Bert Lee Takes His Best Shot at Boxing : Tonight’s Fight Against Mannion Is a Crucial One

Welcome to the Westminster Boxing Club.

Located just off Westminster Boulevard near Golden West Street, behind an unfinished furniture store, the club is the home of many an unfinished boxer and is recognized as the sweet science’s most prominent laboratory in Orange County.

It is here that Bert Lee, ranked as California’s top super-welterweight, prepares for a 10-round middleweight fight against Boston’s Sean Mannion tonight at the Marriott Hotel in Irvine.

Most prominent West Coast boxers train in the plush surroundings of the big hotels in Palm Springs or Las Vegas, but not Lee. He prefers the Westminster facility because its atmosphere is more like his hometown of Corona, which isn’t nearly as lavish as a desert resort.

Although not as famous as, say, Smokin’ Joe’s Gym in Philadelphia, the Kronk Gym in Detroit, or the Main Street Gym in Los Angeles, the air in what is more commonly known as the Westminster Gym is no less dank. A lifeless American flag hanging in one corner offers mute testimony to the lack of circulation inside the small gymnasium.

Outside, a sign greeting visitors says that all boxers must please sign in and monthly dues for amateurs are $10 per month. For pros, it’s $20.

Inside, a half dozen or so heavy bags hang from the low ceiling like so many oversized sausages.

The walls are decorated with old fight posters promoting Pipino Cuevas, Julio Chavez and Ruben Castillo. There are several mirrors for fighters to shadow box in front of.

An old newspaper clipping proudly proclaims that “The Westminster Boxing Club was founded with the personal attention and dedication of former welterweight Carlos Palomino and other dedicated residents of the community.”

And no boxing gym worth its speed bags would be complete without the requisite old-timers, loosely defined as anybody who hangs out in the gym just to watch, regardless of one’s chronological age.

Today, three old-timers are found near the entrance, talking about an old-time boxer named Tombstone Smith. One of the old-timers even has a copy of The Ring magazine from 1948 with a picture of Kid Gavilan on the cover.

The object of their attention soon turns from the magazine to one of the two rings in the middle of the gym. The rings are labeled, appropriately enough, Ring 1 and Ring 2. Into Ring 2 steps Lee and a sparring partner, Tomas Perez.

Lee adjusts his headgear while leaning against a corner turnbuckle, which comes equipped with a makeshift spittoon for the boxer to spit in after he rinses out his mouth in. On it is a sign that reads “NOTICE--Please Do Not Throw Anything (Paper, Tape, Trash) In Our Water Buckets (thank you).” A nearby water bottle belongs to the La Habra Boxing Club.

Before he begins sparring, Lee leans over the ropes and is anointed with petroleum jelly by his trainer, a short, stocky man who takes the task of smearing Vaseline all over his boxer’s face seriously.

Looking about the gym, you quickly learn that the shiny faces (to lessen the chances of being cut during practice) and bandaged hands are the foremost badges of courage here.

Youngsters who don’t look old enough to spell petroleum jelly nonetheless have their faces smeared with it. And other youths who can’t afford real gloves still shadow box with bandaged hands, just in case a pair of real gloves becomes available sometime throughout the late afternoon.

The entire gym beats to the pulse of a boxer dancing with his speedbag-- slap - slap slap - slap slap - slap --with only the occasional cackle of a three-minute alarm, to let sparring partners know when a round is over, breaking the monotony.

Some boxers are exercising or jumping rope. Some are admiring themselves in the mirrors, imagining what it might be like to have a referee in Las Vegas raising their arm in victory some day.

Some are taking a day’s--maybe a life’s--frustration out on a heavy bag. A few others lay back on a trainer’s table in the corner, avoiding the work. The old-timers eyeball the younger boxers, trying to predict which one might be the next Palomino or Sugar Ray Leonard.

Lee and Perez meet in the center of Ring 2, oblivious to the parade around them. They touch gloves, nod their heads out of respect, and then begin circling each other with gloves raised, ready to strike.

For Lee, it is the first of three sparring partners he will meet on this day, covering 10 rounds of spirited fighting. Perez is no shrill. He is the younger brother of Cubanito Perez, a lightweight of some note.

After the last and most furious round of action, the muscular Perez emerges with a slightly bloody nose and Lee with some of Perez’s blood on his glove. “He’s in shape,” Perez puffs, leaving the ring in favor of a fresher partner.

Lee, as his trainer pulls his mouthpiece out and offers between-rounds advice, allows his only smile of the day. It is a moment to treasure. Boxing has offered Bert Lee little reason to smile. He’s hoping that tonight’s fight might change all that.

Mack Kurihara is an unlikely boxing trainer. Most such trainers may have had a few of their boxers launched into orbit on occasion, but Kurihara has had actual satellites placed there.

A satellite technician at TRW in Redondo Beach, Kurihara spends most of his free time developing pros at the Westminster Gym or youngsters at the Huntington Valley Boys and Girls Club in Huntington Beach.

At practice he wears a red, white, and blue TRW jacket with a shoulder patch that reads TDRSS-1/Flight 1. That stands for Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System. Two satellites that he worked on for that system were launched by the space shuttle Columbia last year.

An amateur champion while fighting in the Air Force in the 1950s, Kurihara, 53, has helped train boxers on and off ever since. His style would definitely be labeled hands-on, considering that he is in constant motion at the gym, shuttling between Lee and four other boxers he helps train.

One minute he’s at ringside, swabbing a fighter with Vaseline, the next he’s wearing blocking pads, encouraging another fighter to work on his punching combinations, and after that he’s critiquing another’s footwork.

