Nothing Is Trivial About Hill : Boxing: Light-heavyweight champion is the most successful member of the Olympic class of ‘84--except at the bank.

Six years later, Virgil Hill is 1 1/3 of the answers to two trivia questions related to the 1984 U.S. Olympic boxing team that won nine gold medals.

Q: Of the 12 U.S. Olympic boxers, which has been the most successful pro?

A: Virgil Hill.

Q: Which members of that team did not win gold medals?

A: Robert Shannon, who won no medal; Evander Holyfield, who won a bronze; and Virgil Hill, a silver.

Other members of America’s amateur boxing class of 1984 have earned more than Hill, but when he meets Australian Guy Waters at Bismarck, N.D., in July, it will be Hill’s ninth defense of his World Boxing Assn. light-heavyweight championship.

No ’84 Olympian has defended a world title as many times, although Mike Tyson--the alternate heavyweight on the ’84 team--was defending his heavyweight title for the 10th time when Buster Douglas knocked him out in February.

Hill is also, with Holyfield, one of two ’84 Olympians unbeaten as a pro. Hill is 27-0 with 11 knockouts and has been the WBA light-heavyweight champion since September, 1987, when he knocked out Leslie Stewart.

Because Hill is a light-heavyweight, others in the class of ’84 have earned much more money. When Hill meets Waters--in a bout scheduled for Sunday in Las Vegas but postponed when Hill broke a thumb in training--he will earn his third consecutive $300,000 purse; not chicken feed, but not Tyson-esque, either.

Five who boxed in the ’84 Olympic trials have since reached the million-dollar fight level as professionals--Tyson (who earned nearly $50 million in 1988 alone), Holyfield, Michael Nunn, Meldrick Taylor and Tyrell Biggs.

Hill aspires to join that club this year, even if he has to go to the Persian Gulf to do it.

Hill and his manager, Gary Martinson, are studying a $1-million offer to fight International Boxing Federation light-heavyweight champion Prince Charles Williams in Manama, Bahrain, in late October.

They are also studying Thomas Hearns, trying to figure how to get him in the ring for much more.

“A unification light-heavy title fight in Bahrain is an attractive offer,” Martinson said, “but we want Hearns more than anything. If we can get Hearns anywhere--we’d even fight him in Detroit (Hearns’ hometown)--we’d skip Bahrain.”

Whatever, Hill rolls along.

“I’m happy with what I’ve done so far in my career, but my primary goals now are to unify the light-heavyweight title and fight Tommy,” he said.

Hill-Hearns, the way Martinson sees it, would boost his fighter into the seven-digit class . . . and then some.

“We love the idea of a pay-per-view fight with Hearns, then unifying the light-heavyweight title in a tournament,” said Martinson, a Phoenix builder who manages Hill’s boxing and real estate interests.

Hill trains in the Arizona desert, in a shaded, outdoor ring behind the tennis courts at Club Mirage, a health/fitness spa with 72 condominiums about 30 miles from Phoenix. Martinson, who built Club Mirage, made Hill a co-owner when Hill made him his manager.

Hill met Martinson just before his March, 1989, Bismarck, N.D., fight with Bobby Czyz. Martinson is from Fargo, N.D. Hill was raised in Grand Forks, N.D.

At the time, Hill lived in Las Vegas preceding his fights because of the abundance of sparring partners there.

“I agreed to take over managing Virgil, and my only condition was that he move out of Las Vegas,” Martinson said.

“My real estate business keeps me in Fountain Hills a lot, and I thought Virgil could train here just as well as anywhere else. Besides, I didn’t like the idea of him being around a lot of cutthroat boxing people all the time in Las Vegas.

“Now, Virgil not only spends most of his time here, he’s bought a home about five minutes from Club Mirage. He’s one of the locals.”

So are Bob and Leona Hill, Virgil’s parents, when he’s training for a fight.

Hill, who is single, says he can’t prepare for a fight properly without Leona Hill’s cooking.

“One reason I’m unbeaten is because of Mom’s meat loaf, spaghetti, roast beef and burritos,” he said.

The light-heavyweight class (175 pounds), for about the last century, has been boxing’s lost division--trapped in anonymity, between the usually better-known middleweights and heavyweights.

Historically, purses reflect that prejudice.

Michael Spinks, who successfully defended his world championship 10 times, is believed to be the only light-heavyweight to earn a million-dollar purse. Spinks earned $1.75 million against Dwight Qawi in 1983.

