Futch Won’t Be in Stewart’s Corner Tonight

When Alex Stewart returns to the ring tonight for the first time since his gallant eight-round KO loss to Evander Holyfield in November, he will have a surgically repaired left hand and some newfound confidence won in the heat of battle.

What he will not have is Eddie Futch in his corner. Futch, the 77-year-old trainer who has prepped such greats as Joe Frazier, Larry Holmes and Alexis Arguello, was added to Stewart’s corner -- at the fighter’s request -- just before the Holyfield fight. Maybe coincidentally -- and maybe not -- Stewart responded with by far the best performance of his 25-fight career, even if it did turn out to be his only loss. Stewart, who was laughed at after his first 24 fights even though he won them all by KO, earned praise after giving Holyfield hell until he was stopped on cuts in Round 8.

Now, Futch is gone, a casualty of training-camp jealousies and insecurities -- and, to a lesser extent, his training rival heavyweight prospect Riddick Bowe, who is several fights behind Stewart in terms of development. Stewart will be served by trainer Edwin Viruet in tonight’s scheduled 10-round bout at Trump Plaza in Atlantic City, N.J., against journeyman Mark Young. And yet, the feeling is that Stewart has lost an important member of his camp in the sage, low-key Futch.

“I thought Edwin needed some help in a fight of that magnitude, so Eddie was brought in to advise, but it kind of backfired,” Stewart said. “He and Edwin never got along real well. There was a lot of tension in the camp, a lot of arguments. It was not the one of the happiest and most relaxed of training camps.”

It was obvious to close observers well before the fight that Futch and Viruet would mix like gasoline and a match. Even as Futch was being introduced to the media at a Brownsville news conference to announce the bout in October, Viruet sat at another table, grumbling. He seemed to sense he was in a no-win situation.

If Stewart got blown out, as expected, newcomer Futch was likely to escape blame. If Stewart won or performed better than expected, Futch would probably get the credit. After all, Viruet, a former lightweight contender who went the distance with Roberto Duran twice, had trained Stewart for all the lackluster Felt Forum stoppages of woefully mismatched opponents.

“What do we need him around for?” Viruet said that day. “I’m a good trainer, too. I know how to beat Holyfield. There’s no reason to add another trainer to the camp.”

Stewart said the infighting in his own camp raged every day. Arguments over how many rounds to spar, how many miles to run, how many hours to sleep. “I did the best I could under the circumstances,” Stewart said.

And the worst was yet to come. Stewart was given virtually no chance against Holyfield before the fight started. The odds got considerably longer when Stewart suffered a gusher of a cut -- from an accidental butt -- over his left eye in Round 2. The same round, he caught Holyfield on top of the head with a left hook, tearing the tendons away from two knuckles and rendering his best weapon useless.

“Those things didn’t make it any easier, but what are you going to do?” Stewart said. “You can’t quit. You got to keep fighting.”

He admitted, though, “Once I lost (the left hand), I lost everything. You can’t beat Holyfield with only one hand.”

Still, Stewart rallied to control the fight in Round 4, and using his right hand only, staggered Holyfield and nearly dropped him in the fifth. But Holyfield rallied back and widened the cut in Round 6, causing the fight to be stopped two rounds later. “I’ve got no excuses, he beat me,” Stewart said. “If I didn’t have the cut and the bad hand, it might have been a different story. But could’ve or would’ve doesn’t count.”

Nor does the consolation prize many were ready to hand him after the Holyfield loss. Stewart, 26, wants no part of the gallant-loser role. “The whole purpose of fighting Holyfield was to beat him, not to get respect,” Stewart said. “Who needs respect? If I had won that fight, I would have had a title shot. I would have had a lot of money. All I got was a loss.”

And the satisfaction of getting back into the ring sooner than Holyfield. Holyfield doesn’t return to action until June 1 against Seamus McDonagh. In the meantime, Stewart has moved up to No. 4 in the WBC ratings, behind Holyfield, Mike Tyson and Razor Ruddock. But it still doesn’t dull the pain of losing to Holyfield for Stewart, who really, truly believed he would win the fight.

But the Jamaican-born, English-bred, Brooklyn-based Stewart is back to his mild-mannered self these days -- and there are still some, despite his tough showing against Holyfield, who are taking advantage of it.

“I can tell things are back to where they were,” he said. “My wife (Angela) is bossing me around again, and when I talk, nobody listens to me anymore.”

Holyfield is making his movie debut Friday night in Atlanta, but he will skip the premiere of “Blood Salvage,” an independently-produced film financed by him and his manager, Ken Sanders, and written by Sanders’ son, Ken Jr., in order not to break training. Holyfield has a cameo role -- as himself -- in the film, and in his only scene, a carnival barker -- played convincingly, no doubt, by co-trainer Lou Duva -- tries to coax someone out of a circus crowd to fight Holyfield for $500.

There are no takers until Holyfield agrees to wear a blindfold. Unfortunately for McDonagh, Holyfield will not wear a blindfold on June 1. And maybe it wouldn’t matter. In the film, the blindfolded Holyfield knocks out his stooge with his first punch.

The oft-postponed WBA purse bid for the rights to the Buster Douglas-Holyfield title bout has been postponed again, from Sunday to “somewhere between June 11 and June 17.” This is the fifth new date for the purse bid, and Dan Duva, Holyfield’s promoter, is understandably alarmed.

Duva, who sees shadows whenever Don King, Bob Arum and officials of the WBA and WBC are around, believes the latest postponement is a ruse designed to somehow get Douglas stripped of one of his titles and slip Mike Tyson into a vacant title fight. Or to dilute the value of the bout by announcing a Tyson-George Foreman fight at the same time as the bid. Or any one of a dozen other devious scenarios.

In boxing, stranger things have happened, but what this whole thing boils down to is that the WBA is asking the Duvas and Holyfield to wait three more weeks. Until then, no need to panic. Or is there?

CBS boxing analyst Tim Ryan is off on his annual African safari, a trek that always puzzles his on-air sidekick, Gil Clancy, whose interest in animals is limited to the ones that run at Belmont and Aqueduct. “Timmy and his wife sit around for a week waiting for a bird to swoop down and pull a fish out of the water,” Clancy said. “I tell him I can go down to Coney Island and see the same thing for nothing.”