THE CRAZY WORLD OF LIVINGSTONE BRAMBLE : Snakes, Dogs, Voodoo--He Even Has His Manager a Little Punchy

Livingstone Bramble is angry with the media because all they want to do is write about an eccentric, a kid who trains with a boa constrictor named Dog around his neck and whose most beloved companion is a pit bull terrier named Snake.

It’s like this: You hire a witch doctor for just one fight--what if it does turn out that Dr. Doo was a high school basketball coach--and nobody lets you forget it for the rest of your life.

Well, you can see what Bramble, 24, the World Boxing Assn. lightweight champion, is up against, even as he trained for tonight’s rematch with Ray Mancini, 23.

It’s “Hey, Bramble, hear you’ve been sparring with a caged chicken.” Or “Hey, Bramble, hear you’ve been shadow-boxing with bubbles.”

There is no letup. No wonder, then, the chip on his shoulder. No wonder he refused to tape a segment with CBS, which just happens to be providing part of his $750,000 purse.

There is a serious side to Bramble that everybody chooses to ignore. The other day at a press conference, for instance, he unwrapped a voodoo doll and began probing the eyes with a needle. “Ray, tell me how your eyes feel. See how your eyes are jumping now.”

Then there was the solemn presentation of a ceramic skull--made in China and bought at a pet store. Bramble would like to know just what they mean by eccentric.

“Don’t believe it,” said Wily Lou Duva, Bramble’s long-suffering manager, when asked about these reported troubles with the media. “He loves it. I mean, what we have here is a nut, a real coconut head, a cuckoo.”

Duva, no stranger himself when it comes to promoting a fight--he nearly started a brawl with Mancini’s manager, Dave Wolf, the other day--said he doesn’t mind Bramble’s zaniness, only his protests to the contrary. Duva’s attitude is: Why should a man who plans to wear a skull and crossbones on his trunks complain about his coverage? Does the Pope whine because everywhere he goes people look on him as a religious figure?

If Bramble is not, in fact, what the psychiatrists like to medically classify as a coconut head, he is at least showing many of the symptoms. Since winning the title from Mancini last June in a 14-round upset, Bramble has done little to change his image from the dread-locked Rastafarian who is full of that Virgin Islands voodoo.

It is almost easy to forget that he is really a champion, an excellent counter-puncher with a 22-2-1 record whose strength was more than equal to that of the stand-up slugger, Mancini, whose record of 29-2 was forged largely by presenting his face and daring anyone to hit it. Bramble’s activities outside the ring tend to overshadow those within.

The glory of his reign, a reign that will be tested in Reno’s Lawlor Events Center and will be televised nationally by HBO, has been obscured by a certain unpredictability, a behavior that has often veered onto a very low road, indeed, even beyond voodoo dolls. Before the first Mancini fight, for example, Bramble said he was going to sew the name of Duk Koo Kim on his trunks, in reference to the fighter who died after a title fight with Mancini.

There is little doubt that all this had an effect on Mancini in that first fight. Mancini was somewhat psyched by those goings-on. “The Mancini people, they don’t know how to hype a fight,” Duva said. “They think everything is for real.”

Mancini, of Youngstown, Ohio, says it was more a case of overtraining for that fight, that he had absolutely nothing that night. All the same, those close to the promotion say Mancini has been working hard to stay above the fray this time, that he has resigned himself to whatever Bramble has up his sleeve. After Bramble had his way with the voodoo doll, Mancini simply asked if Bramble would be his valentine.

Wolf, who put a recent press conference in high gear by tossing out some vague drug allegations, said Bramble’s efforts for the rematch have been boring. “I have to fault them for their creativity,” he said. “They should have done something better than this. This is supposed to be a psych-out?”

To tell the truth, there is some question as to whether this is, indeed, supposed to be a psych-out. Duva ordinarily welcomes anything that gets his fighter attention, but Bramble’s behavior has been getting even to him. And he’s not sure it’s all so calculated, either.

“Some of it’s BS,” he said. “But you have to remember, he’s a kook. I don’t know from hour to hour what he’s going to do. He doesn’t either. I’ve been spending all my time here covering up for him, for the things he’s been saying.”

In the beginning Duva could laugh it all off. It’s been a standing joke when he said: “I’ve got an appointment already made. After any Bramble fight, I commit myself to a mental institution for 10 days.”

But it doesn’t always make him laugh these days. In fact, he’s at the point where he’s ready to walk away from a champion. See, not all this bizarre behavior makes it to the press.

“We’re training in Houston (along with Duva’s four Olympic gold medalists and two other pro champions) and he says he won’t stay with the rest of the guys because he wants somebody to be there to cook his island food,” Duva said. “So I spend $600 for an apartment and give the three of them $500 for food for the week. I get a call from Bramble and he says there’s no toilet paper. I tell him to go across the street and buy some. He says no. I say what are you going to do until somebody else does?”

The whole week, Bramble did not eat one meal in his apartment. Then, disgusted because it was too cold in Houston, he left the training camp. He went back to New Jersey, where a foot of snow was on the ground.

Before that, even, Bramble had proved frustrating in his refusal to fight Mancini in an immediate rematch. He wanted to fight top-ranked Tyrone Crawley instead, a fight that would have given him $250,000 at most, half a million less than this Mancini fight.

He also frustrates Duva daily in training. “Everything has to be reverse psychology,” Duva said, sighing. “If I want him to do one thing, I have to tell him to do the opposite. It’s impossible to be forceful with him; he rebels.”

As it is, Duva goes along with a lot. When Bramble got the idea of having his trainer blow bubbles into the air, so that Bramble could pick them off, Duva said fine, go ahead.

When Bramble got the idea of putting a chicken in a cage and chasing it around for 10 minutes at a time, Duva said fine, go ahead. That chicken has been Bramble’s biggest embarrassment so far. A resolute fowl, it just stood there, prompting Wolf to say, “See, even a chicken isn’t afraid of Bramble.”

Said Duva, shrugging his shoulders: “Who knew the chicken would be so damn slow?”

Duva, for one, has about had his fill. He noted, though, that there is a good side to Bramble. After Bramble won his title, he returned to Passaic, N.J., to continue his coaching of Boys Club basketball and swimming.

“You know, he can be a good kid,” Duva said. “He could be a credit to boxing. He’s a tough kid, a strong kid. If he’d just let me manage him. But he’s just not all there, he’s a nut. I tell you, unless he does something, there could be some changes.”

It would be a remarkable thing for a manager to cut a champion, but Duva says that’s just what he might do. What could be a manager’s dream is instead, all too often, his nightmare.

“You know what I wish on Dave Wolf?” he said of his spirited and hated adversary. “Sometimes I wish he were Bramble’s manager.”