ON THE ROPES : Hull, the Man Who Runs U.S. Amateur Boxing, Faces International Suspension, Trouble Within His Ranks

It has been a long year for the man who runs amateur boxing in this country, Col. Don Hull. The 74-year-old Hull can’t seem to stay out of the news, and in 1988, it has been mostly bad.

Possibly the worst news for Hull is that he might not accompany the U.S. Olympic team to Seoul, Korea.

The International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA) has suspended him for alleged financial improprieties and has also denied him a credential to the Olympic Games. Hull was president of AIBA, Olympic boxing’s worldwide governing body, from 1978 to 1986.

Hull also has problems within the USA/ABF--amateur boxing’s U.S. governing body--not the least of which is his handling of the 1988 Olympic team’s head coaching position, which is to say there is no head coach. Hull is now president of the USA/ABF.

Today at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, site of this weekend’s Olympic boxoffs, a USA/ABF committee is to hear the final appeal by Army Sgt. Ken Adams, who was named the Olympic team’s head coach last October, then fired in May.

Adams is accused of assaulting a federation staffer at the USA/ABF headquarters in Colorado Springs May 18 and was suspended for six months, effectively firing him from the Olympic job.

If Adams is denied reinstatement, Hull has indicated that the replacement will be Tom Coulter, a Syracuse, N.Y., tavern owner and longtime amateur coach who was named the Olympic team’s No. 1 assistant coach when Adams was given the head job. The No. 2 assistant is Larry Ramirez of Fontana.

However, Coulter is under investigation by the USA/ABF for alleged improper behavior and a lack of leadership shown during a two-week tour of the Soviet Union last March by a U.S. boxing team.

The team physician for the trip, Dr. Joseph J. Estwanik of Charlotte, N.C., wrote a letter to Executive Director Jim Fox of the USA/ABF, complaining about “a total lack of discipline” on the trip, citing several fights that broke out between the boxers, and confrontations between boxers and adults on the trip.

Said Coulter, who was the head coach during the Soviet Union tour: “That kind of stuff is normal on a long trip--you’re talking about a group of spirited kids on a 21,000-mile trip involving 11 airplanes. Of course, you’re going to have some petty arguments.”

Sportswriter Sharon Robb of the Ft. Lauderdale (Fla.) News, who accompanied the team for the entire trip, also said there were discipline problems.

“All the problems were due to the fact that no discipline was imposed on the boxers,” Robb said.

Robb said that at one point in Moscow, on the way to a team workout, Coulter asked a driver to stop the team bus, in traffic. Coulter, Robb said, left the bus and urinated in public. The incident was confirmed by another adult member on the trip.

Coulter denied the charge.

“Nothing like that happened,” he said. “I’ve made a lot of international trips with boxing teams and one thing I’m very careful about is (not) doing anything that would . . . embarrass the United States.”

When asked about the charges against Coulter, USA/ABF executive director Jim Fox said: “The matter is being investigated, and that’s all I’m going to say about it now.”

Hull dismissed the charges against Coulter with a wave of the hand, saying: “That’s all inconsequential. We all agreed last October that if anything happened to Adams, Coulter would become the head coach.

“Now, if the committee wants to change the decisions it made last October, that’s another matter.”

Another potential problem is that Coulter is white, and Adams is black. The top administrative officers of the USA/ABF are all white, and generally from the eastern United States.

Many federation staffers believe the Olympic team should have a black head coach, since at least 10 of the 12 boxers on the Olympic team--and maybe all--will be black.

“All things being roughly equal, I’d say it’s important we have a black head coach,” said Rolly Schwartz of Cincinnati, in his 50th year as an amateur boxing referee/judge.

A late entry in the coaching picture is Army Coach Hank Johnson, who is black. He could wind up with five of his boxers on the Olympic team.

“Hank Johnson is a dandy,” Schwartz said. “I’ve been on international trips with him--he’s up at 6 a.m., doing road work with those kids and his work habits are impeccable.”

Hull indicated Johnson could be added to the Olympic team coaching staff as the second assistant coach, under Coulter, but that he is not being considered a head coach candidate. The No. 2 assistant is Ramirez.

Johnson, 40, a 19-year Army man, has been coaching Army boxers since the early 1970s. In 1972, he was a national champion light-middleweight.

“I would love to be the Olympic coach, but only if they do not reinstate Kenny Adams,” he said.

When Adams took the Olympic job, Johnson replaced him as the Army’s head coach. For the past six months, he has trained the Army boxing team at Ft. Huachuca, Ariz.

Said one non-Army boxer, a black athlete who is still competing for an Olympic team berth: “A lot of us have problems with Coulter. Johnson has shown what kind of coach he is. If he doesn’t get the head job, there’s going to be a very unhappy Olympic team.”

Even Pat Nappi, head coach of three U.S. Olympic teams, remains on the fringe of the coaching picture. Nappi, who is white, says he wouldn’t take the coaching position even if it were offered. Others say he would.

Said Kelcie Banks, a world and Pan-American Games gold medalist: “We need Nappi. He puts on great clinics on what to expect from international referees and judges. I’ll be very disappointed if he doesn’t have something to do with it (the Olympic team).”

Hull sits squarely on top of this problem, as he does on several others. He’s the chairman of the USA/ABF’s Olympic Committee, which makes coaching assignments.

