BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Smith Deserves an Assist for His Problems

It sounds like a story out of the 1930s, when the mob ran boxing, when fighters and their managers routinely handed over as much as half their purses to gangsters.

In 1985, Lonnie Smith of Denver signed a contract to fight Billy Costello in Madison Square Garden for Costello’s World Boxing Council junior-lightweight championship. On the night of Aug. 21, 1985, Smith knocked Costello down five times, finally knocking him out in the eighth round.

Smith’s contract “guaranteed” him $360,000 for the fight. But then, what’s a guarantee in boxing? Almost five years later, Smith claims he still hasn’t been paid.

Not at all? Surely, he got something.

“Lonnie never got a dime,” says his current manager, Sterling McPherson. “Even worse, he took the promoter to court, ran up $67,000 in legal bills, won a $2.9-million judgment, and hasn’t got a dime of that, either.”

In the shadowy, often outrageous world of boxing economics, this is about as bad as it gets.

In this case, Smith’s problem was that his promoter for that fight was Jack Solerwitz, a Long Island lawyer who last May was sentenced to five-to-15 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of grand larceny.

Smith, boxing people agree, is a talented fighter who has fallen far short of where his talent should have carried him. He stopped Henry Anaya in the 10th round in a Las Vegas show Monday, but Smith should have stopped fighting Henry Anayas five years ago.

It’s an oft-asked question: Whatever became of Lonnie Smith?

Promoters claim he has pulled out of too many fights. His manager says Smith simply can’t get fights, and at least one matchmaker agrees.

“Lonnie Smith is a very talented fighter, and if I was the manager of an up-and-coming junior welterweight, I wouldn’t let him fight Lonnie Smith,” said Bruce Trampler of Top Rank.

“We used him exclusively six times in 1984. At that time we felt he was the best junior-welter in the world. And while he won all those fights, we didn’t feel his style was all that crowd pleasing. But he does have a great right hand. . . . He can really stun guys with it.”

Smith’s problems in getting his career on the right track, many say, are largely of his own making.

Randy Gordon, boxing commissioner for New York, recalls interviewing a manager who wanted to manage Smith, who was also in his office.

“I asked Lonnie how many contracts he had currently with other managers, when I knew exactly what the number was, three. Apparently, he’d told this guy no one had paper on him,” Gordon said.

“I said: ‘Lonnie, how many contracts do you have out there?’

“He said: ‘None.’

“I said: ‘Lonnie, the truth.’

“He said: ‘OK, three.’ ”

Trampler says Smith, still only 27, had a tendency to surround himself with disreputable, unruly entourages. He said the management of an Atlantic City hotel once told Top Rank it never wanted another Smith fight on its property.

“Finally, Smith has hired a good manager (McPherson), who should be able to move him in the right direction,” Trampler said.

McPherson wants to move Smith toward Meldrick Taylor or Hector Camacho.

“Those are two guys who have had better opportunities than Lonnie has, but the plain fact is Lonnie beats them both, and he knocks Taylor out,” he said.

Paul Banke isn’t yet on anyone’s list of great fighters from Southern California, but for courage under fire he may deserve a top-10 ranking.

The bantamweight from Quail Valley has pulled another championship fight out of the fire with another late-round victory. This time, it was a 12th-round knockout in South Korea, with his World Boxing Council super-bantamweight championship on the line.

Last weekend, in a 1,500-seat gymnasium in Ichon, a three-hour drive south of Seoul, Banke and South Korean Lee Ki Jun engaged in a brutal, bloody battle in Banke’s first defense of his title. This is not news. All of Banke’s fights are brutal and bloody. And there is another consistent theme: He keeps winning them.

This time, Banke and Lee were even on all three judges’ score cards after 11 rounds. Banke was cut, and so was Lee. Banke’s right eye was also closed after the ninth round. Banke put Lee down in the 11th with a right hand, and had him down twice in the 12th when the referee stopped it.

All this means is that Banke, who overcame a drug problem a couple of years back, now has positioned himself for his biggest payday yet, $70,000 for what figures as the Forum’s biggest money fight of 1990, Banke-Zaragoza III.

Banke earned his championship in dramatic fashion by stopping Daniel Zaragoza last April in the ninth round when he was far behind on points. That night, ringsiders were calling it a Forum classic. Zaragoza, from Mexico City, had won a decision over Banke in 1988.

Banke’s manager, Riverside roofing contractor Bob Richardson, is still marveling over his fighter’s courage in South Korea.

“Paul told me later the pain his eye was causing him in the eighth, ninth and 10th rounds was the worst he’d ever experienced, when his eye was swelling up,” he said.

“The Korean kid kept leaning in and working Paul’s body, but what hurt more was the Korean bouncing his head off that tender eye. I thought Paul won five of the first seven rounds, but the Korean won most of the late rounds. In my mind, I had it very close going into the 12th.

“It was a courageous performance by Paul, and he won a lot of fans over there.”

Richardson said the crowd loved the fight and loved Banke’s Korean-like, free-swinging style.

“People clapped and cheered for him when he walked down the aisle after the fight, and gave him the thumbs-up sign,” Richardson said.

Boxing Notes

About 150 amateur boxers will compete in the Blue and Gold invitational tournament Labor Day weekend at the Baldwin Park Community Center. . . . Lawyers representing Dan Goossen and Michael Nunn announced recently that their contract has been ended by mutual agreement.

Why was it necessary for three California boxing commission staffers to evaluate 45-year-old Jerry Quarry’s fitness to box at a special sparring session Thursday? Why not just look at the video of his 1983 fight in Bakersfield, against a blown-up middleweight named James Williams. Quarry, who has applied for a state boxing license, was 38 that night and was slow, unimpressive, won a 10-round decision and was booed by spectators, who thought Williams had won.

Actually, the promoter of that fight, Bob Wollitz, says Quarry is missing the boat. He should sing, not fight, he says. “Jerry sang the national anthem at a boxing card in Bakersfield not long ago, without accompaniment, and it was the best rendition I’ve ever heard.”