When Little Champs Fight the Big Champs, It’s Lights-Out Time

Are you the kind of person who slows down to gawk at traffic accidents in the other lane?

Train wrecks your bag? Go to every disaster movie in town, do you? Like it when that volcano dumps all over Pompeii? Tidal waves thrill you? Smile when you see the Titanic heading for that iceberg? High-rise fires give you goose pimples?

Root for the lions against the Christians, would you? Hurricane Elena your idea of late-night entertainment? Alfred Hitchcock your kind of guy? Have this hankering to see a homicide?

We may have just the thing for you. On Sept. 21 at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas, Larry Holmes, a 225-pound fist-fighter with a 45 1/2-inch chest and an 18-inch neck, will get in a 16-foot square ring with a 175-pound “opponent,” one with a 38-inch chest and a 15 1/2-inch neck, and will be turned loose on him.

Bring a priest.

If you have missed Larry Holmes’ fights of the century against the great Lorenzo Zanon, Lucien Rodriguez, Osvaldo Ocasio, and Alfredo Evangelista; if you missed all two minutes of his thrilling stand against Marvis Frazier, don’t despair. Even if you haven’t seen the latest rerun of “The Last Days of Pompeii,” this may be better. In fact, it may be better than Cagney going to the electric chair.

Michael Spinks, the light-heavyweight champion of all the world, is going to take on the heavyweight champion of the world and try to win his title.

If he does, he’ll be the first. It’ll be like the lava flattening Vesuvius, the Titanic ripping open the iceberg, the Christians eating the lions. It’s not the way to bet.

Light-heavy champs have had delusions of grandeur before. Back in nought-six and seven, Philadelphia Jack O’Brien went 40 rounds with heavyweight champ Tommy Burns without noticeably mussing Burns’ coiffure.

At that, he did better than those who came later. In 1921, the French Orchid Man, Georges Carpentier, tried Jack Dempsey, who turned him into a blood clot. Tommy Loughran lost to Primo Carnera, which wasn’t easy to do.

John Henry Lewis tried Joe Louis. It was a moral victory for Lewis. He lasted almost a round. He announced his retirement as soon as he woke up.

Billy Conn came the closest. He was leading on points against Louis in 1941 till he turned Irish. Slugging with Joe Louis was about as good an idea as trading bites with a shark.

Even the great Archie Moore couldn’t handle the hurdle, even though he weighed only a quarter pound less than Rocky Marciano--188 to 188 for the Rock--when he tried.

In fact, it’s well to remember that in those days, heavyweights tended to be 190-pounders as often as not, and not the 230-pound behemoths of today.

Tommy Burns weighed only 172 the first time he fought Jack O’Brien, who weighed 163 1/2. Joe Louis weighed 199 1/2 when he knocked out Conn, who weighed 174. When Ezzard Charles beat light-heavy champ Joey Maxim, he weighed 182 to Maxim’s 181 1/2.

Heavyweights live up to their names today. When Bob Foster fought Muhammad Ali for the North American title in 1972, Ali weighed 224 and Foster 184.

Conditions are stacked against the lighter champ. If he gains weight, he sacrifices speed, which may be his only asset going in.

Spinks is bucking a trend. He’s also bucking one of the oldest axioms of the fight game--a good big man will always beat a good little man. The betting here is that Cain had a 20-pound pull in the weights on Abel. Larry Holmes may have as much as 50.

The fighters had a press conference at a Sunset Strip hotel Wednesday. Holmes had the decency to look embarrassed. Spinks just looked worried.

It was one of those witless my-old-man-can-beat-your-old-man exchanges. But the champ’s heart wasn’t in it. It’s one thing to exchange taunts with the glowering brutes of the division, another to threaten a guy who looks as if he’s standing in the rain with a shawl over him.

“Are you scared?” a young lady asked Spinks.

“Naw,” he assured her. “That’s just my sense of humor. I said I was upstairs being scared. I just like to inject a little humor in the situation.”

That’s nice to know. As Custer said, you have to wait for your laughs. Spinks may get cross with the champ in the ring. “You’re stepping on all my laughs, chump! Lighten up!”

Actually, Holmes is laughing already. When someone asked him if he was scared, he grinned wickedly. “Yeah, scared I might kill him!” he said.

When someone pointed out that when Louis fought Conn, he noted in his prefight speech, “He can run--but he can’t hide,” Holmes was ready with a quip. “This guy can’t even run,” he said, sneering.

Dempsey-Firpo it ain’t. The light-heavyweight champion’s best shot would seem to be invisibility.

If you can’t make it, just go find some earthquake movies or pull the wings off butterflies and get the same effect. This fight will not be by the Marquess of Queensberry’s rules, but by the Marquis de Sade’s.