One USA/ABF staffer, who asked not be named, said there is little question that Hull’s candidate automatically becomes coach. Few in the USA/ABF will publicly speak out against Hull for fear of how it would affect their standing in the federation.

One federation staffer, Woody Gregory of Charleston, S.C., voted against a proposed piece of Hull legislation at a recent USA/ABF meeting. Shortly thereafter, Gregory’s plane ticket was pulled and he was forbidden to attend the Olympic trials and boxoffs.

One who does speak out against Hull is his predecessor, Loring Baker, of Atlanta.

“Hull is a vindictive,” said Baker, federation president from 1980 to 1984.

“In 1986 and 1987, the East German boxing federation wanted a home-and-home boxing series with us. They were to come here, and we were to go to Leipzig, in late ’87 or early ’88. ABC wanted to televise it. But solely because Hull had a personal animosity problem with Karl Heinz-Wehr (an East German boxing official who is now AIBA’s general secretary), it never came off.

“What I’m saying is, that because of Hull’s personal problems with Wehr, our Olympic boxers and coaches will go to Seoul with no recent competition under their belts against the East Germans.”

Hull denies ever speaking with an East German boxing official about such a series. USA/ABF staffers, however, say a USA-East German series was at one point under discussion.

Now, there is the case of Sugar Ray Leonard.

Hull, against the advice of virtually everyone in the USA/ABF, named Leonard, a 1976 gold medalist, as a special adviser to the Olympic staff last March.

Federation staffers feared Leonard would use the position to recruit amateur talent for his pro boxing stable. Said Hull at the time: “Ray has assured me he will not use the position to recruit boxers.”

Last week at the 96-boxer Concord Olympic trials, Leonard and his entourage were openly recruiting talent. Super-heavyweight Robert Salters, heavyweight Ray Mercer and featherweight Ed Hopson were among many under Leonard’s full-court press.

In addition, Leonard had T-shirt stands (“Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing Club”) set up at every trials session.

Said Bob Surkein, USA/ABF president from 1976 to 1980: “I love Ray Leonard more than any one kid who ever came out of the amateur program. But the fact is that since he won his gold medal at Montreal, Ray hasn’t lifted a finger to help the federation . . . never lifted a finger.

“For Hull to give him that position is outrageous. And when I saw on the telecast of the trials that Lou Duva (a prominent pro boxing trainer) was working (light-welterweight) Todd Foster’s corner, I hit the ceiling. That’s a disgrace.”

Responded Hull: “I have been told Leonard was recruiting at the tournament, but I have no firsthand knowledge of it. If he was, perhaps he could have used better taste. I do know that Leonard and everyone in his organization are dues-paying USA/ABF members.”

Surkein said he once tried to fire Hull, but couldn’t.

“Hull worked for me, as my executive assistant, when I was president of the AAU boxing committee,” he said.

“Everything he touched went wrong . . . he couldn’t do anything right. I tried to get him fired, but I couldn’t because he was too politically strong with top people.”

Hull’s problems with AIBA are serious, sources say, and Hull himself indicates they are headed toward litigation.

“If they deny me an Olympic credential, I’ll make them pay for it through the nose,” Hull said, referring to a possible lawsuit.

In addition to charging Hull with failing to turn over 1978-1986 AIBA financial records, the new AIBA president, Anwar Chowdhry of Karachi, Pakistan, accuses Hull of making AIBA TV deals after he left office.

At a recent AIBA meeting in Havana--at which Hull participated by Telex from his home in Cresskill, N.J.--Chowdhry said he’d only recently learned of a TV deal Hull had made with ABC after, he said, Hull’s term as president had expired.

“AIBA was not a party to those negotiations, and Hull signed a contract without AIBA authority,” Chowdhry said in a recent issue of the AIBA quarterly publication.

“We consider the contract void. Hull was asked to suspend all AIBA financial operations as of Dec. 12, 1986, which he has ignored.

“It was proposed that AIBA general secretary Karl-Heinz Wehr go to Cresskill, N.J., and take charge of all AIBA office papers and records, but this was rejected by Hull. I have asked Hull by Telex that all records and files not be destroyed, but be transferred to (the AIBA offices in) East Berlin . . . and we have asked that all AIBA checkbooks, bank statements and credit cards be handed over to us, and he has refused.”

Hull said the amount of money in question in the AIBA dispute is $11,000.

“Their accusations are absolutely false,” he said. “I long ago transferred the bulk of the money. There is a small residual sum, $11,000, that (my) accounting people told me to hang onto, to take care of some (late) expenses.”

To the charge that he negotiated a TV contract after leaving the AIBA presidency, Hull said: “That’s false. What happened was, Barry Frank of International Management Group, who negotiated the contract for AIBA, told me his secretary made a typographical error on a letter to AIBA, typing the 28th as a date, when it should have been the 18th.

“On the 18th of November, 1986, I was still president. I wasn’t on the 28th.”

Hull is also accused of nepotism and cronyism by AIBA and USA/ABF officials. When he was AIBA president, Hull’s son was executive director. His daughter was the AIBA bookkeeper.

“My daughter is an accountant, with offices in New Jersey and Ohio,” Hull explained. “When I started out with AIBA, she told me, ‘Daddy, I’ll keep your books for free.’ I told her that if I could ever get AIBA to a point where it made money, I’d see that we’d pay her something. We did, and I did.

“Let me say this: If the AIBA continues to make these wild charges, I’ll take them to court.”