Agents Prowl the Boxing Trials Looking for Prospects

While America’s top amateur boxers compete this week for a spot on the Olympic team, another battle just as intense is being waged outside the ring.

Like the boxers who dream of Olympic gold, this fight is also about gold -- in the form of the riches some fighters may earn once they turn professional.

In the lobbies and bars of the Concord Hilton, representatives of at least four different managerial groups are on the prowl, looking to open new relationships with pro prospects or cement existing ones.

In whispered conversations with a fighter’s trainer in the hallway or a meeting with his parents in a hotel room, they try to get the inside line on fighters they think might have a chance to have a lucrative career.

“They’re always tagging behind, following other people,” said Kelcie Banks, the favorite to make the team at 125 pounds. “I see them bugging other fighters. I can’t see how they can concentrate.”

The stakes -- at least for the few top fighters who have chances for medals in Seoul -- are high. An Olympic gold can be the passport to quick riches to a fighter and his manager or promoter.

“They tell me if you can get a gold medal you’re an instant millionaire,” said super heavyweight Riddick Bowe.

Even fighters who have no realistic shot for a medal are being courted on the theory that some may make better pro fighters than amateurs.

That was the case in 1984 when a young heavyweight who lost a spot on the team in his final bout turned out to be the best prospect of all. The heavyweight was Mike Tyson, who earned $21 million for his fight last month with Michael Spinks.

“Most of our kids are in the program to go into a career of professional boxing,” said Jim Fox, executive director of the Amateur Boxing Federation. “This gives them a chance to meet the people who may further those careers.”

Fox said the ABF encourages pro managers to establish contacts with fighters because they can provide the training facilities and routines that prepare boxers for their amateur fights.

“It’s not like basketball where you’ve got the schools feeding players into the program,” he said. “We do it on a club level where we need the facilities these people offer.”

Many of the fighters work out at facilities run either by the Houston Boxing Association or Lou and Dan Duva’s Main Events Inc., which signed many of the 1984 Olympians. Sugar Ray Leonard also provides space for fighters who may be willing to sign with his stable.

Leonard is also a special adviser to this year’s Olympic team, a position that competitors have claimed is a conflict of interest.

One fighter close to Leonard’s stable, light heavyweight prospect Andrew Maynard, lost in the first round this week and has his Olympic hopes resting on whether a six-member committee will name him the “most worthy opponent” to compete in the box-offs next week in Las Vegas to pick the final squad.

“Leonard isn’t on that decision-making panel,” said Fox. “He’ll have no influence at all.”

Although some of the fighters will admit they are leaning toward one manager or another upon turning pro, most are reluctant to talk about any arrangements they have with the pro managers.

Some, though, are recipients of trust funds established by the managers to pay their training and living expenses before they turn pro.

Todd Foster, a 139-pounder who trains in Houston with Main Events, conceded that he would “most likely” sign with the organization after turning pro, quickly adding: “I don’t like to say one way or another.

Banks, meanwhile, said he has received few offers because most managers think he is already locked up because he works out in HBA facilities.

“I haven’t had a lot of people approach me because they think I’m signed with HBA,” he said. “I socialize with them but I haven’t signed anything.”

Fox said the money made by members of the 1984 Olympic team shows the importance of an Olympic medal to a pro hopeful.

While Tyson fought for relatively little money in his first dozen pro fights, gold medalist Mark Breland had a million-dollar contract signed to televise his first series of fights.

“An American gold medalist is an important commodity,” he said. “Those kids got immediate paydays when they turned pro.”