Robert Shannon

Vocation

Notable

American bantamweight boxer, member of the 1980 Olympics team which was aborted due to international conflicts. Shannon was the second oldest of six children. His father, who was black, died when Shannon was barely seven. He and his siblings were raised by his white mother and a black step-father. At age 12, Shannon met Troy Summers, a coach who owns the Everett Firefighters Boxing Club in Everett, Wash., and who helped hone Shannon's natural athletic ability. Shannon's boxing and wrestling skills developed despite his weight of about 100 pounds at his heaviest. He won the regional state wrestling championships in his sophomore and junior years at Woodway High in Edmonds, Wash., then turned to boxing. He won a world championship in the juniors in '79 and an AAU title the following year. In the summer of 1980, Shannon became the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic boxing team, winning the 106-pound light-flyweight title. The team never played the Olympics when heartbreakingly, the U.S. boycotted the Moscow Games. He remained an amateur, boxed infrequently from 1980 to 1982. Shannon went on to get a barber-hair stylist license while living at the Colorado Springs training center. He competed for the Olympics in the early '80s, but was not among the favorites. Link to Wikipedia biography