Pulling No Punches : HBO PREPARES TO SHOW ITS BOXING STUFF AGAIN AS TWO CHAMPS MEET

By late Saturday night, Julio Cesar Chavez could be on the road to becoming a member of boxing’s rich and famous.

The World Boxing Council super lightweight champion faces International Boxing Federation junior welterweight titlist Meldrick Taylor in a 12-round fight in Las Vegas in a rare meeting of champions. The HBO telecast begins at 7 p.m.

Both HBO and Chavez will have much at stake Saturday. A win could make Chavez the pay cable network’s new marquee name. After Mike Tyson’s supposed aura of invulnerability ended at the hands of James (Buster) Douglas last month, HBO stopped billing itself as the network that “has Mike Tyson,” saying instead it “has the fights that make boxing history.”

(HBO has a seven-fight, $26.5-million contract with Tyson, which remains in effect despite the loss to Douglas. Tyson and HBO remain obligated for two more fights.)

Continued wins for Chavez would mean multimillion-dollar paydays. The biggest being a projected pay-per-view fight against the brash, essentially universally disliked, undefeated World Boxing Organization junior welterweight champion Hector (Macho) Camacho.

The Chavez-Taylor matchup had been pegged as the fight of the year until Douglas upset Tyson.

“This fight has every chance of being just as memorable a fight as that one,” HBO boxing announcer Jim Lampley said. “It’s completely valid to say that both Chavez and Taylor are among the five best fighters today pound for pound.”

Lampley described Chavez (66-0, 56 KOs) in practically mythic terms.

“Chavez has an almost mystical sense of will, courage and determination,” Lampley said. “This fight gives Chavez a chance to stake a spot in the history of the sport.”

Despite Chavez’s glittering record, Lampley expects Taylor (23-0-1, 13 KOs) to be ahead on the judges’ score cards entering the latter rounds.

“Taylor has more speed and quickness and will land more punches,” Lampley said. “It will be a question if Chavez’s will and mind power can overcome the deficit.”

Chavez has also won the WBC super featherweight and llghtweight titles and the World Boxing Assn. lightweight title. The 27-year-old native of Sonora, Mexico, is 16-0 in title fights. But two factors have denied him a place in boxing’s top level and the multimillions in purses and endorsements that accompann such status. The first is Chavez’s inability to speak English, and the second is a lack of major opposition in his 140-pound weight class.

However, HBO Sports executive producer Ross Greenburg believes that Chavez can overcome both obstacles.

“Chavez has been taking some time and hitting the books to learn English,” Greenburg said. “He’s starting to throw in some English words in his post-fight interviews.

“Chavez will need some very high-profile wins to achieve real superstar status. He can’t just go in against nobodies. But in time, it just takes a mix of four or five great stars in a division to create that explosion. It’s the personalities that make it happen.”

The Chavez-Taylor fight continues to be a part of Lampley’s most unusual double life: KCBS anchorman Sunday-through-Thursday and a sportscaster on HBO’s boxing and Wimbledon tennis telecasts.

Lampley first gained national attention in 1974 as a 25-year old sideline reporter on ABC’s college football telecasts. He began announcing boxing in 1986.

“Boxing had been my most satisfying experience in my last two years at ABC,” Lampley said. “I was convincing people in the sport that I was doing a good job. I was lucky enough that the HBO option arose a few months after I left ABC. It turned out to be something I could do which didn’t take a great deal of time away from commitments to KCBS.”

Lampley describes his boxing announcing style as “frank and straightforward.”

“I believe boxing is a sport of strong, subjective opinions,” Lampley said. “Most viewers think they see the fight as well as the announcers do. I want to make room for (analysts) Larry (Merchant), Ray (Leonard) and the viewers’ perceptions. When all those imperatives are taken care of, I want to offer what I can.”

The Chavez-Taylor fight is HBO’s first since Tyson-Douglas, making comparisons between the two inevitable.

“The Tyson-Douglas fight is filed away in the memory bank,” Greenburg said. “You’re only as good as your last show. There’s no way we can ever recapture that moment again.”

In Greenburg’s view, producing a boxing telecast is akin to putting together a movie, with a beginning, middle and end.

“But the beginning doesn’t start when the fight begins, but when the fighters were 10 years old and first put on boxing gloves,” Greenburg said. “We want to profile these men, showing them outside the ring and give the public a conception of what motivates them and who they are. I don’t want them to be nameless fighters in a ring. When people tune into our fights, there’s a history behind the fighters.”

On the technical side, HBO has been lauded for its many firsts in boxing telecasts, including the use of an overhead camera and super-slow motion. But HBO’s commercial-free format has allowed it to include in its telecasts the innovation most appreciated by viewers: going into the boxer’s corners between the rounds. During the Tyson-Douglas fight, this allowed a look at Tyson’s inexperienced co-trainers Aaron Snowell and Jay Bright, as they failed to properly treat Tyson’s cut left eye and didn’t give Tyson any inspiration or advice on how to overcome Douglas’ unexpected success.

Had the fight been on a commercial network, such a luxury would not have been possible because the time between rounds is the normal time for advertising.

“It’s one thing to have that minute, but the other ingredient is to know what you want to do with it,” Greenburg said. “You have to know what corner to go into and what punch you want to see replayed. The key is to make sure we’re telling the right stories. That’s whattwe pride ourselves on.”