BOXING : Hearns Chooses the Easier Path

Negotiations for a Thomas Hearns-Michael Nunn fight at the Mirage Hotel in Las Vegas collapsed recently, in part because Hearns still holds out hope for a third bout with Sugar Ray Leonard.

Sources report Mirage impresario Steve Wynn had put together an $8-million purse for Hearns and $4 million for Nunn, but that the project started coming apart because:

--Wynn brought a half-dozen pay-per-view exhibitors to Las Vegas, put the package on the table and was told the fight wasn’t marketable--at least, not at the prices he was asking.

--Promoter Bob Arum had already spoke with Hearns and his manager, Emanuel Steward, about fighting Michael Olajide in a tripleheader, also featuring George Foreman and Doug DeWitt, at Caesars Palace in April.

--Hearns decided to take the $1.2-million Arum offer for what is projected as a far easier fight for him, against Olajide, than a Nunn fight would be. In other words, if Hearns can make $8 to $10 million, he wants to make it fighting Leonard, not Nunn.

--And Marvelous Marvin Hagler might want to get back into the ring. For a guy who says he is retired, Hagler seems to be holding up a lot of pay-per-view boxing shows these days.

“If Hagler is available to fight Leonard at any time in 1990, then Hearns doesn’t fit in at all,” said Rick Kulis, a Southern California pay-per-view exhibitor. “So when Wynn puts Hearns-Nunn on the table for us, one of the first things we want to know is: ‘Will Hagler be available later in the year?’ ”

Hagler is going through a divorce and has said nothing about a comeback. But he hasn’t ruled it out, either.

Meanwhile, with Hearns at least temporarily out of Nunn’s future, the Mirage’s Nunn-Marlon Starling fight is back on the front burner. Those two were originally scheduled to fight Jan. 27, but when Nunn began feuding with his manager, Dan Goossen, and then injured his back, the fight was postponed indefinitely.

Word is that Nunn-Starling will take place in late April or early May.

Mike Trainer, Sugar Ray Leonard’s attorney, said he received a call from Hearns’ lawyer during the Hearns-Nunn talks.

“He wanted to know if Hearns taking a fight in April would in any way interfere with anything Leonard wanted to do,” Trainer said.

“I told him Ray has no plans to do anything, that I knew of,” Trainer said. “We haven’t talked about what he wants to do, if anything, boxing-wise. I have the feeling that if the Hearns-Nunn fight was scaled back, to a $5-million purse, and that Ray was totally out of the picture, then Tommy would have taken the Nunn fight.”

Even so, Leonard might be very much in Hearns’ future, which could be the reason Hearns took the low-risk $1.2 million to fight Olajide.

Jerry Nathanson was recently elected chairman of the California Athletic Commission for the third time, and the days of draws in pro boxing matches here could be numbered.

Nathanson, who succeeds Raoul Silva as chairman, has tried to eliminate draws, but he was never sufficiently supported by his fellow commissioners. This time, he thinks he can pull it off.

Nathanson spearheaded the move in 1986 that added a third judge to pro bouts in California and relieved referees of scoring duties.

As do many others, Nathanson believes it’s physically impossible for two boxers to land exactly the same number of blows at exactly the same velocity and demonstrate exactly the same degree of generalship in a boxing match.

In Las Vegas, in the space of 14 months, judges scored two world championship fights draws, Starling-Mark Breland and Leonard-Hearns.

Nathanson’s solution? Order judges not to score a round even and to schedule bouts for five, seven, nine, 11 or, for championship fights, 13 rounds.

In amateur boxing, draws are avoided by requiring a judge to designate a winner of a bout, even though he may have scored the bout even on points.

“If we can get rid of draws here, the rest of the states will get rid of them, too,” Nathanson says.

Mike Tyson appears in for a shock if he thinks he is going to make more money for fighting Evander Holyfield than he for his bout with Michael Spinks, which was about $21 million. Tyson and Holyfield signed to fight June 18 in Atlantic City for a purse said to pay the champion $22 million or more, and $10 million for Holyfield.

“The way it’s structured, it’ll cost $50 to watch it at home,” said Rick Kulis, Southland pay-per-view exhibitor.

“That’s not necessarily a problem in Southern California, but it would be a problem almost everywhere else in the country. There’s resistance out there now, especially after a lot of negative feeling from the Leonard-Duran fight. Hard-core boxing people are anxious to see Tyson-Holyfield, but I’m not sure if the general public knows who Holyfield is.”

Said matchmaker Ron Katz: “You have to turn it into an event. There has to be that aura about it. So far, it isn’t there. It’s just another Tyson fight.”

Boxing Notes

Don Fraser’s Monday show at the Irvine Marriott, Ben Lopez vs. Vicente Gonzales, is for the vacant California super-featherweight championship. . . . Henry Tillman (18-4), who beat Mike Tyson twice during the 1984 Olympic team’s selection process and then won an Olympic gold medal, will fight Rocky Valero (24-7) at Chuck Landis’ Country Club in Reseda Tuesday.

Ten Goose Boxing’s mini-stars, brothers Gabe and Rafael Ruelas, are scheduled to make their Forum debuts in eight-rounders Feb. 5, but no opponents have been selected. . . . Featherweight champion Jorge Paez, the clown prince of Mexicali who will fight Troy Dorsey at the Las Vegas Hilton Feb. 4, has reached boxing’s big money. His one-year pact with the Hilton and the Forum will pay him, if he continues to win, more than $1 million in 1990.

Tyson’s meaningless knockdown at the hands of sparring mate Greg Page in Tokyo the other day brings to mind the summer of 1958, when heavyweight champion Floyd Patterson was training under Cus D’Amato in Oceanside to fight Roy Harris in Los Angeles. He was sparring with a light-heavyweight, Jose Torres, who suddenly knocked Patterson flat on his back with one punch.

That would occur often in Patterson’s career, of course, but at the time no one knew Patterson had a glass jaw. It was also believed by promoters and managers at the time that training knockdowns were box office poison. Patterson’s knockdown was seen by two young sportswriters, Bud Furillo of the Los Angeles Herald-Express and Irv Grossman of the Oceanside Blade-Tribune. Grossman was out the door and running back to his office to write about the knockdown before D’Amato could catch him and swear him to secrecy. Furillo, despite D’Amato’s pleas not to report the knockdown, made Page 1 with it the next day.