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He’s Striking a Blow for Fatherhood : Starling, a Devoted Parent, Faces Less-Devoted Honeyghan

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Times Staff Writer

This one is for fatherhood.

One boxer will fight tonight because, he says, “my son is my life. My son is everything.”

The other boasts of having fathered, as nearly as he can figure, five children by three women.

It’s Marlon Starling and Lloyd Honeyghan tonight at Caesars Palace, the featured matchup of an HBO welterweight doubleheader. Starling is seeking Honeyghan’s World Boxing Council welterweight championship.

The co-main event matches two more welterweight contenders, 1984 Olympic hero Mark Breland and South Korea’s Lee-Seun Soon, fighting for the vacant World Boxing Assn. championship.

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Starling and Honeyghan are a couple of one-time dead-end kids. Starling grew up in Hartford, Conn.; Honeyghan on the streets of London, by way of Jamaica.

For Starling, 30, big paydays have arrived after a long climb up boxing’s ladder.

His career-turning victory occurred in the summer of 1987, when he knocked out Breland in the 11th round. Starling’s manager, Mort Sharnik, recalled a conversation with his boxer, just days after that shocker.

“When I sat down with Marlon afterward, I commented to him that he didn’t seem as jubilant to me as I’d expected he would be,” Sharnik said.

“And he said to me: ‘I haven’t thought of anything since the fight except my son.’ He told me that the Breland fight made him understand how important his son was to him.”

In a phone interview the other day, Starling, who is divorced, talked about Marlon Jr, 12.

“Everything I do is for Marlon Jr.,” he said. “He’s doing really well in school right now, and I’m so proud of him for that I could bust. My son is my purpose for living.”

By contrast, Honeyghan’s love life, to say nothing of his parenthood, has been fodder for London tabloids for years. When he told British boxing writers in December that he planned to marry his live-in girlfriend, Jennifer Green--who is the mother of two of his children--they burst out laughing.

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Not only that, he said he would marry her on Feb. 2, two days before the Starling fight.

At noon Friday, British fight writers stationed in Las Vegas called off a not-very-serious matrimony watch.

Starling-Honeyghan was supposed to have been Starling’s first $1-million fight. Instead, he will earn about $250,000 tonight, and Honeyghan will make $650,000.

A year ago, HBO wanted to sign Starling to a two-fight deal, paying him $250,000 to meet Tomas Molinares of Colombia and $800,000 to meet Honeyghan. He turned it down.

“Against my advice, Marlon took only the Molinares end of the deal,” Sharnik said. “He felt he should get $1 million for Honeyghan. I even advised him to take it for $750,000.”

He got his $250,000 for the Starling fight last July, but he was also beaten. After the bell sounded to end the sixth round, Molinares caught Starling with a right hand and knocked him out.

Sharnik screamed foul and threatened a lawsuit against the WBA, the New Jersey State Athletic Commission and everyone else within shouting distance.

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“We spent a couple of days with a room full of attorneys, and eventually decided a lawsuit would take Marlon out of the prime years of his boxing career,” Sharnik said.

“We filed a protest with the WBA, and Marlon is still bitter over the fact that after paying $15,000 in WBA sanction fees for three title fights, the WBA never even responded to the protest. Not even a phone call.

“But here’s what kind of a guy Marlon is: As depressing as that whole experience was to him, he gets more depressed at having to leave home, to train for fights like this one, and be separated so much from Marlon Jr.”

Breland, 22-1-1 and still in the comeback mode, was supposed to meet Molinares tonight. But Molinares pulled out six weeks ago, giving up his WBA title, citing “severe depression.”

Enter Lee, the WBA’s No. 2-ranked welterweight. Breland, somehow, is ranked No. 1.

A lot of boxing people will be looking to see if Breland can regain some of the luster he lost against Starling in 1987 and in a disputed draw in a rematch with Starling last year.

His trainer, Joey Fariello, talked about the Breland-Starling draw, which most ringside watchers saw as a clear win for Starling.

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“Mark still has to prove he can fight,” Fariello said.

“Right after the (second) Starling fight, I recommended that Mark quit. I told Shelly Finkel (Breland’s manager) he just wasn’t right. There was nothing there, no motivation. I don’t think he wanted to fight.”

Finkel wanted to see Breland in the ring again, however, and the Olympic champion knocked out someone named Fabio Baez in one ound.

“The Baez fight was the best I’d ever seen him,” Fariello said. “He went out there and threw bombs. If he’d fought like that against Starling, it’d been a different story.”

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