Ricky Anderson is a retired Canadian boxer, born in historic Africville, Nova Scotia. Anderson was due to represent Canada at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, but the Canadian teams boycotted the event. He soon became a top amateur boxer, and later a champion professional boxer. Biography Olympic career Making Canada's Olympic team was the biggest highlight of the young light-welterweights' career up to that point. Later that year, Anderson won a gold medal in the light-welterweight division at the Acropolis Cup tournament in Athens, Greece before the Moscow Olympic boycott was announced. Anderson was unaware that politics ran so deeply in sports and he felt in his heart he would be going to Moscow, it never happened. Hear Anderson's personal comments on the boycott in a 2012 Chronicle Herald article entitled: An Olympic dream KO'd by politics. Amateur career Nova Scotia’s Ricky Anderson would prove that he was a champion from the first time he fought as an Amateur in 1974. He’d go on to win the Nova Scotia Fly-weight title in his first year as a boxer. In 1975, he’d capture a Silver medal at that year’s Canada Games held in Lethbridge AB. In 1977, Ricky Anderson would become the first Canadian born boxer to beat a Cuban fighter. In 1980, Ricky made the Canadian Olympic Team but he would not get the chance to represent his country as Canada would boycott the Games in Moscow that year. Yet, 1981 was another big year for Anderson, he won his fourth amateur Canadian Championship. Then, in Shreveport, La., he added the North American light-welterweight crown to his growing collection of gold medals by knocking out U.S. Champion James Mitchell, a former World Army Champion. Following the win over Mitchell, he was named Canadian athlete of the month for September by the Canadian Sports Federation. The stage was now set for the 1981 World Cup of Boxing in Montreal, he would battle for the world championship against Vasily Shyshev of the Soviet Union. Anderson said, he went into the fight a little overanxious. The first two rounds were close and Anderson would need to win the final round to win the fight. But Vasily Shyshev turned it on in the last round and won the fight. Anderson had knocked on the door of a world championship and just missed by a few punches. Anderson had come to this point twice