‘84 Olympic Boxers, After Collecting Gold, Are Pocketing Green

Jerry Page goes to college and teaches boxing, and Robert Shannon goes to college and cuts hair, while other members of the golden 1984 U.S. Olympic team make their mark as professional fighters.

Page, the Olympic light welterweight champion, and Shannon, the bantamweight on the 1984 team, are delighted at their teammates’ success, and still dreaming of glory for themselves. They, too are fighting pro . . . without fanfare.

Mark Breland, the glamour boy of the team that collected nine gold medals, one silver and one bronze, will challenge for the World Boxing Assn. welterweight title when he fights Harold Volbrecht of South Africa next Saturday at Atlantic City, N.J.

Evander Holyfield, the “uncrowned” Olympic champion, who had to settle for a bronze when he was controversially disqualified, already is a world champion. He will make his first defense of the World Boxing Assn. junior heavyweight title Feb. 14 against Henry Tillman, who won the heavyweight gold medal at Los Angeles.

Steve McCrory fought his way to a title shot, but failed when he was knocked out by Australian Jeff Fenech, who was the International Boxing Federation flyweight champion, last June 18. The Olympic flyweight champion was then knocked out in the fifth round of his next fight, making his record 11-2-1, with three knockouts. Manager Emanuel Steward recommended he retire, then he and McCrory split.

All the other 1984 Olympians, except Virgil Hill, Page, Shannon and McCrory, are ranked contenders. Tyrell Biggs is No. 1 in the WBA heavyweight rankings.

The combined pro record for the team is 139-4-4, with 78 knockouts.

No one involved with the ’84 group seems surprised by its success, including Pat Nappi, who coached it as well as the 1976 and 1980 teams. The 1976 team won five gold medals and produced five world champions, including Sugar Ray Leonard; the 1980 squad, which missed the Moscow Games because of the U.S. boycott, produced four world champions, including Donald Curry. Both Leonard and Curry were undisputed welterweight champs.

“We were kind of professional in the ring as amateurs,” said Pernell Whitaker, the Olympic lightweight champion. “We just had to learn to go longer than three rounds.”

“I’m not surprised everybody has progressed so well,” said Meldrick Taylor, who was the featherweight champion at Los Angeles and who now fights as a lightweight and welterweight.

“There was no doubt in my mind we would do well as pros,” said Biggs, whose gold medal was in the super heavyweight class.

“I felt some of them were better pro fighters than amateurs. . . . Taylor, Evander and Whitaker,” Breland said.

But quite a few boxing people doubted if Breland and Biggs would make it as pros.

Breland posted a 110-1 amateur record, with 73 knockouts. He won six fights in the Olympics, but four were by decision and he often heard boos.

“Breland’s problem was that everybody expected him to be a killer,” Nappi said, “and he never was.”

But the 6-foot-2 1/2, who learned better balance as a pro, can hit with right-hand power and has an excellent jab. He has scored 11 knockouts in winning all 16 of his pro bouts and gained the WBA’s No. 2 ranking. He is ranked No. 4 by the World Boxing Council and No. 7 by the International Boxing Federation.

The knock on the 6-5 Biggs was that he didn’t have the aggressiveness or power to make it as a pro heavyweight.

“Biggs always had it, it just had to come out,” Nappi said.

Biggs still has his detractors, but he has shown improved punching power in posting a 12-0 record, with eight knockouts. He also fought eight rounds with a broken collarbone in scoring a 10-round unanimous decision over Jeff Sims last March 23.

Co-managers Lou Duva and Shelly Finkel would like Biggs, who also is ranked No. 4 by the WBC and fifth by the IBF, to fight Mike Tyson later this year. By then, Tyson, now the WBC titleholder, could be undisputed champion.

Tyson failed to make the Olympic team in the 201-pound heavyweight division when he lost decisions to Tillman in the trials’ final and in the box-off.

In challenging Holyfield, an Olympic light heavyweight, Tillman will be fighting a friend and former sparring partner.

Holyfield, who is 13-0 with nine knockouts, won the WBA 195-pound class title in his 12th fight with a 15-round decision July 20 over Dwight Muhammad Qawi, the former WBC light heavyweight champion.

Tillman, ranked third by the WBA, and No. 6 by the WBC and IBF, also has won 12 fights, nine by knockout, but he is the only Olympian besides McCrory and Shannon, to have lost as a pro. He lost a 10-round decision to Bert Cooper on June 15, but he has won his last three bouts.

The other Olympians ranked as pros are Paul Gonzales, Olympic light flyweight champion, 5-0 with no knockouts, No. 1 as a flyweight by the WBA; Taylor, 13-0-1 with eight knockouts, No. 7 as a lightweight by the IBF and No. 9 as a super lightweight by the WBC; Whitaker, 11-0 with six knockouts, No. 6 by the IBF and No. 9 by the WBA as a lightweight; and Frank Tate, Olympic light middleweight champion, 15-0 with nine knockouts, No. 9 as a middleweight by the IBF.

Unranked, besides Page and Shannon, is Virgil Hill, the Olympic middleweight silver medalist. Hill, fighting as a light heavyweight, is 14-0 with nine knockouts.

Page, an Ohio State sophomore who works for the recreation department in Columbus, is 2-0 as a junior welterweight. He has been plagued by hand and knee injuries.

Shannon, 13-1-2 with six knockouts as a junior featherweight, has just taken on Angelo Dundee as a manager. Besides being a barber in Lynwood, Wash., and a freshman at Edmonds Community College, Shannon lectures school and business groups on motivation and setting goals.