BOXING : Rams’ Irvin Tries His Hand at Promoting

LeRoy Irvin, the Rams’ 10-year veteran at cornerback, will get a head start on his post-football career as a boxing promoter Tuesday night at Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

His first main event is an interesting heavyweight bout, matching Tony Tubbs, a contender until Mike Tyson knocked him out in Tokyo, against Orlin Norris, ranked in the top 10 by all three of boxing’s governing bodies.

The California Athletic Commission issued Irvin a one-show-only promoter’s license. After the NFL season, he will be able to attend a commission meeting and formally apply for a promoter’s license.

Don Muse, the assistant executive officer for the commission’s Los Angeles office, is troubled that Irvin’s first main event involves Tubbs, a boxer managed by Harold Smith, who served 5 1/2 years in federal prison on a $21.3-million bank embezzlement conviction. At the time of his sentencing in 1983, the FBI called it the biggest computer fraud case in U.S. banking history.

At a January commission meeting, Muse said, Irvin will have to persuade the five-man commission that he’s his own man.

“We’re going to require LeRoy Irvin to testify under oath as to exactly who is running his boxing promotions, who is making the matches,” Muse said. “He will have to convince the commission he alone is in charge of the promotions.”

Irvin’s matchmaker, Merlin Petit, is trying to put hard-luck Seoul Olympic boxer Anthony Hembrick on the Tubbs-Norris show, but Muse has rejected two proposed opponents.

Hembrick was the U.S. middleweight who missed the bus to his first bout in the 1988 Games and was disqualified.

“Hembrick has knocked out a string of absolute stiffs so far,” Muse said, “and the opponents the Irvin people were proposing for him were ridiculous. Petit and I have agreed on one main event fighter--I won’t tell you his name yet--who we both agreed would be a worthy opponent. My understanding is they’re trying to make that match now.”

Speaking of Tubbs, he appears finally to have conquered obesity. He was a spectator at the Michael Dokes-Lionell Washington bout at the Forum last Monday night and was clearly leaner than he was when he fought Tyson.

It should be noted, though, that Tubbs is a fighter of considerable merit, and he won the first round against Tyson before quickly getting stopped in the second round after taking a hard punch to the ribs.

Actually, Boxing Illustrated magazine ranks Tubbs as history’s 51st-best heavyweight. For more on that list, see below.

Here’s the up-to-date, though tentative, Tyson boxing calendar, according to Don King’s new press aide, John Solberg:

--On Feb. 12, Tyson will fight James (Buster) Douglas in Tokyo.

--On a date to be named, but probably in June, Tyson will finally meet Evander Holyfield, almost certainly in Atlantic City, N.J.

--Next, assuming Tyson is successful in both bouts, he’ll return to Edmonton, Canada, to take on Razor Ruddock.

Tyson was originally scheduled to fight Ruddock in Edmonton today, but the bout was postponed when the champion came down with a mild case of pleurisy. King wanted to move it to January, but HBO’s monthly program printing deadlines scrubbed that plan.

Meanwhile, King had already tentatively booked the Tyson-Douglas match in Tokyo on Feb. 12.

Boxing historian Herbert G. Goldman is ranking the 100 best fighters in every weight division for Burt Sugar’s Boxing Illustrated magazine. Heavyweights are featured in the current issue, and Goldman has ranked Muhammad Ali, Joe Louis and Tyson Nos. 1 through 3.

The problem is, as you go through the list to the bitter end, you discover Goldman needed a shorter list, which is another way of saying there aren’t 100 great heavyweights.

Some of the others on the list: Sonny Liston (fourth) Larry Holmes (fifth), Jack Johnson (sixth), Jack Dempsey (seventh) Rocky Marciano (eighth), Harry Wills (ninth), George Foreman (10th), Gerry Cooney (24th), Tim Witherspoon (32nd), Pinklon Thomas (33rd), Holyfield (41st) and Tubbs (51st).

Among those used to fill out the list: Leotis Martin (88th), Renaldo Snipes (90th) and Bonecrusher Smith (96th).

Boxing Notes

Evander Holyfield was asked recently to test for a part in Sylvester Stallone’s latest “Rocky” film. His role would require him to take a bad beating by another current heavyweight, Tommy Morrison. No deal. Said Holyfield: “I don’t think I could possibly be that good an actor.”

In this space some time back, we wondered how South Korean boxers often suddenly appear as high-ranked fighters in the various ratings. And we wondered if a South Korean boxer had ever actually won a main event in the United States. We found one. While digging around for something else, we discovered that Suh-Kang Il defeated Mando Ramos at the Olympic Auditorium in 1967. . . . Ron Shelton, director of the baseball film, “Bull Durham,” has acquired movie rights to the life story of Billy Conn, the Pittsburgh light-heavyweight who, at 169 pounds, nearly beat Joe Louis in 1941.

Reader John Romero writes to comment on the computerized scoring system introduced recently at amateur boxing’s World Championships in Moscow and described here last week. San Jose State, he writes, was three decades ahead of the Soviets. When collegiate boxing was in flower in the 1950s, San Jose Coach Dee Portal had rigged up a four-sided scoreboard that showed how judges were scoring a bout during the action, according to Romero.

Meldrick Taylor, on his way to a showdown with Julio Cesar Chavez in March, will fight Rocky Balboa (honest) on a SportsChannel show Monday in Philadelphia. Balboa (47-10 with 44 KOs) was born Jaime Balboa but legally took the name Rocky in 1982.