World Boxing Championships : Stevenson, Smashingly, Wins Title for Third Time; U.S. Takes 3 Golds

Suddenly, there he was, like so many before him. On his back, his eyes glazed and his face a blank stare, lay another American heavyweight, Alex Garcia.

Standing over him, smiling, was the 35-year-old legend of amateur boxing, triple Olympic champion and now triple World champion Teofilo Stevenson.

And once again, it was Stevenson’s shotgun right hand that shot down another American super-heavyweight. So, add Garcia to a list that includes Duane Bobick, John Tate, Jimmy Clark and Tyrell Biggs.

In the second round, Stevenson knocked Garcia down with the big right and then sent him tumbling into the ropes, and Soviet referee Vladimir Gordienko, after giving Garcia a second standing-eight count, awarded the bout and another championship to Stevenson.

When will it end? How much longer can this go on? When the East Bloc boycott of the 1984 Olympics was announced, most in amateur boxing believed it meant adios for the 6-6 athlete whom the Cubans call El Gigante .

But the manner in which he won four matches here at amateur boxing’s World Championships--twice with displays of well-rounded boxing skills and twice with smashing right hands--suggests that Stevenson might have a couple of years left as amateur boxing’s dominant figure.

Even normally tight-lipped Cuban boxing officials were jubilant Saturday. Some of them were even smiling and winking about the subject of Stevenson competing in the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

And talk about smiling and winking, how about the young Americans? This is a team that came out of nowhere to win three world championships and a silver medal Saturday. And it can win a fourth today when light-heavyweight Loren Ross boxes Cuba’s Pablo Romero.

Saturday, the United States, in an upset, went 2 for 2 against Cubans and knocked off an East German. With Ross’ bout still to go, the United States has already equaled its best performance in a World Championships, the standard being set in 1982 at Munich, West Germany, where Biggs, Mark Breland and Floyd Favors won titles. Cuba has won five gold medals in each of the last three World Championships--1974, ’78 and ’82.

The Americans are 22-8 in this tournament, the Cubans 40-5. Some U.S. boxing officials are saying that a fourth championship, which Ross could win today, would prompt some comparisons between this U.S. team and the 1976 Olympic team that won five golds at a non-boycotted Olympics.

Kelcie Banks, a slick featherweight from Chicago who boxes like a 125-pound Breland, started the American championship string with a 4-1 decision over Cuban Jesus Sollet. Then, in the next bout, welterweight Ken Gould of Rockford, Ill., defeated Cuban Candelario Duvergel, 3-2. Darin Allen, the middleweight from Columbus, Ohio, decisioned East German Henry Maske, 4-1.

Head Coach Pat Nappi, who at the outset said his U.S. team was too young, too inexperienced, to hope for more than maybe one gold medal, was nearly speechless.

“I just can’t tell you how happy I am,” he said. “We don’t normally do well two years before an Olympics because we lose so many good kids to the pros. I’m so, so proud of these kids.”

Gould, the short, muscular welterweight winner, lectured the media in the interview room afterward. Experience, he said, doesn’t count. You’re better off being good, according to Gould.

“Everyone kept talking about how inexperienced we are,” he said. “Experience doesn’t count for that much. You got the skills, the technique--you just go for it, that’s all.”

Possibly this doesn’t apply in Garcia’s case. Stevenson entered the bout with a 300-20 record in a career stretching back to the 1960s. Garcia, 24, who started boxing 18 months ago after spending 9 1/2 months at Soledad State Prison on a voluntary-manslaughter conviction, was in his 19th amateur bout and his first international tournament.

After the referee gave Garcia his second standing-eight count and waved off Stevenson at 1:06 of the second round, the big Cuban ambled over to Garcia’s corner and embraced his opponent. He talked to Garcia and his coach, Blinky Rodriguez, for a couple of minutes.

“He was very nice,” Rodriguez said.

“He talked to Alex in Spanish (Stevenson speaks English well), but Alex doesn’t speak Spanish. I do, though. He told Alex: ‘You’re going to be a great one. I’ve left a lot of guys in worse shape than you. You’re a very strong guy.’ ”

Rodriguez said he sent Garcia out smoking.

“We figured with the way decisions were going here, Alex had to really beat Stevenson up, if it went to a decision. Hey, Alex could have gone out there and thrown left jabs and survived. But he didn’t--he went after him. And he walked right into that first Stevenson right hand. But he got up. How many guys have gotten up after getting tagged with that right? And he got up twice from it.

“To me, Alex is still a phenom. He’s had 19 amateur bouts and he’s a silver medalist at the World Championships.”

In the interview room afterward, Stevenson spent half his time delivering a rambling commercial through a translator on the wonders of amateur sports under Cuban leader Fidel Castro and the country’s Communist system. And as he has throughout the tournament, he was smiling but evasive when asked about the ’88 Olympics.

Rolly Schwartz, longtime U.S. amateur boxing official from Cincinnati, thinks that Stevenson cannot only win a fourth gold at Seoul but that he also could win the pro world title.

“I said four years ago I thought he’d beat Larry Holmes inside of four rounds, and I still think he’s the best heavyweight in the world, amateur or pro,” Schwartz said. “In 45 years in boxing, I never saw anyone hit with that kind of velocity.”

Almost unnoticed amid Stevenson’s victory and the triple-gold American day was the fact that another boxer, Cuban lightweight Adolfo Horta, won his third world championship.

Horta, a world champion in 1978 and 1982, went through this tournament by the skin of his teeth. He won his first bout here on a 5-0 verdict, then scored four consecutive decisions by 3-2. His quarterfinal 3-2 win over Puerto Rican Fernando Maldonado was thought by many ringsiders to be the worst decision of the tournament.

But his 3-2 victory over Venezuelan Engels Pedrosa Saturday was genuinely close. And when Horta’s hand was raised, the Cuban burst into tears and was still crying happily when he left the ring.

Only Stevenson and Horta have won three world championships.

Cuba’s third gold Saturday was heavyweight Felix Savon, who outclassed Arnold Van der Lijde of the Netherlands, 5-0. The Cubans hope that Savon, only 18, will one day succeed Stevenson as the world’s greatest super-heavyweight.

But the way El Gigante looked in Reno this week, Savon may have to wait for the 21st Century.