Boxing : Idea Whose Time Has Come: Headgear for Pros

Many in pro boxing become enraged over the idea, but it’s an idea whose time hasn’t only come but is long overdue: Pro boxers should wear headgear.

All right, all right . . . Now that we’ve all calmed down, listen to what happened at the Sports Arena Thursday night. About 5,000 people paid between $20 and $100 to watch a bantamweight championship bout. When it was over, the two fighters, Raul Perez and Lucio Lopez, looked as if they had just fought 12 rounds with swords.

Spectators in the first two rows were at their dry cleaners Friday morning with their blood-spattered clothes, and referee Chuck Hassett’s shirt will never be the same.

True, this sort of thing doesn’t happen often. It was a freakish fight, in fact. The winner, Perez, the World Boxing Council bantamweight champion, was butted in the third round and cut deeply on the right side of his forehead, at the hairline.

Lopez wound up with exactly the same kind of cut on the left side of his forehead, presumably from a butt, in the sixth round.

It has been five years since the International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA) mandated the use of competition headgear and turned amateur boxing, except for an occasional bloody nose, into a bloodless sport.

One of the most unsatisfying results in a boxing competition is a bout that is stopped because of a cut. Everyone gets short-changed, the athletes as well as ticket-buying spectators.

The alternative, headgear, works.

In the boxing tournaments at the last two Olympic Games and the 1986 world championships, the number of bouts--out of more than 1,000--stopped because of cuts can be counted on one hand.

It’s not macho , you say? Everyone’s done fine without it for 100 years?

Well, the Soviets have bought it.

In 1983, at the AIBA meetings in Rome, the western boxing nations had finally rounded up the necessary votes to bring in mandatory headgear. The Soviet delegation protested.

The Soviet chief, Nikki Danizov, erupted during one meeting, shouting at the Americans: “Next, you’ll be wanting us to wear the equipment your baseball catchers wear. Let me tell you something: Do you know how, in the war, we determined if the Germans had mined a field before us? We sent someone out to walk across it!”

Three years later, the Soviets seemed to have found their manhood intact. During the world championships in Reno, Soviet boxing Coach Artem Lavrov said of headgear: “It is a good idea; we should have used it years ago so that mothers won’t cry when they see their sons’ faces.”

Boxing has done fine for a hundred years without headgear?

No, it hasn’t done fine. The sport is under attack as never before.

With all its present problems--from the political to the neurological--one thing boxing could use less of is blood.

If gate receipts from the Mike Tyson-Frank Bruno heavyweight title fight are any indication, ticket prices to major boxing shows may dip a bit.

The Las Vegas Hilton lost almost $3 million on the Feb. 25 show, according to John Giovenco, president of Hilton Nevada Corp. The Hilton paid a site fee of $7 million to acquire Tyson-Bruno and scaled its 9,200-seat Hilton Center for an average ticket price of $700.

Though prices were dropped the week before the bout, it didn’t sell out.

Lesson learned: Mike Tyson may be too good for his own good.

“Mike Tyson is a media star, but that doesn’t translate into ticket sales at high prices,” Giovenco said. “The demand for tickets was very disappointing.”

Boxing Notes

Two major fight dates have been postponed: James (Bonecrusher) Smith’s April 1 Lake Tahoe bout against Razor Ruddock, and the World Boxing Council super-bantamweight title fight between Paul Banke and Daniel Zaragoza March 20 at the Forum. Smith-Ruddock, called off because of an injury to Ruddock, will be rescheduled for late June. Zaragoza has an ear infection, and his matchup with Banke was moved to April 25.

Mailbag: Russell Gruver, 86, writes to comment on The Times’ recent look-back at the 1923 Dempsey-Gibbons fight at Shelby, Mont.: “I rode a freight train from Postville, Iowa, to Roundup, Mont., 1,600 miles, and hitch-hiked the rest of the way to Shelby with two girls from Chicago, who were on their way to Lake Louise, Canada. I was one of the gate-crashers. When the bell rang for the main event, all hell broke loose. The cowboys lunged into the wire fence with wire cutters they’d hidden in their pockets.”

Unbeaten Torrance flyweight Ricky Romero, who wants to fight Paul Gonzales in June, will box Jose Quirino of Mexico at the San Diego Convention Center Thursday night. . . . Longtime Southland promoter Don Fraser will he honored by friends at a banquet Wednesday at the Gem Theater in Garden Grove. Ticket ($20) information: (714) 556-0353.

World Boxing Assn. champion Marlon Starling and WBC champion Mark Breland will meet for the third time April 15 in Atlantic City, N.J., with both welterweight titles at stake. Starling ended Breland’s unbeaten status with a 1987 upset knockout, then the two fought to a disputed draw a year ago. . . . Tomas Perez of Santa Ana will defend his state super-welterweight championship against Royan Hammond of Vallejo March 23 at the Irvine Marriott. . . . Jaime Garza of Pacoima will face Rocky Alonzo of Bakersfield in a 130-pound bout at the Hollywood Palladium March 30.

While Marty Denkin, the California Athletic Commission’s assistant executive officer, remains under suspension due to extortion charges, commission chairman Raoul Silva is rewriting the rule book. Denkin got himself into more hot water recently when he recommended issuing a California manager’s license to paroled bank embezzler Harold Rossfields Smith.

“I’m amending the state regulations so that we’ll have it in writing that such cases in the future (convicted felons applying for manager’s or promoter’s licenses) have to come before the commission,” Silva said.

HBO says two Mike Tyson fights are on its top-10 list of most-viewed programs. Tyson-Larry Holmes is No. 7, Tyson-Bruno No. 10. . . . Ray Mercer, the former Army boxer who won the Olympic heavyweight gold medal at Seoul, is 2-0 as a pro. He knocked out Luis Wolford in the first round Saturday at Bismarck, N.D.