is.”
The judges’ decision in the Conlan-Nikitin fight was not the first one at the Rio Games to draw scrutiny. On Monday, the crowd jeered when another Russian fighter, Evgeny Tishchenko, was awarded a unanimous decision over Vassiliy Levit of Kazakhstan, who appeared to have won the bout handily.
“I felt that I was winning the bout, but if the judges and the referee gave a different decision, then they have good grounds to do so,” Levit said.
The decision in the Tishchenko-Levit fight was made by judges from Algeria, Colombia and Ireland.
Judging controversies in boxing are not uncommon at the Summer Olympics. The light middleweight final in 1988 in Seoul appeared to have been dominated by the American Roy Jones Jr. But three of the five judges awarded the victory to his South Korean opponent, Park Si-hun. One judge later confessed to voting for Park to appease the Korean crowd.
Another future world champion, Evander Holyfield, was involved in a dubious ruling in a semifinal when his knockout punch of Kevin Barry of New Zealand was ruled a late hit and he was disqualified. But because Barry had been knocked out, he was not allowed to fight in the final. Both the referee and the beneficiary, gold medalist Anton Josipovic, were from Yugoslavia.
In 1964, a South Korean fighter, Choh Dong-kih, refused to leave the ring for almost an hour after he was disqualified. In 1988, his countryman Byun Jong-Il staged an even longer sit-in after losing a decision, one that prompted Korean officials to attack the referee.
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