Ruddock Gets His Chance to Answer the Questions : Boxing: There are doubts about his ability, which will be tested by Tyson in a non-title fight tonight.

Shortly after 9 tonight, in a Las Vegas parking lot, an answer will be provided to a question that has been bouncing around the world of professional boxing for the past several years:

Can Razor Ruddock fight?

So far, all he has done is knock over three former heavyweight champions who were years past their prime.

The fight has been sold on the premise that Ruddock might be able to defeat another former heavyweight champion, Mike Tyson. Tyson is a 4-1 favorite.

Last December, when promoter Don King signed Tyson to fight Ruddock, many in the boxing community were shocked.

Some of the questions asked at the time:

--Tyson didn’t need to fight anyone, and still face the Evander Holyfield-George Foreman winner to make between $10 million and $15 million. Why risk everything on a non-title fight with Ruddock? Why not save Ruddock until after Tyson regains the championship, and earntwice the purse he will earn tonight ($6 million to $8 million?)

One theory is that Tyson was ridiculed by his old South Bronx neighborhood street chums for ducking a fight with Ruddock in 1989 and ducking him since. Tyson, this theory goes, ordered King to make the fight over the promoter’s objections. King, as always, will be the only certain winner tonight at the Mirage Hotel’s 15,000-seat stadium. If Ruddock wins, King has co-promotion options on his next three championship fights. If Tyson wins, he is still Tyson’s promoter.

Says Tyson: “Let me tell you something, Razor Ruddock is not as great as everyone thinks he is.”

How great is he?

Ruddock, born in Jamaica and raised in Toronto, is a 6-foot-4, 228-pound, long-armed fighter who since 1986 has beaten three former champions.

The first victory was a decision over Mike Weaver in Fayetteville, N.C. The next two were clean knockouts, of Bonecrusher Smith in 1989 and Michael Dokes last April in Madison Square Garden.

By 1990, Dokes had been through a series of drug battles, a brutal 10-round fight with Holyfield, and was roughly eight years past his prime. No one else on Ruddock’s ledger (25-1-1) has ever been on page one.

In fact, since 1988, Ruddock has fought the likes of Reggie Gross, James Broad, Kimmuel Odom and Mike (The Mouse) Rouse. He knocked them all out, of course.

Naturally, Ruddock has an explanation for his loss, an eighth-round technical knockout by journeyman Dave Jaco in 1985. In his 11th fight, Tyson, as a 19-year-old in 1986, stopped Jaco in one round.

Ruddock’s excuse?

“I had an asthma attack during the fight.”

There is a widely held view that Tyson, forgiven for tripping over Buster Douglas in Tokyo, is still the world’s best heavyweight. Further, many expect that it is only a matter of time before Tyson regains his championship.

And so tonight, Ruddock must prove he can not only stay with a guy who is 10 for 11 in heavyweight championship fights, but even more difficult, beat him.

The Ruddock story begins in 1978, in a ninth-grade science class at Emory Collegiate High School in Toronto. A neighborhood chum of Ruddock’s, Rico Rossi, has an idea.

“Hey, Ruddock, why not box?” Rossi says. “You’ll kill everybody.”

The way Ruddock tells it, he left the class immediately, went to the principal’s office and asked that his brother, Delroy, 17, be pulled out of class. It was urgent, he told the principal.

“I want to be a boxer, we have to move to New York,” he told his brother.

When Delroy asked why he, too, had to go to New York, Ruddock told him it was because he didn’t have a suitcase and Delroy did.

Eventually, the Ruddock brothers settled first on a gym they found in the Toronto yellow pages, the Lansdowne Gym. Ruddock recalls with relish his first visit.

“It was dark, dirty and smelled bad . . . I loved it,” he said.

Ruddock won 17 of 19 amateur fights and turned pro in 1982 with few expectations. “I didn’t have any great aspirations, I just thought $400 for a four- round fight sounded pretty good,” he said.

Tonight, he will make between $3 million and $4 million. Most of that is King paying for future options, if Ruddock wins.

Midway through Ruddock’s career, Team Ruddock was the fighter, trainer Art Miles of Los Angeles and brother Delroy. He was not committed to a promoter until he decisioned Weaver.

Watching the fight at home was Newark, N.J., promoter Murad Muhammad, always on the lookout for a heavyweight. Watching Ruddock-Weaver on TV that afternoon, he found him.

“I’d never heard of Razor Ruddock before, but I’ll never forget what happened in the fifth round of that fight,” he recalled recently. “Weaver still had the best left hook in boxing then and he caught Razor with a hook right on the chin. You could hear the impact on TV. Any other fighter, we’re talking unconscious. Razor blinks, backs up one step and gets back to business.

“I came right out of my chair. I made some calls and found out he was a free agent. I contacted Delroy that night and we’ve been together ever since.”

Muhammad will never forget the afternoon of Nov. 1, 1989, either. It was fewer than three weeks until Tyson-Ruddock in Edmonton, Canada.

“Razor and all of us were coming back to the hotel from the gym, and we see a crowd gathered around a lobby TV,” he said.

“ ‘Hey, Razor,’ someone says. ‘The fight’s off.’ ”

Team Ruddock listens to the TV announcer say Tyson, suffering from a respiratory problem, had pulled out.

“The thing that hurt most was the way we learned about it . . . (King) didn’t even give us the courtesy of a phone call,” Muhammad said.

Muhammad sued King for $75 million. Then he and Ruddock had to watch ruefully as, three months later, Buster Douglas beat up an out-of-shape Tyson in Tokyo.

“A few weeks later they signed to take Buster to Tokyo, thinking Buster’s a dog,” Muhammad said.

“We subpoenaed Tyson’s medical records and saw that Tyson’s doctor said only Mike was sick that day (of the scheduled Ruddock fight) . . . it didn’t say anything about how he’d be the following day or three weeks later. Calling him too sick to fight . . . that was strictly Don King’s interpretation.

“Here’s what I think happened. I think Tyson went to King and said, ‘Hey, I can’t beat this guy right now . . . call it off.’

Muhammad said Tyson ran out shortly after a photo publicity session. Tyson was talking to Ruddock, but Ruddock said nothing.

“Mike is a street bully, see?” Muhammad said. “Street bullies never like to fight quiet guys, especially bigger quiet guys. And so Mike ran out on us, and didn’t even offer a postponement.

“Razor was terribly upset and so was I, it put me in a terrible situation. I’m the guy’s promoter and all of a sudden I’ve failed to deliver the biggest fight of Razor’s career.

“I’m thinking: ‘What does Razor think of me? Is he going to fire me?’ ”

And the $75 million suit against King? Muhammad will drop it.

Meanwhile, observers have questioned why Ruddock quit sparring about a week ago. Ruddock, many think, has a problem with his right hand. He said he fought Dokes with a hairline fracture in the hand.

Nonsense, says Ruddock’s Los Angeles trainer, Art Miles.

“Does a Super Bowl coach put his quarterback into full-contact scrimmages every day before the game?” he asked.

“Razor’s a high-spirited guy and we didn’t want him taking on wild-swinging sparring partners.”

On the undercard tonight, Julio Cesar Chavez (73-0 or 72-1) will defend his World Boxing Council and International Boxing Federation junior-welterweight championships. meets against John Duplessis (36-1). IBF welterweight champion Simon Brown (33- 1) will fight WBC champion Maurice Blocker (32-1) and Roberto Duran (86-8) will face San Francisco’s Pat Lawlor (14-1) in a super-middleweight fight.