Boxing : After His Jail Release Lopez Starts Training

For Hector Lopez, it was the best of times.

He was about to break into boxing’s big time. The big money was just around the corner. There was talk of his meeting Australian Jeff Fenech on the undercard of last month’s Sugar Ray Leonard-Donny Lalonde fight at Caesars Palace.

Hector Lopez at Caesars Palace--who could believe it?

A world title fight within 6 months, a year at the outside, they told him. As he closed in on boxing’s big time, Lopez’s disappointment at winning a silver medal instead of the gold at the 1984 Olympics was becoming a distant heartache.

After an impressive victory over Oscar Bejines at the Sports Arena last May, Lopez exuberantly told a reporter: “I’ll be a world champion in 1988, I can feel it.”

Then on Oct. 9, 1988, Lopez’s trademark, the locomotive-sized heart that had propelled him to a 17-1 pro boxing record, jumped the tracks.

After a days-long argument with his girlfriend, Lopez, 21, surrendered to Glendale police, who arrested him on suspicion of kidnaping her at gunpoint.

Lopez, probably Southern California’s outstanding young boxing prospect, was in jail for about 2 months. At first, bail was set at $100,000. Then it was raised to $500,000. When it came down to $27,500, Lopez bailed himself out, 2 weeks ago.

“That’s roughly how much Hector had in his bank account from the $100,000 he earned by winning the Forum’s featherweight tournament in 1987,” said Lopez’s manager, Gordon Wheeler.

So Lopez is back in the gym, trying to work off 10 pounds he put on in jail. He’s also getting in shape for a Jan. 30 bout--opponent to be named--at the Forum, a bout he hopes will lead to a championship fight with Fenech in 1989.

But there’s another important date on his calendar, too, Feb. 8--his pretrial hearing on the kidnap charge.

At first, it sounded like a throwaway line, a wisecrack.

It was 6 months ago, during a Prime Ticket telecast of a Forum boxing show. Ruben Castillo, addressing his announcing partner, Chick Hearn, made a sly reference to his comeback.

Hearn: “That’s a joke, right?”

Castillo: “No, it’s not.”

Castillo, now 31, then told a shocked Hearn as well as viewers that he was back in the gym, working himself back into boxing shape.

When last seen in the ring here, Castillo was taking a terrible beating at the Forum one night in 1985 from Julio Cesar Chavez, who knocked him out. He lost another fight in South America, then packed it in.

Since he’d retired, with a 65-5-2 record as a featherweight and junior-lightweight, the Bakersfield-raised Castillo has acted a bit, announced a bit--and been eaten up by what he now believes was a premature retirement from boxing.

“I realized that when I came up, I fought guys like Alexis Arguello, Salvador Sanchez, Juan LaPorte and Chavez, all of whom were at their baddest when I fought them,” Castillo said.

“And when I look around the featherweight and lightweight divisions today, there’s no one like that around now. I see opportunity. So I went in the gym, to see if I had anything left, and I don’t think I’ve lost a thing. I’m boxing 5 rounds a day and my reflexes are still there, I’m getting my old sharpness back.”

Castillo has a bout scheduled at the Forum, at 135 pounds, against an unnamed opponent on the same card as Hector Lopez’s comeback Jan. 30.

He was asked what his purse will be, but declined to say.

“It just causes problems,” he said. “Women see that in print, they seek me out, and I wind up back in court on another paternity suit.”

About 6 months ago, Mike Tyson wanted Steve Lott, his longtime, loyal aide-de-camp, fired, reportedly on orders from his wife, Robin Givens. He asked his trainer, Kevin Rooney, to handle it.

Rooney refused, telling Tyson to do it himself.

Now, for the last several weeks, Tyson has freely told everyone that Rooney, who has trained him since he was 14, has also been fired.

But he hasn’t told Rooney.

So the heavyweight champion, for all his courage and ferocity in the ring, isn’t nearly as brave as he’d like everyone to believe.

“Mike and I talked on the phone 2 weeks ago, and my status never came up in the conversation,” Rooney said Thursday.

At the Los Angeles news conference to announce his fight with Frank Bruno Feb. 25, Tyson was asked about his trainer.

“I don’t have one,” he said. “I’ll bring in a new trainer a month or 6 weeks before the fight.”

Said Rooney: “Until he either tells me I’m gone or he hires someone else . . . I guess he’s going to let me twist in the wind. I’ll have to wait and see, like everyone else.”

Boxing Notes

The Orlando Canizales-Frankie Duarte bout for the International Boxing Federation’s bantamweight title, scheduled for Jan. 15, has been postponed because Canizales, the champion, has come down with a virus infection. The fight, to be staged at Caesars Tahoe, will not be held until at least mid-February.