Referee Gave Performance of a Lifetime

Until he sent everyone home early in Atlantic City, N.J., two Fridays ago, referee Randy Neumann hadn’t been heard from since becoming the answer to one of boxing’s trivia questions.

The question: Who is the only fighter ever to lose on cuts to Chuck (the Bayonne Bleeder) Wepner?

It happened in 1974. Neumann and Wepner fought several times, but on this occasion it was for the New Jersey heavyweight championship.

One of boxing’s noted bleeders, Wepner made it through six rounds without shedding a drop. Ed Schuyler, boxing writer for the Associated Press, recently remembered the seventh round this way:

“All of a sudden, blood was everywhere. The referee, Arthur Mercante, stepped between them and said: ‘That’s it, I’m gonna stop it.’

“Then Wepner started screaming: ‘No, Arthur, no! Don’t stop it! Please!’

“Mercante looked at Wepner and said: ‘No, no Chuck--it’s his blood.’ ”

Neumann made reference to his fighting days--he was a 31-7 heavyweight--late on the night of July 21 while explaining why he stopped the Mike Tyson-Carl Williams fight after 93 seconds.

“I’d been there,” he said. “I had 38 fights. Normally, a fighter will go out of his way to show a referee he’s able to continue. Williams didn’t do that. He couldn’t answer a simple question (‘Are you OK?’), which I asked him twice.”

At the time, it seemed to nearly everyone in the Atlantic City Convention Hall that Neumann had pulled a quick trigger. Williams didn’t seem at all incapacitated--he was standing and his knees were steady.

Now, consider Neumann’s workplace environment that night. Ringside patrons, those who actually bought tickets, had paid $500 for their seats. HBO had paid millions to televise the thing. Donald Trump had paid a couple of million to be the host.

If he had taken time to think about it, which he didn’t, Neumann would have realized that he would catch all kinds of flak if he stopped it.

But in those few seconds when Neumann looked into Williams’ eyes and found no one home, he didn’t care about any of that. He didn’t even care that Tyson was earning $4 million, Williams was making $1.25 million and he was getting $2,000.

During those few seconds, just after Williams had struggled to his feet following Tyson’s crashing left hook, Neumann cared about only one person in the world--Carl Williams.

Neumann, a family financial planning adviser from Paramus, N.J., said this week that he had received a call from a New York University neurologist who conducts clinics for boxing referees.

“He told me that was the best 10-second neurological exam he’d ever seen,” Neumann said. “The training (referees) get at a lot of clinics has to do with recognizing possible concussions. We’re told to look for abnormalities that occur during a fight. Is a guy getting hit with punches that he was blocking earlier in the fight? Is a fighter beginning to stumble? That kind of thing.

“Really, Williams was easy. He wouldn’t answer my question, and his eyes were barren. His hands were down. I would have stopped it if it had been a four-round prelim, too.

“Another thing we’re taught to look for is the ‘parachute reaction’ on knockdowns. Did he throw out his hands to break his fall on the knockdown, or did he go down like a rock? Williams went down very hard.

“That, plus his unresponsiveness during my count, the long blink during the count and his eyes told me he might have been concussed. Remember--even in a heavyweight fight at that level, a one-punch knockdown like that, where a guy is rocked as bad as Williams was, is really rare.”

Neumann was asked where he rated the Tyson punch among great left hooks he had seen.

“It was kind of perfect,” he said.

The protests afterward by Williams and his trainer, Carmine Graziano, sounded a little silly to Neumann, particularly Graziano’s charge that Neumann was “inexperienced.”

“I got the job because the Williams people requested me,” he said.

“In my pre-fight meeting with Williams, he kept telling me to watch Tyson’s elbows. ‘Mike likes to throw those elbows inside, watch him on that,’ he kept telling me.

“Well, I knew all about Mike’s elbows. I also knew that Carl likes to put his left hand on the back of the neck of an opponent at close quarters and I told him I’d watch that, too. He did it 30 seconds into the fight and I warned him.”

Tyson-Williams was Neumann’s 13th world title fight in eight years. He estimates he has worked more than a thousand pro fights.

And beyond a doubt, Randy Neumann’s work on the night of July 21 was much better than Carl Williams’.

Looks as if there might be a new, but familiar, face on the Southland boxing scene: Manny Steward, manager-trainer of Thomas Hearns. Steward is looking at houses this week in the Los Angeles area, and after that, maybe a gym.

Steward’s Kronk Gym in Detroit is one of the country’s most successful pro boxing operations, and Steward wants a Kronk West in Southern California. He’s also here to begin taping a boxing fitness video.

“Tommy wants to buy a home in either L.A. or Las Vegas, and I want one in L.A.,” Steward said. “I just see us spending a lot more time out here in the coming years, so I’d like to have a gym here, too. Whether we’d buy one or build one, I don’t know yet.”

Boxing Notes

Paul Gonzales, in quest of a world championship bout in either the super-flyweight or bantamweight division, fights Sergio Perez of Mexico Monday night at the Sacramento Radisson Hotel, at bantamweight. . . . Glendale lightweight Hector Lopez, still awaiting sentencing on assault and kidnaping charges stemming from an incident involving his girlfriend and her father last October, meets Santos Moreno at the Forum Monday night. On the same card: Genaro Hernandez-Felipe Orozco and Edward Parker-Rogelio Lopez in Forum super-featherweight tournament quarterfinal bouts.

Unbeaten welterweight Ernie Chavez meets Daryl Colquitt in his first 10-rounder Monday night at the Irvine Marriott. . . . Super-lightweights Harold Brazier and Irish Mickey Ward meet on ESPN Aug. 8, with heavyweight Tommy Morrison, unbeaten in 13 fights, on the undercard. . . . Ricky Romero of Torrance won the state super-flyweight title at the Antelope Valley Fairgrounds recently when he knocked down Abe Garcia twice and stopped him after seven rounds. No opponent yet, but he will box again at Antelope Valley Sept. 23.