Later, Spinks moved up to heavyweight and even bigger purses. When he was knocked out by Tyson in 91 seconds in 1988, Spinks made about $10 million.

The light-heavyweight division was created in 1903 at the suggestion of Loy Houseman, a Chicago boxing writer and promoter. He believed there should be a weight class between middleweight (the limit then was 158 pounds) and heavyweight, the champion of which, Jim Jeffries, weighed 220 pounds.

According to the Ring Record Book, the first light-heavyweight championship bout was in 1903, Jack Root winning a decision over Kid McCoy at Detroit with Bat Masterson as referee.

Through the years with the light-heavyweights:

--Bob Foster defended the world title 14 times but was knocked out by heavyweights Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali to earn his biggest purses.

--Archie Moore fought for 17 years before winning the light-heavyweight title in 1952, but with the exception of one light-heavyweight fight, made his biggest purses when he lost to heavyweight champions Rocky Marciano ($100,000) and Floyd Patterson ($50,000). The exception: Moore’s second fight with Yvon Durelle, in 1959, when he earned $100,000.

--Billy Conn earned modest purses when he defended the light-heavyweight title in 1939 and 1940, but made a then-staggering $77,202.40 when, at 169 pounds, he fought and nearly beat Joe Louis in 1941. Louis made $154,404.80. In their 1946 rematch, Conn made $312,958.22, Louis $625,916.44.

--By contrast, when “Slapsie” Maxie Rosenbloom lost his light-heavyweight championship to Bob Olin in Madison Square Garden in 1934, Rosenbloom’s share of the gate was $3,874.12.

--Georges Carpentier of France won the light-heavyweight championship in 1920, but found himself looking at a small purse for defending it. So he challenged Jack Dempsey in 1921 for the heavyweight championship. The result: boxing’s first million-dollar gate ($1,789,238) and an easy knockout for Dempsey.

--Philadelphia Jack O’Brien beat Bob Fitzsimmons in 1905 in San Francisco to win the light-heavyweight championship. Then, at 163 1/2 pounds, O’Brien boxed heavyweight champion Tommy Burns (172) to a 20-round draw in Los Angeles in 1906. O’Brien later lost to Burns and one other heavyweight champion, Jack Johnson.

--Bob Fitzsimmons probably had the most interesting career of all the light-heavyweight champions. In an age when a big heavyweight weighed 185 pounds, Fitzsimmons was, in order, the world middleweight (1891), heavyweight (1897) and light-heavyweight (1903) champion, losing the latter to O’Brien in 1905.

Hill isn’t a history student of his sport, only an expert technician. At 26, he can’t remember a pre-Spinks light-heavyweight champion.

But like most in his weight class before him, he expects he, too, will one day move up to the big money.

“I could go on a weight-training program and fight well at 200 pounds, so I know I could fight at cruiserweight (195), too,” he said. “But above that, I’m not sure.

“The only trouble I ever had making weight was before my last fight (Feb. 25), against David Vedder. I got up to 190 pounds before I went into training for that fight, and for some reason had a harder time than usual taking it off.

“I’m comfortable at light-heavy now, and I feel good about myself physically against Hearns. After all, he’d be moving up in weight to fight a champion in a bigger weight class.”

Hill is an extremely competent boxer with quick feet and hits with accuracy and sharpness, but not with power. Some in boxing are scornful of his record, contending he’s dominating a weak weight class with quick feet and no punch.

“I’m a counter-puncher,” Hill said. “I have good speed. I don’t have devastating power, but I’m accurate. I take a lot of guys out with an accumulation of punches. Basically, I’m always looking for the counter, but I’ll take it to a guy if I think he’s ready to go.”

A decade ago, Virgil Hill was a high school football and wrestling star in Grand Forks, N.D., where his biggest fan was Bob Hill, his father. He’s still his No. 1 booster.

No one in the U.S. delegation argued the decision when Hill lost in his gold medal bout at the 1984 Olympics, but Bob Hill is still angry.

“Virgil’s been making people eat crow all his career,” Bob Hill said proudly, watching his son spar recently at Club Mirage, a few days before the thumb injury washed out the Waters fight.

“They said he’d never make the Olympic team. They said he’d never win a gold medal, but he would have if they hadn’t ripped him off. They said he’d never cut it as a pro, and look at what he’s done.

“He was like that when he played football and wrestled. He always did the things he wasn’t supposed to do.”