The Skinny on a Contender : Boxing: With a little more seasoning--and perhaps a few more pounds on his lean frame--Rafael Ruelas of Arleta could soon be making money hand over fist.

When 12-year-old Rafael Ruelas begged his way into the Ten Goose Boxing Club gym several years ago and announced that he wanted to be a part of the boxing world, trainer Joe Goossen took one look at the kid’s body and felt that the youngster most certainly had a bright future in the sport. He just didn’t know as what.

Perhaps as a ring rope. Or a boot lace.

At 5-foot and 80 pounds and with a pair of arms dangling at his sides that appeared not to be arms at all but threads hanging from the sleeves of his T-shirt, Ruelas didn’t exactly fit the traditional image of a boxer.

No one would have faulted Goossen had he told the kid to forget about the ring and boxing gloves and instead consider a future at Santa Anita with a whip in his hand.

But Goossen didn’t do that. He gave the boy a chance despite the fact that the kid had more ribs on display than a formal Texas dinner.

Soon, perhaps in the next six months or a year, Ruelas very possibly will start putting some serious boxing money into his pocket. And Goossen’s.

“I think I made a good decision,” said a smiling Goossen, who brought boxer Michael Nunn from obscurity to the middleweight championship of the world.

The rise of Ruelas, of Arleta, has been brief but remarkable. Starting his career with all the strength of a paper sack, Ruelas was thrown into 55 amateur bouts. He won 50. He embarked on a pro career just 16 months ago. He is 16-0.

And lest anyone get the idea that Ruelas, now a wispy 5-10 and 126 pounds, has been winning these fistic battles by moving and jabbing and waltzing his way around befuddled opponents who wished they had trained by sparring against a dangling length of clothesline, get a load of this: The kid with the body that seems perfect for cable TV has knocked out 14 of his 16 opponents.

He has knocked some out cold, the referee not bothering to count to 10 because he knew that, if he wanted, he could count to 50 over some of Ruelas’ victims without receiving much more than a leg twitch in response.

He has left several others out on their feet, winning by TKO when the referee would ask the battered opponent a question such as, “Are you OK?” and receive a slurred, glassy-eyed answer such as, “Yes. I own the large lamp.”

Ruelas, who just turned 19 and fights in the featherweight division, has become a pure boxer, skilled far beyond his years in the ability to deliver a quick blow and duck or deflect an opponent’s fist. And he also has used his body to advantage, learning all about the principle of leverage and the great force that can be generated by thin--but very long--arms.

Like his his brother, Gabriel, who is also 19 but fights at 130 pounds, Rafael has emerged as a legitimate force in boxing. Gabriel (21-1) is recovering from a broken bone in his arm, a freak injury sustained in last month in Las Vegas during a bout against Jeff Franklin. Rafael will continue his march Tuesday night against Vincente Gonzalez of Bell in a scheduled 10-round bout at the Country Club in Reseda. A victory over Gonzalez, and perhaps a half-dozen after that, will put Ruelas in line for much bigger things.

“Rafael is six months or so away from $50,000 fights,” said his manager, Dan Goossen. “It’s all out there for him. And it’s not very far away.”

Not bad for a thin young man who spent the first eight years of his life living high in the mountains of southern Mexico, in the decidedly uncosmopolitan settlement of Yerba Buena in the state of Jalisco. There, he spent days in the jungle picking garbanzo beans and corn with his brothers and sisters, of whom there are plenty. Rafael is one of 14 children of parents who came to the United States in 1979.

“It was such a big change when we moved here,” said Ruelas, who knew little English as an 8-year-old but graduated a semester early from North Hollywood High. “Everything was so different. Just having a bathroom inside the house. I had never seen that before.”

It was while working as door-to-door candy salesmen that Rafael and Gabriel happened to knock on the door of the old Ten Goose Gym in North Hollywood. An older Ruelas brother, Juan, was a professional boxer at the time and the kids had decided that they liked the excitement of the sport.

They saw the Ten Goose Gym as their big break. The Goossens gave Gabriel a chance to work out in the gym, and within three months they cracked the door one more time to let Rafael in.

The door of the gym--in North Hollywood and now in Van Nuys--has been swinging open daily for Gabriel and Rafael ever since.

“I felt early on, after a few months with these guys, that both of them had the ability and dedication to become world champions,” Joe Goossen said. “I honestly believed it. I had been around amateur fighters for a long time and I felt I had an educated eye, that I could spot real talent. And these guys were real talent.”

That, of course, is not enough in what is likely the toughest and most punishing of all sports. There is another ingredient that is just as elusive as talent.

“You get kids with great talent, and they don’t want to train,” Goossen said. “And you get kids with mediocre talent who you can’t get out of the gym because they are so dedicated. To find the combination of great talent and great dedication, that is very, very rare. Gabriel has that combination. And Rafael has it too.”

Veteran boxer Bernardo Pinango of Venezuela, a two-time world champion as a bantamweight and a junior featherweight, put his considerable talents and vast experience in the ring a month ago with Rafael during a sparring match. He did not like what he found.

“Rafael just pounded him,” Goossen said. “It wasn’t even a match.”

When it was over, Ruelas said Pinango came over to him and, speaking softly in Spanish, delivered a message. “He took out his mouthpiece and told me that he would never get in the ring with me again until I was a world champion, and then someone would have to pay him a lot of money to do it for the title,” Ruelas said. “I think he was impressed.”

As Ruelas’ young body continues to grow, he knows the featherweight division will one day be left behind. He reckons he might end up weighing a bit less than 150 pounds, making the lucrative welterweight division and its 147-pound limit an attractive goal.

“I see myself five years from now as a very well-known and established champion,” Ruelas said. “I see myself making the million-dollar purses too.”

Does all of his early success and his great promise make him think that all of this cannot be happening to a former garbanzo bean picker, to a young man who marveled a decade ago at indoor plumbing? Does it sometimes seem as though all of the success is happening to someone else?

“No,” said the thin man with the heavy punch. “I have no doubts. I know it is happening to me.”