Forum Boxing : It Was Case of Weight and Not See

The most interesting fight at the Forum Tuesday night took place outside the ring.

Middleweights Lindell Holmes and Mardo Roybal had been scheduled to go toe-to-toe in a 10-round bout, but Holmes came in weighing two pounds over the 160-pound limit.

Under the circumstances, the California State Athletic Commission could not sanction the fight, but promoters of the Stroh’s boxing tournament thought they could save their featured attraction by getting the respective managers to agree to different terms.

Not a chance.

Holmes’ manager, Billy Gutz, and Bobby Waddil, representing Roybal, dickered for about four hours, with Gutz finally offering to pay Roybal $2,500 for each pound that his fighter was overweight, or a total of $5,000.

Waddil declined, and the fight was off.

The weight problem was not the only difficulty surrounding what was to have been the main bout on the Stroh’s card, according to State Athletic Commission member George Johnson.

“There were two different contracts sent out, and that’s illegal,” Johnson said. “They had two different weights on them, with Holmes contracted for 159 and Roybal for 158.

“I had tried for three weeks to get the thing together, but in the end it was Holmes saying that he wouldn’t take off the weight.

“Roybal’s manager didn’t want to fight Holmes at such a high weight (162) and that also contributed to the cancellation.”

This fight had been rescheduled from July 22 after Holmes pulled out because of a broken hand.

Two welterweight elimination bouts on Tuesday’s Forum card both went the distance.

California’s Derrick (Hurricane) Kelly won a unanimous decision over New York’s Nelson Ortiz, while Manning Galloway of Columbus, Ohio, took a split decision from Alphonso Long of Los Angeles.

Kelly knocked Ortiz down in the first round and hurt him in the later rounds.

“You have to give him (Ortiz) a lot of credit,” Kelly said. “I thought I would knock him out early in the fight, but he wouldn’t go down.”

Kelly (14-0-1) moves on to the next round of the welterweight tournament.

Galloway started out slowly, but hurt Long in the later rounds, eventually taking the split decision.

“With the fights on television, I had to sit my dressing room and wait awhile,” Galloway said. “It didn’t really get started until the fourth round, and from then on I was carrying the fight.”

Galloway, the Ohio welterweight champion, improved his record to 24-7. Long (16-3) was the No. 2-ranked welterweight in California, behind Kelly.