Sims Hopes to Open Door in Tonight’s Bout

The eyes of the sparse crowd are focused on the ring where a small, quick fighter is lambasting a sparring partner with strong jabs and powerful rights.

This is Frankie Duarte, two weeks away from the dream of a lifetime, a shot at the World Boxing Assn. bantamweight title.

Off to the left, another fighter draws a few glances as he pounds a heavy bag mercilessly, hardly pausing for it to swing back into position before attacking it with crisp punches. His grunts reverberate off the walls of a makeshift gym in a hotel across the street from the Forum.

This is Michael Nunn, perhaps less than a year away from his chance at a title and his dream of a lifetime.

Off in a corner, another fighter removes the last vestiges of tape from his hands. No one in the crowd seems to notice.

Yet this fighter is closer than any of the others to fulfilling his dreams.

It is understandable that 25-year-old Walter Sims would spend his brief boxing career in the shadows. As a member of the Ten Goose Boxing Club of North Hollywood, he is No. 3 in the pecking order behind Duarte (41-6-1, 31 knockouts), who will fight champion Bernardo Pinango for the WBA title on Feb. 3 at the Forum, and Nunn (20-0, 12 knockouts), who is ranked ninth in the WBA’s middleweight division and hopes to fight for a title before the year is over.

Tonight, however, all eyes will be on Sims (22-3-2), who will face Vernon (Yogi) Buchanan of Berkley, Mo., in the 12-round main event at the Forum. The winner gets the championship of the Forum’s lightweight tournament and a prize of $50,000.

Dan Goossen, head of Ten Goose Boxing, first spotted Sims jogging down a street in the Valley. It was in October, 1983, when Ten Goose Boxing was just starting and desperately in need of fighters.

The well-built man on the street--his arms swinging rhythmically, his breathing unlabored--was just what Ten Goose needed.

Goossen, on his way to work, wheeled his car up to Sims, rolled the window down and asked, “Are you a fighter?”

Yes, nodded Sims.

“Do you have a manager?”

Again, Sims nodded yes.

“Here, take my card and if you ever need help, give me a call.”

Sims took the card, threw it in a drawer when he got home and didn’t plan on looking at it again.

After all, he was 7-1-1 since turning professional in the summer of ’83. He had been a pretty successful amateur, too, starting at age 19. He won 40 of 45 fights and had battled his way to a spot on the All-Army team back in his service days.

But the Cleveland native still wasn’t happy before he signed up with Goossen.

He said he couldn’t get enough fights under his manager, Jerry Moore. Then, Sims’ wife, Janice, started pestering her husband about this new boxing organization she had heard about.

“Ten Goose Boxing?” Walter said. “Well, I met the guy who runs it and he gave me his card.”

Three months after he had run into Goossen, Sims went to the Ten Goose gym to show his stuff.

“You could see right away he had potential,” said trainer Joe Goossen, Dan’s brother. “He had talent and he had the basic fundamentals and that’s what you want to start.”

It wouldn’t be an upset if Sims won tonight. The biggest upset is that he’s even here.

He couldn’t have told you where he was two minutes and 20 seconds into the quarterfinals of this tournament last September.

He was fighting Chris Calvin, who had 21 knockouts in his 22 fights. Sims learned quickly how Calvin got those stats. He went down twice from solid rights in the first round. The second time, he went crashing down and came up wobbling. If the referee had asked him where he was, Sims might have had trouble guessing the right state.

He immediately bought himself time by falling into a clinch, and when the referee pushed the fighters back, Sims stumbled halfway across the ring, back to the ropes. You got the feeling that had the ropes not been there, Sims might have stumbled all the way out to Manchester Avenue.

But he survived and, by the third round, it was Calvin who was batting away the cobwebs after Sims put him down with a right hand. Sims was in command from then on. Calvin hurt his hand in the seventh round and went on to lose a unanimous 10-round decision.

Then came the semifinals in December. Joey Olivera was the opponent this time, and again Sims was in trouble early. Olivera dominated the first half of the fight, building up enough of a lead, thought many at ringside, to win the decision.

Sims came back in the latter rounds as Olivera backed off, but when the close but unanimous decision went to Sims, boos filled the Forum.

Announcer Jimmy Lennon, before announcing the verdict, leaned down to his son, Jimmy Jr., seated ringside, and said, “Better put your helmet on.”

Yogi Buchanan, 20, is 16-4-1 with 11 knockouts. As an amateur, he won 70 of 80 fights and a city championship in St. Louis.

As a professional, he has been known to grab the microphone from the ring announcer after a victory and proclaim himself the greatest.

He did so in his last tournament fight, much to the disgust of Sims.

“I don’t like that kind of thing,” Sims said. “I’m mad anyway when I get in the ring. With Buchanan acting like that, it’s just double jeopardy.”

Sims’ stablemate, Duarte, won a Forum tournament last July and has earned a title fight. Sims figures the same will happen to him.

“There were two guys--Kenny Gibbs and Leon Mock--who I grew up with in Cleveland,” Sims said. “I always figured they were going to be the ones to make it big, but they both got shot and killed in separate cases in Cleveland. So now, I figure the Lord has left it up to me to make it.

“I’ve just been following Frankie and Michael. I figure life is like a big doorknob. And it’s my turn.”