BOXING : Forum Fight Will Help Fans Forget

Fans burdened by the unpleasantness of last week’s one-punch fight for the heavyweight championship should get a lift Monday night at the Forum.

The following are guaranteed to happen:

--Paul Banke will show up fit and primed for battle.

--If he goes down, he will get up.

--Win or lose, fans will cheer his name when it’s over.

--Banke will be paid $60,000, not $19,075,000.

After a week during which a heavyweight championship fight and cowardice are mentioned in the same breath, it will be reassuring to watch once more a fighter who consistently offers the kind of intensity and excitement so rarely seen in boxing today.

Banke stands 5 feet 4 and weighs 122 pounds. He hits as if rocks, not fists, were in his gloves. His kind of courage under fire--he seems to be at his best when he is hurt--is rare, even in a sport where bravery is mandatory.

Banke is probably Southern California’s most popular fighter, and with good reason. On the night of April 23, 1990, he won the allegiance of 5,937 at the Forum with one of those performances that will be remembered for a lifetime. He fought back from certain defeat and stopped Daniel Zaragoza in the ninth round to win the World Boxing Council’s super-bantamweight championship.

The little guy from Azusa was a champion at last.

In more than 20 years of boxing at the Forum, this was as good as it had ever been. Banke and Zaragoza hammered away at each other. In every round, it seemed, someone would surely fall.

Finally, Zaragoza did.

Banke had shown an unremitting will to win. Many who saw that victory will be back for more Monday, when Banke makes his first Forum appearance since then, defending his title against Pedro Decima of Argentina.

But it may be that if Banke retains his championship for another five years, no one in this country will have seen his greatest victory. Last Aug. 18, in Ichon, South Korea, he was up against a rugged opponent, Lee Ki-Jun. Banke’s left eye became severely swollen.

But for the second straight fight, Banke, behind on points, had more at the finish than his opponent. Exhausted and with one eye swollen shut in the 12th round, he nonetheless knocked Lee down twice, and the referee stopped the fight.

Such courage seemed to be missing in one contestant in the big Las Vegas fight last week.

Banke will come into Monday’s fight without having sparred.

“Paul sparred nine rounds total before the fight in South Korea and five rounds before the Zaragoza fight,” said Banke’s trainer, Steve Rosenzweig. Banke recently moved from Quail Valley in Riverside County to Richfield, Utah, so he could train at the 5,500-foot altitude.

“He won’t spar a single round for this fight,” Rosenzweig said. “We don’t believe in getting a fighter beaten up in the gym. What’s the point? I wear body pads and sparring mitts when we’re in the ring. We feel we’re extending the life of the fighter. We work mainly on timing, and you don’t have to get hit to do that.”

Because of the animosity that people who run amateur boxing hold for professional boxing, Southern Californians will probably see Oscar de la Hoya, possibly the country’s best amateur boxer, only on television before the 1992 Olympic Games.

What’s wrong with prominent amateurs boxing in exhibitions on the undercards of pro shows at major venues, such as the Forum? Nothing, really . . . but it probably will never happen. “First, it’s an international rule, not a national rule,” said Paul Konnor, a Milwaukee attorney who is a vice president of AIBA, amateur boxing’s world governing body.

“Second, we’re constantly getting lumped in with pro boxing by the American Medical Assn. people who want to ban boxing, so for that reason alone we try to stay as far removed from pro boxing as we can.

“The best way for people in Southern California to see De la Hoya and the other top amateurs is for someone there to bid on our major 1991 events, like the USA-Cuba and USA-Soviet Union competitions.”

There is, however, an obvious inconsistency in these arguments for separating amateurs and pros. On a practical level, there is no separation. At any boxing gym, amateurs not only spar with pros, they are trained and advised by men who also train and manage pros.

The USA Amateur Boxing Federation is wasting an opportunity to show off its best talent, to raise some significant revenue and to garner support for the 1992 Olympic team.

Even after splitting the difference between the high and low estimates of the pay-per-view television revenue from the Evander Holyfield-Buster Douglas heavyweight title fight, it is still the highest-grossing boxing event ever.

Low side: Tom Adams, pay-per-view analyst for Paul Kagan and Associates, a Carmel-based cable TV newsletter, said his firm is estimating the fight was purchased by 6.8% of 13.2 million cable households. That’s 897,600 homes. Based on an average price of $40, it comes to $35,904,000.

High side: Rick Kulis, who marketed Holyfield-Douglas sales for Mirage President Steve Wynn, is estimating at least a 7.8% rate out of 14.8 million homes, or 1,154,400 households paying a total of $46,176,000.

Roughly half of the gross TV receipts go to Wynn, who says he invested $39 million. It is believed that the previous pay-per-view record for boxing was a gross of $30 million, by both the 1987 Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler bout and the 1988 Mike Tyson-Michael Spinks fight.

Will the general unhappiness over Douglas’ effort hurt future shows, such as April’s Holyfield-George Foreman bout?

“None at all,” Kulis said. “Remember, Leonard-(Roberto) Duran III was a stinker, too, and it didn’t hurt Holyfield-Douglas. Besides, George Foreman is hugely popular, he’s articulate and he’s a great promoter.”

Kulis also said the theme to Holyfield-Foreman is a proven winner. “It’s the ‘Can the old man do it?’ theme, just like (Larry) Holmes-(Muhammad) Ali,” he said. “Holmes-Ali grossed $12 million in 1980, a huge number then.”

Boxing Notes

Buster Douglas received $19,075,000 for 7 1/2 minutes of work. In his entire career, Rocky Marciano earned $4,138,289. His largest single purse: $948,117, for his final fight, against Archie Moore Sept. 21, 1955. . . . The Forum boxing staff is getting static from the Los Angeles office of the Immigration and Naturalization Service over work visas for foreign boxers. As late as Friday afternoon, Argentine lightweight Fabian Tejeda (22-0) still hadn’t been cleared by the INS for his 10-round Forum bout Monday night. The INS was also asking that the Forum provide documentation that WBC light-flyweight champion Humberto Gonzalez of Mexico City really is a champion.

An invitational amateur boxing tournament is scheduled for Lincoln Park Gymnasium in Los Angeles Nov. 26-Dec. 1. . . . Don King has signed Julio Cesar Chavez for a 10-round, non-title rematch against Meldrick Taylor at 145 pounds for January or February. Then, win or lose, Chavez will meet Hector Camacho in May or June with Chavez’s two junior-welterweight titles at stake. . . . The USA Amateur Boxing Federation is starting a masters division, for boxers 38 and over.

Kelcie Banks, America’s most decorated amateur boxer as recently as 1988, will fight his first pro main event Thursday in Las Vegas, against Felix Gonzalez. The Bally’s show also has a good undercard: Heavyweights Loren Ross and Tommy Morrison in separate bouts, Olympic featherweight champion Kennedy McKinney and Canadian Olympic flyweight Scott Olson. . . . Bob Arum’s Top Rank pro group recently signed top-rated amateur welterweight Skipper Kelp of Colorado Springs, a two-time national Golden Gloves champion.

CALENDAR Monday--Paul Banke vs. Pedro Decima, WBC super-bantamweight championship, 12 rounds; Cesar Martinez vs. Fabian Tejeda, lightweights, 10 rounds. Forum, 7 p.m.