Yet for all his hyperactivity, Kurihara hardly seems winded at the end of his Westminster Gym coaching day. Next up, after all, is the boys club to teach the very basics to the younger boxers.

Kurihara is clearly a man who enjoys his work and especially enjoys working with Bert Lee, currently his best--but not only--hope for a champion.

“I met Bert a few years ago, but about a year and a half ago he came to my gym and asked me to train him,” Kurihara said. “It seemed that everybody had given up on Bert Lee, but I felt that there was just something about him that had the makings of a champion.”

Actually, Lee is a champion of sorts--he’s the WAA (World Athletic Assn.) junior middleweight champion, but in the alphabet soup of boxing, that particular title doesn’t command any of his sport’s big three brass rings: respect, a big purse, or a television appearance.

Kurihara believes that a victory by Lee over Mannion in tonight’s scheduled 10-round lightweight fight should lead to opportunities for exactly that.

While Kurihara has great faith in his fighter, he is nonetheless dispassionate when discussing the Lee-Mannion matchup. You won’t find any Muhammad Ali-esque bravado from either the fighter or the trainer.

“I don’t think he’s (Mannion) going to fight any different than he did when he fought (David) McCallum last year,” Kurihara said. “He has proven he can go the distance. He’s not a Marvin Hagler, but he does have a jab that we have to stay away from.”

Mannion lost a 15-round decision to McCallum last October for the then-vacant WBA 154-pound title at Madison Square Garden in New York.

So Mannion, too, is looking at this fight as a stepping stone to greater opportunities. Mannion (28-5) and Lee (28-8-4) appear to be evenly matched.

The biggest difference between the two is that Mannion, a native of Ireland, is left-handed, so Lee has spent the past eight weeks of training preparing for this. Finding left-handed sparring partners hasn’t proven to be a problem, what with the healthy cross-section of fighters that pass through the gym.

That Lee will face a left-hander isn’t Kurihara’s greatest concern as a trainer, however, because Kurihara prepares his fighters more with stamina than strategy in mind.

“What boxing is, basically, is how long you can go at a fast clip, how long you can box with your arms up without getting tired,” Kurihara said.

Lee has long been known as a “fight-night boxer,” meaning that he may not look impressive while sparring, but under the bright lights of the actual match he is considerably more aggressive than he ever was in training.

“He’s a disciplined fighter,” Kurihara said, “so that makes him a very easy fighter to train. I tell him something once and then I don’t have to worry about repeating myself. But that’s not surprising, especially for this one. He knows it’s the biggest fight of his life.”

With his mustache and full beard, Bert Lee resembles Roberto Duran, although because of his competitive nature, it would be difficult to imagine Lee stopping a fight and shouting No Mas before the end. In Indonesia once, people even asked him if he was the great hands of stone (Duran’s nickname) when he was training there for a fight.

In short, Lee looks like the kind of guy you certainly wouldn’t want to meet in a boxing ring, much less a back alley.

In person, however, Lee shows no signs of his in-the-ring, fight-night intensity. He is thoughtful and well-spoken, but hardly melancholic, when discussing his immediate future.

“If I win I should get a shot at one of the top guys like David Braxton or David McCallum,” he said. “It would be a very satisfying thing if I could ever get a shot at a world title.

“But if I lose, that’s it. I’ll just quit. So Monday will decide my future.”

At 28 years old, Lee is hardly ready to file for social security benefits, but in his case he is close to reaching a point of diminishing returns for all of his efforts in the ring. He works a 40-hour work week and after work he must go to the Westminster Gym for at least two hours of training.

That means that every day he must travel from his home in Riverside to work at a recreational vehicle manufacturer in Anaheim, then to the gym in Westminster, then back home to Riverside and his wife, Karen and daughter, Leyna.

Lee will continue that busy routine only if there is a promise of greater things to come in his career and that will only happen if he beats Mannion tonight.

Lee has already had two memorable fights in his career, one a victory and one a defeat.

The defeat came in 1983 to Bobby Czyz in Las Vegas, on the undercard of the Aaron Pryor-Alexis Arguello fight, resulting in Lee seeking out Kurihara to be his trainer.

“I was a stepping stone for Czyz that night,” Lee recalled. “I gave away every ounce of 10 pounds to him and probably shouldn’t have fought him because he was so much more experienced.”

The fight was stopped in the third round with Czyz winning on a technical knockout and Lee left the ring in search of a new trainer and handler. Once under Kurihara’s supervision, Lee’s biggest fight was in Indonesia against its middleweight champion.

“I thought I was going against their junior middleweight champion but he turned out to be a regular middleweight,” Lee said. “It was one of those deals where they don’t tell you until you get there.

“We were in a nice little stadium in Jakarta and there were maybe three, four thousand people there. It turned out that I stole his crowd--by the end of the night, they were chanting Beht Lee! Beht Lee! because they couldn’t pronounce it quite right.

“I just wailed on him and made him back up that night.”

According to Kurihara, Lee is in the best shape of his life and has the necessary experience to make something of his career, but a win over Mannion is crucial.

Life will hardly end for Lee should he lose tonight, but he eagerly wants something tangible to show for his seven-year pro boxing career.

Lee is a very religious man, but it’s a personal matter to him and he doesn’t go around the gym quoting Scripture or cursing the fates.

But, as promoter Don Fraser said, “When we were at that fight in Indonesia, I was out at the bars and he was back in his room reading the Bible.”

When it comes time for Lee to step out of the ring for the last time, whether that’s tonight or in the future, it is likely he is one boxer in particular who’d find comfort in a brief quote from St. Paul that reads: “I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.”