CAREER FIGHT : Tillman or DeWit May Re-Evaluate After Rematch

One of the most improbable scenes from the Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984 was the medal ceremony at the Sports Arena for Henry Tillman, the Los Angeles boxer who won the heavyweight gold medal.

But Tillman has struggled the last four years as a professional. The other day, he recalled his golden moment while changing into fighting togs for a workout at the Broadway Gym.

“It’ll be a long time before I forget that (medal ceremony),” he said. “After what I’d been through, it was kind of hard to believe--that it was really me up there on a victory stand, listening to them play the national anthem for me.”

A lot of other people found it hard to believe, too. Only three years before, Tillman had stood before a judge and heard him say: “Tillman, is this how you want to spend the rest of your life?”

Tillman had replied: “No, it’s not.”

After that, the story goes right into fantasy land and emerges with an ending that would strain the credulity of even the most imaginative screenwriter. Make it, “Somebody Up There Loves Me.”

Tillman, sent to the California Youth Authority facility at Chino for a year after a 1981 armed-robbery conviction, signed up for a boxing class. His instructor, a 5-foot 5-inch ex-featherweight named Mercer Smith, sized up the 6-3, 200-pound Tillman as a comer. In a crash-course, Smith coached Tillman right into the Olympics.

Tillman won a decision from Canada’s Willie deWit in the gold-medal bout.

But now it’s 1988 and on March 29, the same two, both struggling pros, finally will meet in a rematch, at Edmonton, Canada.

As a pro, Tillman hasn’t nearly approached the consistency he displayed as an amateur. He was rolling along, 10-0, when he unexpectedly lost his North American Boxing Federation cruiserweight championship to Bert Cooper, in 1986.

Then, in early 1987, Tillman foolishly accepted a $50,000 payday to fight Evander Holyfield, his former Olympic team roommate, in Reno. Holyfield was the U.S. light-heavyweight bronze medalist at the Olympics and by early ’87 was world cruiserweight champion. Tillman, whose best fighting weight ranges from 215 to 220, had to make 190 pounds for the Holyfield bout. Predictably, he was beaten badly.

Two months ago, Tillman, at 227 pounds, lost an embarrassing decision to Duane Bonds.

So far, boxing followers know Henry Tillman best as the answer to a trivia question: Who was the last man to defeat Mike Tyson, now the heavyweight champion?

Tillman beat an 18-year-old Tyson twice on decisions in the 1984 Olympic trials tournament and box-off.

Both Tillman (17-3) and DeWit (19-1-1) have something in common: Bert Cooper. DeWit’s only loss was also to Cooper, who caught him in the corner and knocked him unconscious two years ago. And DeWit also had a draw with little-known Alex Williams, on the Hagler-Hearns undercard at Las Vegas two years ago.

Tillman and DeWit.

For both, 1984 is a long, long time ago. And for both, their meeting in Edmonton is a crossroads fight.

DeWit said it best the other day, while training in Westminster: “Whoever loses this fight is going to have to take a long look at his career.”

Said Rod Proudfoot, promoter of the Edmonton card: “The winner of this fight is maybe a couple of more wins away from knocking on the door of Tyson. And the loser, I would think, would have to re-evaluate his pro career.”

“Do Not Spit on the Ring or the Floor!” the sign in the Broadway Gym warns.

Nearby, Henry Tillman is preparing to spar a few rounds with a 6-5 amateur, George Barbour.

Tillman, a heavyweight with quick feet and a powerful, quick left jab, works on moving inside on Barbour, delivering solid combinations to the body, then moving out quickly. Within two rounds, the inexperienced Barbour is retreating.

After the workout, Tillman recalls DeWit at the Olympics.

“Willie’s a strong guy with a big punch, so I can’t stand still in front of him, that’s for sure,” Tillman says.

“He’s got that big right hand and a good short left to the body inside. So I gotta keep moving on him. He’s pretty much the same kind of fighter he was in the Olympics. If I do a lot of the same things I did in ‘84, I should beat him again.”

Tillman, a Diamond Bar resident who last year married Jesse Owens’ granddaughter, casting agent Gina Hemphill, left Sunday for two weeks under trainer Joe Fariello in Clearwater, Fla.

“I weight 222 now,” Tillman said. “I want to come in at about 210 for DeWit.”

Tillman hasn’t completely split from Smith, the man who taught him to box, and says Smith will also be in his corner March 29.

“I learned a lot from Smitty, but it’s always good to learn new things,” he says. “Also, Joe has lined up some good sparring partners for me in Clearwater. Both Joe and Smitty have pretty much the same philosophies.”

In 1982, a couple of wealthy Texas boxing fans, Billy Joe Fox and Ben Tamney, were watching the North American amateur boxing tournament in Las Vegas.

