Boxing / Earl Gustkey : Why They Call It the Sweet Science

Late one afternoon in 1982, there was a knock at the back door of Joe Goossen’s boxing gym in North Hollywood. He interrupted a drill with a couple of boxers and opened the door.

There stood a couple of street urchins--Gabriel Ruelas, 12, and his brother, Rafael, 11. Gabriel Ruelas extended a small box toward Goossen and said: “Hey, mister, want to buy some candy?”

No screenwriter would dare try to pass this one off, yet Goossen swears this is how it started, how two tiny kids dropped out of the sky into his life and are now on the threshold of being main-event boxers.

Today, Gabriel and Rafael are unbeaten featherweights who are getting more cheers in their undercard bouts than some main eventers. Last Tuesday at the Country Club in Reseda, each Ruelas won a six-rounder and was cheered lustily by a full house, which then booed during the main event, when their stablemate, Jesus Poll, lost an unexciting 10-rounder to George Garcia.

Goossen says that after he turned down the Ruelas brothers’ candy pitch, they wouldn’t leave.

“I think they really just wanted inside the gym,” he said. “So after I let them in, they wanted boxing lessons. The next thing I knew, we were signing them up for pee wee-class amateur tournaments.”

A couple of years went by, and the two ballooned up to 80- and 90-pounders.

“We used to have a top flyweight named Alonzo Strongbow, and Gabe and Rafael would spar with him,” said Dan Goossen, who runs the Ten Goose Boxing Club.

“And it soon got to the point where he couldn’t push either one of them around. Then we had Frankie Duarte, a ranked bantamweight, and they started giving him problems in sparring sessions, too.”

Recalled Joe Goossen: “Frankie told me one day, ‘Joe, I’m going to have to cut loose with these kids. They’re the best amateurs I’ve ever worked with.’ ”

Goossen says the Ruelas brothers have been with him since that day they worked the candy dodge, right through their years at North Hollywood High School and into their young pro careers.

Gabriel, who is 10 months older than Rafael, is 13-0 and Rafael is 7-0. Rafael is taller, 5-foot-9, and weighed 121 for his fight last Tuesday. Gabriel is not as tall but more muscled. Rafael is an upright boxer, quick and aggressive, and delivers a sharp, straight right hand. Gabriel is an intense little slugger. Southland boxing statistician Dean Lohuis says Gabriel, in 13 bouts, hasn’t lost a single round.

The brothers’ story is only beginning, though, and where it’s headed Joe Goossen can’t say. He does know it’s not going to end in the featherweight division, however.

“Gabe and Rafael have four brothers (and seven sisters), and they’re all older, 200-pound guys,” he said. “And they’re truly big guys, not a beer belly among them.

“Gabe is a few pounds heavier than Rafael. His walking-around weight is 140 pounds and he trains down to 126. Gabe turns 19 next month and Rafael just turned 18. I see both of them winding up at least as welterweights, maybe middleweights.”

The Ruelas brothers are fighting on a Chicago ESPN card in two weeks, then will fly to Miami to film an anti-drug commercial for Telemundo, the Spanish-language network. Their next Southland appearance should be on a Country Club card in late August, Goossen said.

Chuck Minker, executive director of Nevada’s Athletic Commission, who said after the Leonard-Hearns draw June 12 in Las Vegas that he wasn’t troubled by draws in pro boxing, may be changing his mind.

One way to prevent a draw, he said this week, would be to devise a scoring format that creates a difference between 10-8 and 10-9 rounds.

“Sometimes there’s a huge difference between 10-8 and 10-9 rounds,” he said. “A 10-8 can mean a guy was down a couple of times and was thoroughly outclassed, but a 10-9 can be an extremely close round. If you had something like a plus-or-minus system for 10-9 rounds, that might break draws.”

Boxing Notes

There will probably be a rematch of the Daniel Zaragoza-Paul Banke World Boxing Council super-bantamweight title fight won by Zaragoza on a split decision June 22 at the Forum. First, though, Zaragoza makes a mandatory defense against South Korean Seung Hoon Lee. If he wins, expect Zaragoza-Banke II in November at the Forum. . . . Ricky Romero, the 16-1 super-flyweight from Wilmington, tries for the California championship July 22 against Jose Quirino of San Diego at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds Auditorium. Romero’s only defeat was a split-decision loss to Quirino last March.

That Fourth of July FNN:SCORE 10-hour boxing video marathon begins at 11 a.m., not 2 p.m., as reported here last week. . . . Also on the Fourth, ESPN stages its first outdoor show, from a cow pasture in Gardnerville, Nev. The main event features middleweights Alberto Gonzales and Dan Schommer. In a four-rounder, El Paso heavyweight Carl Chancellor, 7-1 and 305 pounds, makes his TV debut. . . . Interesting CBS heavyweight bout Sunday: Bonecrusher Smith-Razor Ruddock.

Marco Sarfaraz of Marina del Rey was one of five U.S. judge-referees promoted to world status by the USA Amateur Boxing Federation recently, which means he could be eligible to work the 1992 Olympic Games. . . . Michael Nunn, who earned $1,000,034 for his one-round knockout of Sumbu Kalambay in March, recently bought a $420,000 house in Agoura Hills.

A Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield blockbuster could occur as early as next February or March, sources say, should both heavyweights prove successful in forthcoming engagements. Holyfield meets Brazilian Adilson Rodrigues at Caesars Tahoe July 15 and Tyson meets Carl Williams at Atlantic City’s Trump Plaza July 21. After that, Tyson will probably fight Jose Ribalta.

Rich Rose of Caesars World says Caesars Palace did in fact sell out its 15,300-seat stadium for Leonard-Hearns, that the 12,064 paid-attendance figure released by the Nevada Athletic Commission didn’t show that about 3,200 tickets were bought by the hotel’s casino and given to casino regulars.