Boxing Notes : Handlers Make Things Anything but Simple for Simon Brown

Simon Brown is a major-league talent stuck on a minor-league team.

Wednesday night, Brown, the IBF welterweight champ who is included on many experts’ “10 best in the world” lists, defended his crown with a second-round knockout of journeyman Bobby Joe Young before a crowd of less than 2,000 at the Rochester (N.Y.) War Memorial Auditorium. No HBO. No network TV. In fact, no television at all except for a smattering of pay-per-view systems at a bargain-basement $9.95 a pop.

Brown’s purse was supposed to be $50,000, but since his manager, Allan Baboian, was bankrolling the show out of his own pocket and the gate was expected to be less than $15,000, that too was in doubt. Especially since Young’s manager, Bob Ross, insisted his man get paid up front--$22,500--or there would be no fight.

Consider that Brown’s WBC counterpart, Marlon Starling, earlier earned about $100,000 to batter a punching bag named Young-Kil Chung on SportsChannel, and WBA champion Mark Breland will get similar money to beat up a Brown victim, Mauro Martelli, next month, and you have to realize that someone is stumbling over the gold mine that is Simon Brown.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Brown said the other day. “It seems like there’s nobody out there for Simon to make money with.”

Nothing could be further from the truth. There’s a rematch with Starling, who outpointed Brown when he was a callow 21-year-old and Starling was a mature 27. There’s Breland, a two-time champ who has yet to beat a top-10 welterweight. There’s a rematch with Tyrone Trice, who gave Brown a battle before being stopped in the 14th round of the best fight of 1988. All are at least network fights, and Breland and Starling belong on HBO, Showtime or pay-per-view.

And yet, Simon Brown fought Wednesday night before, maybe, 2,000 people. Who is to blame?

You can start with the manager, Baboian, who made enough lettuce as a greengrocer to buy himself a fighter. But Baboian the vegetable man has no idea of how to shop his man around. “I can’t get anybody to fight Simon,” Baboian said. “We tried to get Buddy McGirt, we tried to get Glenwood Brown, we tried to get Starling. None of them want any part of us.”

All of that may be true, but instead of aligning Brown with a high-powered promoter, such as Don King, Bob Arum or Dan Duva, all of whom have leverage with the networks and the ranking organizations, Baboian decided to go with Don Elbaum, a wheeler-dealer who is best at promoting Don Elbaum. If Baboian makes good on his promise to pay Brown his $50,000 purse in spite of Wednesday night’s turnout, he stands to lose more than $100,000.

Then there is Elbaum, who was the man responsible for the last fiasco in Rochester, when his co-main eventer, Aaron Pryor, was knocked off the show at the last minute when the required commission eye exam revealed Pryor was virtually blind in his left eye. Of course, Elbaum tried to delay Pryor’s taking the exam as long as possible, and then, after Pryor was bounced by commission Chairman Randy Gordon, tried to keep the news from leaking out to prospective ticket buyers. The crowd was not told that Pryor would not fight until the card was well underway.

Anyway, when it became apparent on Tuesday that Wednesday night’s turnout would be slim, Baboian and Elbaum, like Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in “The Producers,” apparently were rooting for a cancellation of their main event. Contrary to an agreement made with Young’s manager, Baboian tried to renege on paying Young $7,500 by certified check before the bout. The sum of $15,000 had been placed in escrow. Ross, predictably, threatened to pull out. Baboian and Elbaum, probably relishing the possibility of shedding $72,500 in purse responsibility, began making plans to go with a main event of Donny Poole, a bum-kneed former hockey player who was beaten at the Felt Forum by Allan Braswell four years ago, against washed-up former champ Joe Manley, who had been knocked out in his past two bouts.

Boxing’s version of “Springtime for Hitler”--the musical Mostel and Wilder designed for failure in the movie--was forestalled late Wednesday afternoon when a settlement was reached and the real fight could go on.

These are the kind of characters Brown (30-1, 23 KOs) finds himself surrounded by. Before Baboian and Elbaum, Brown was hooked up with a D.C. outfit, the head of which is now doing time for a variety of crimes including embezzlement and fraud. Great fighter, poor judge of character.

“Things were going very badly for Simon for a while,” said Brown in his lilting Jamaican accent. “But I don’t make no excuses, and I don’t beg for no help.”

And it doesn’t help that HBO, which has bankrolled a procession of Mike Tyson mismatches as well as the recent bore, Michael Nunn vs. Iran Barkley, refuses to buy a Brown-Starling fight because of a grudge against Starling, who pulled out of a dreaded third match against Breland last year.

“I have a tough time with Marlon Starling these days,” said HBO senior vice president Seth Abraham. “I definitely do have a grudge in the Starling situation. I don’t feel the need to reward him with a fight. I’m not over my hurt yet.”

The ones really getting hurt are Simon Brown, who deserves better, and boxing fans, who deserve more chances to see this exciting and talented fighter in action.

The bitterness in the Barkley camp that has been festering since The Blade lost that winnable fight to Nunn last month erupted backstage at the Beacon Theatre last week when trainer Victor Machado slapped around manager John Reetz over his diminished role in Barkley’s corner.

Reetz is 0-2 versus colleagues--he was decked by former partner Vinnie Ferguson in Johnny Tocco’s Las Vegas gym a few years ago--but he is still solid with Barkley. Reetz bought Ferguson out of Barkley’s contract just before Barkley knocked out Michael Olajide and went on to a big-money fight against Thomas Hearns. Now, it looks as if Machado will be out as well.

“He’s just a disgruntled, disappointed trainer,” Reetz said. “I still love the guy, but he’s apparently chosen not to work with us any more.”

Reetz said Barkley will fight WBO middleweight champ Doug DeWitt on the Jan. 15 Cooney-foreman undercard, and if he wins, could get a rematch with Hearns or Roberto Duran.

Duran and Sugar Ray Leonard are having yet another news conference to promote their Dec. 7 fight, Thursday in D.C. In order to attract the media one more time to this circus, Top Rank publicists “leaked” the scoop that Leonard would announce his new trainer--but wouldn’t reveal who he will be. Here’s who it won’t be: Angelo Dundee, Eddie Futch, Gil Clancy, Teddy Atlas, Joey Fariello, Janks Morton, Pepe Correa or Dave Jacobs. So who will it be? Well, Victor Valle, Kevin Rooney, Victor Machado and Ahmed Bey are available.

Howard Davis, who last fought on July 31, 1988, when he was knocked out in one round by Buddy McGirt, was considering a comeback. That is, until Joe Manley, who beat Davis a few years ago, dealt him another solid beating in a sparring session at Long Island’s Westbury PBC last week before a big crowd. Davis, 33, hasn’t been back in the gym since.