They saw a powerfully built Canadian heavyweight, DeWit, crawl off the deck and knock out a Cuban. They liked Willie. They made him an offer: Win a gold or silver medal at the 1984 Olympics and we’ll give you a million dollars and be your managers.

He did, and they did.

Even as an amateur, Willie deWit could hit. Some said he hit as hard as anyone this side of Teofilo Stevenson. At the 1984 North American tournament in Houston, DeWit got inside on Cuban heavyweight Aurelio Toyo and hit him on the chin with a right hand that traveled about eight inches.

Toyo was unconscious for five minutes.

Unfortunately, Willie also gets hit a lot. He, too, was out for about five minutes when Bert Cooper tagged him.

DeWit, as a pro, hasn’t come close to fulfilling the promise some held for him when he was knocking Soviets and Cubans stiff in his days as a power-punching amateur.

When training for his fights, DeWit lives in an Anaheim apartment and trains at the Westminster Boxing Club gym, under Jackie McCoy. DeWit looks more like a National Football League linebacker than a fighter, or maybe a Hollywood heavy.

But is Willie, at 26, learning anything about defensive boxing?

“The best thing Willie has going for him is his hitting power and his aggressiveness,” McCoy said. “He’s the kind of guy who likes to get in there and mix it up with someone. So if you spend a lot of training time with him on defense, you run the risk of screwing him up offensively.

“Willie is a puncher, period. He’ll never be known as a defensive boxer, but he’s getting much better at slipping and ducking punches.”

But in Canada, where he does nearly all of his fighting--he was raised in Grande Prairie, Alberta--even when Willie takes a direct hit on the chops, he wins. In Canada, Willie’s not yet as big as Wayne Gretzky, but he can see him from where he is.

Said McCoy: “After one of Willie’s fights up there, you wouldn’t have believed the mob of girls who surrounded him outside the arena.”

In 1986, he boxed before 60,000 spectators in eight Canada bouts, six of them sellouts. For the Tillman assignment, Proudfoot figures DeWit will put 10,000 into the 14,000-seat Northlands Coliseum in Edmonton, for a show scaled from $50 to $15.

“When Willie beat Ken Lakusta to win the Canadian heavyweight title in ‘86, he drew 14,761, the largest crowd ever to see a title fight in Canada,” Proudfoot said.

“And it was on live TV. If Willie ever gets a title shot with Tyson, we could fill the Olympic Stadium in Montreal.”

With paramedics?

Tillman will make roughly $30,000 for the Edmonton bout, but DeWit’s share of the purse will be “well into six figures,” according to Proudfoot.

DeWit’s fights are often shown on pay-per-view telecasts in “small venues” across Canada. That means bars.

How much does DeWit earn from his saloon network?

“Well, I don’t like to release figures,” he said. “Basically, what we do is we charge a fee for a tavern owner to buy the telecast. Then he charges a cover charge for patrons to come to his bar and watch the fight.”

OK, are the saloon network bouts seen by, say, tens of thousands of tavern visitors?

“Oh, sure,” DeWit said.

With a win over Tillman, McCoy figures DeWit will be within shouting distance of a world-class payday, a Tyson fight, given the heavyweight champion’s present schedule of three to four title defenses a year.

“If he beats Tillman, I’d like Willie to fight one more mediocre guy, then fight (former Canadian heavyweight champion) Trevor Berbick,” McCoy said.

In the meantime, DeWit will continue to train in Orange County, for two reasons.

“There’s a lot of pressure on me in Canada,” DeWit said. “I don’t like all that attention, so when I’m down here I get a call once in a while from a sportswriter, and that’s about it. Here, no one even knows me.

“Also, it’s hard to find good sparring partners in Canada. For the Tillman fight, I’m lucky--I’ve sparred with Michael Dokes (former World Boxing Assn. heavyweight champion), Tony Tubbs (who will fight Tyson in Tokyo March 21) and Avery Rawls.”

Rawls is a Los Angeles pro with a style similar to Tillman’s.

McCoy dismisses DeWit’s knockout by Cooper in 1986 with a shrug.

“Willie just got tagged by a very good puncher,” he said. “We knew when we took the fight that Cooper was a dangerous puncher. You’re talking about a guy who hits hard enough to take out anyone, and he just happened to tag Willie.”

Since the Olympics, the loss to Cooper is a distant second on DeWit’s problem list. His father and brother died in a small-plane crash a year ago. His father, Len, owned the largest rock-crushing business in Alberta.

“Now that it’s just my mom and I, we’re gradually selling off the rock-crushing business,” DeWit said. “That was Dad’s area of expertise. But he also had an asphalt paving business which I know a lot about, so we’ll keep that.”