Adjusting to Boxing, U.S. Style : Transition Difficult for Latvian Fighter

Yuri Vaulin, the professional heavyweight boxer from Latvia--”Please don’t write I from Soviet Union”--was talking about the joys of his new country, the United States.

“I love to drive in America,” he said, and he proudly pointed from the second-floor Queens gym to the street below, where his 1985 Cougar was parked. “To drive in America is wonderful,” he said. “I drive to Philadelphia and Atlantic City. All streets here paved. Impossible to get lost in America--lots of signs.”

Nearby, Vaulin’s American trainer, Tommy Gallagher, tried to suppress a rueful grin. Gallagher wishes his heavyweight showed as much enthusiasm for the American style of boxing as he does for driving. Or making long-distance phone calls.

The jury is still out on Lou Falcigno’s Great Experiment. It has been 14 months since the New York pay-per-view boxing promoter brought four world-class amateur boxers from the Soviet Bloc, bought them a house and cars, paid them $25,000 salaries, gave them a food allowance, hired a trainer . . . and hoped to hit a promotional home run.

Now, after spending about $500,000 on his gamble that European world-class amateurs could become successful professionally, Falcigno is beginning to wonder if Vaulin, 26, will make it to the top ranks of the heavyweight division.

The 6-foot-3, 208-pound Vaulin is 10-1 as a professional and has from the beginning shown solid boxing fundamentals and excellent conditioning. But he hasn’t yet shown anyone he can hit hard and often enough to knock out American heavyweights.

“Here’s the problem,” Gallagher confided. “Yuri had 300 amateur fights (he was a two-time European amateur champion), so any time I tell him something, he bounces that off his own experience. Every time I talk to him, I see a little voice in him saying: ‘Hey, I’ve had 300 fights . . . Why is this guy telling me how to box?’ ”

Gallagher, a former New York Golden Gloves fighter who has trained professionals for more than half his 49 years, assumed a boxer’s stance.

“I’ve had Yuri for over a year, and every day we’re still talking about this, day-one stuff,” he said. Gallagher pantomimed a fighter delivering a right jab (Vaulin is left-handed), then quickly backing up one step and taking two steps to the right.

“See, he does this every time. He won’t follow the jab with a punch that’s got something on it. He won’t stay inside and throw combinations. He’s still basically a lateral-movement guy, instead of coming in straight.

“The amateur style all those years has given him great survival instincts, and that’s not compatible with what we want him to do. The way he’s going, he’s not establishing anything in a fight.

“It’s really frustrating, because he can knock people out, believe me. I don’t care what anyone says. He does have power.

“He’s a good athlete, and he’s in super condition. But he is left-handed, and that’s another problem . . . getting opponents.

“He really needs to focus on what he has to do. He can’t keep going on with this start-and-stop stuff.

“The other three kids who came over with Yuri have all made the transition to pro style much better.”

Gallagher paused a moment and shrugged.

“In a way, he’s done fine,” he said. “I mean, I try to imagine myself going to his country to start all over, having to learn a new language. . . . I’d be dead.”

Falcigno’s other three Soviet Bloc boxers are middleweight Viktor Egorov (9-1) and brothers Alex Artemiev (5-1), a featherweight, and Sergei Artemiev (10-1), a lightweight. Sergei has emerged as the best of the group.

“Sergei will be a world champion,” Gallagher predicts.

But for Falcigno, Vaulin would be the big payoff.

Veteran trainer Angelo Dundee, who took an Eastern European light-heavyweight to a professional championship, counsels patience.

“I had Slobodan Kacar (the 1980 Olympic light-heavyweight champion) and went through the same thing, weaning him off that amateur style,” Dundee said.

“It’s hard, but you can do it. I’ve seen Vaulin, I like him . . . They just have to be patient with the kid. He’s smooth, I like the way he moves . . . He’s not rigid, like a lot of those Europeans.”

Vaulin is a muscular, compact heavyweight who from ringside appears to be undersized, maybe 6 feet and 195 pounds.

In 14 months, he has become somewhat fluent in English. Henry Kuzin, a 27-year-old New Yorker raised in Kiev who works for Falcigno, shows up to translate for Vaulin’s interviews, but his services are increasingly unnecessary. Vaulin now answers about half of the questions without translation.

But you should hear Vlad, Yuri’s 7-year-old son.

“After one year, Vlad speaks better English than Russian, and much better English than his parents,” Kuzin said.

Said Vaulin: “Vlad learn English quickly on playground at Catholic School. He very good student. Teacher like him. Vlad top 10% of school.”

Vaulin and his wife, Irina, speak the same language but were a continent apart culturally when they met. Vaulin’s home is Jurmala, a small Latvian coastal resort town. Irina is from Novosibirsk, a city of 1 million in Siberia.

“We meet in college in Moscow,” Vaulin said.

Kuzin said Vaulin worries constantly about his parents and brother in Latvia, where unrest related to the independence movement has resulted in sporadic violence. The Vaulins run up substantial phone bills--once a sore point with Falcigno.

In addition to the $25,000 salaries, the large Queens house they all live in, the food allowances and the cars, Falcigno also provides his boxers with medical insurance and air fare for home visits. In the beginning, they got free phones, too . . . until the first bill arrived.

“The first month’s bill was $3,600,” Falcigno said. “Not only were there calls to all over the USSR, but they were calling all their amateur boxing friends in South America and Canada, too.

“Needless to say, they pay their own phone bills now.”

A reporter who asked Yuri what he liked best about the United States got this response: “I like American roads best. Irina like AT&T; best. She call Moscow operator, then through to Siberia.”

Fresh produce is also high on the Vaulins’ list.

“The first time I took them to a New York supermarket, they couldn’t believe the whole scene,” Kuzin said.

“They filled two carts with nothing but fresh fruit and vegetables. Both of them like to cook at home, although they go out often to Russian restaurants.”

Falcigno, who says he has earned back about $400,000 on his $500,000 investment with a cable TV deal--his boxers appear regularly on USA Network--says countdown time for Vaulin is about to begin.

“We’re going to give Yuri about two more fights with guys the caliber he has been fighting, then we’ll move him up to the Tommy Morrisons and the Ray Mercers,” he said.

“He’s coming to the point where he has to show us he can put guys away.”

They do know he can take a punch. Falcigno told a story about a highly regarded sparring partner, Eli Dixon, who was brought in to test Vaulin’s chin several months ago.

Dixon, they were told, hits as hard as anyone in the division.

“Dixon hit Yuri with a shot in the chin that was so hard, I thought the building had moved,” Falcigno said. “Yuri not only stayed up, but his knees didn’t even buckle. And he got mad and actually fought the way we wanted him to . . . for about half a minute, then he went back to his old style.

“The funny thing is, he’d been taught to avoid punches all those years in the USSR boxing program, and this guy had caught him flush. Afterward, he wouldn’t even admit he’d been caught.”

“I teased him about it afterward, and he said: ‘He not hit me . . . hit my shoulder.’ ”