BOXING : Wisconsin Badgered Into Making Reforms

Finally, some sense emerges in boxing in the state of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin, which had so few professional fights that it disbanded its boxing commission 10 years ago, became something of an outlaw boxing state recently. It issued licenses to Jerry Quarry, who is 45 years old, and to Aaron Pryor, who is legally blind in one eye.

The promoter for Pryor’s fight last week, Diana Lewis, actually said this about the ethics involved in licensing Pryor: “If he’s blind in one eye, he’s still got another eye. Even if he only had one eye, why couldn’t he fight? He’s a professional, a seasoned veteran. He knows what he’s doing.”

The state took a richly deserved beating for granting the boxing licenses to Quarry and Pryor, but in recent days, one Orville Pitts has brought reason and thought to the state’s boxing policy.

Pitts, 57, is a lawyer who works in the Milwaukee County Family Court Commissioner’s office. In the mid-1950s, he was a boxer at the University of Wisconsin, and he was good enough to qualify for the 1956 U.S. Olympic team trials.

A light-heavyweight, he turned professional and had a 10-2 record when he abruptly quit after three years.

“I could see even at 25 I was losing it a little,” he said Friday. “Boxing is a dangerous sport, and you simply can’t allow anyone to participate unless they’re 100% sound physically.”

Until Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson appointed Pitts to a new state boxing panel recently, it was beginning to look as though anything went in Wisconsin. Order seems to have arrived in the nick of time.

Without a commission, the licensing of boxers was left to the state’s Department of Licensing and Regulations.

The new boxing panel has moved quickly. Thursday, it recommended rejection of Quarry’s fight, tentatively scheduled for June 9 at Lake Geneva.

“We don’t want Jerry Quarry to fight, because he hasn’t fought in 13 years,” Pitts said. “He’s not in condition to fight, and we should not allow him to fight in Wisconsin.”

Pitts, whose panel is expected to evolve through legislation into a state boxing commission next year, said Pryor and Quarry were licensed in part with the aid of legal loopholes.

“Wisconsin has very liberal statutes on the books regarding handicapped people,” he said. “Legally, you can’t discriminate in any way. Pryor used those laws as loopholes through which he squeezed.

“From now on, I hope, we won’t allow any person to box here if there’s any question that they’re not physically sound.”

The death this week of Rocky Graziano brought to mind comments made about him by boxing broadcaster Don Dunphy.

In his 1988 book, “Don Dunphy at Ringside,” Dunphy rated the first Graziano-Tony Zale fight, in 1946, as the most exciting of the more than 2,000 bouts he’d covered during five decades.

“They battered each other with the greatest display of fistic fireworks I have ever seen,” Dunphy wrote.

“Through rounds three, four and five, Rocky took over. He was hurting Zale . . . badly. I had the feeling the sixth round would be the last.

“It was, but not the way I expected. Graziano was pounding Zale, and it seemed Tony would soon be knocked out. Then it happened. Eager to end it with a series of head shots, Rocky left his midsection unprotected. Zale saw the opening and fired a solar plexus punch that not only floored Rocky but paralyzed him momentarily . . . and he was counted out.”

Afterward, Dunphy wrote, Zale had to be held up by his trainers during the postfight radio interview.

Dunphy rated one other Graziano fight on his all-time top 10 list, Graziano’s 1945 knockout of Billy Arnold. Dunphy said Graziano took more punishment in the first round from Arnold than he had in all his previous 46 fights.

It was more of the same in the second and well into the third, Dunphy wrote, until Graziano caught Arnold with a wild right hand and knocked him out.

Boxing Notes

Dan Duva, promoter of No. 1-ranked heavyweight Evander Holyfield, became angry this week when the World Boxing Assn. told him it would delay, for the fourth time, purse bids for the long-delayed Holyfield-Buster Douglas fight until mid-June. Duva spoke with reporters on a conference call and accused Don King, Bob Arum, the WBA and the World Boxing Council of conspiring to “break up the title” Douglas holds. Duva, who obtained a court injunction preventing anyone from interfering with purse bid offers for Holyfield-Douglas, said he believes that WBC President Jose Sulaiman may strip Douglas of the WBC crown if the champion honors the WBA purse bid procedure.

Featherweight prospect Rafael Ruelas steps up to his first 10-rounder Tuesday night against Vicente Gonzales at the Country Club in Reseda. Olympic bantamweight champion Kennedy McKinney meets Louis Hernandez in a six-rounder. . . . Humberto Gonzales, 24, thought to be one of Mexico’s best young fighters, defends his WBC light-flyweight championship at the Forum on June 4 against Luis Monzote. Gonzales is 26-0 and will be making his U.S. debut.

Shane Mosley of Pomona, the national amateur lightweight champion, headlines the Southern California team that boxes an Irish team tonight at Loyola Marymount, starting at 7 p.m. Mosley and two other Southland amateurs, Oscar de la Hoya and John Bray, will fight in the U.S. Goodwill Games trials in Las Vegas June 8-9. . . . CBS will show a bout between heavyweights Razor Ruddock and Kimmuel Odum on July 1. . . . Charles Murray (13-0) highlights the May 31 ESPN show from Rochester, N.Y. Olympic silver medalist Michael Carbajal meets Fernando Martinez in Las Vegas (ESPN) on June 14. Oops Dept.: Southland record-keeper Dick Mastro points out that, if Mexican fighter Manuel Medina’s birth date is correct, the California Athletic Commission permitted a 15-year-old to box on a 1986 San Diego card. Minimum age to box as a pro here is 18. . . . Tim Dahlberg, sportswriter for the Associated Press in Las Vegas, was shoved up against a wall by one of Mike Tyson’s security guards recently when he tried to ask the former champion a question. Later, Dahlberg was given this letter by Chuck Minker, executive director of the Nevada Athletic Commission: “. . . You are hereby forbidden to write about boxing until you have undergone a CAT scan, a neurological exam and a drug test.”