BOXING : Commission: Licenses Risked if Smith Involved

The California Athletic Commission has warned both the Forum boxing staff and heavyweight Tony Tucker that they can’t deal with Harold Smith “in any boxing capacity” without risking revocation of their licenses.

The commission’s Los Angeles staff was irked at a recent news conference for the Forum’s June 3 Virgil Hill-Thomas Hearns fight when Hill indicated that Smith had played a role in putting the fight together.

Smith, once known as Harold (Rossfields) Smith, served 5 1/2 years of a 10-year sentence in federal prison after his conviction for embezzling $21.3 million from Wells Fargo National Bank.

Paroled in 1988, Smith promptly was licensed to be a California boxing manager by the commission staff. But in the ensuing flap over his being licensed, he never acted as a manager here, the license lapsed and he never renewed it. He is licensed in Florida, however.

Smith claims he has a right to act as an adviser to anyone.

“I have a sports and entertainment consultant business, I’m licensed to do business in Santa Monica and I have a right to act as a consultant to anyone in sports, boxing or otherwise,” he said.

“I do not negotiate for anyone nor do I sign any documents for anyone.”

Dale Ashley, assistant chief inspector at the commission’s Los Angeles office, disagreed.

“If we have direct evidence Tony Tucker is dealing with Smith in any way, Tony will be suspended,” Ashley said.

“That would be the case if we had direct knowledge of any fighter dealing with any unlicensed person in any boxing capacity.”

Tucker’s promoter is Ed Bell of Los Angeles, who said he complained to the commission staff that Smith was messing with his fighter. But Ashley said the commission staff had received no such complaint from Bell.

Also, it has been learned that Steve English, the commission’s assistant executive officer, warned John Jackson, the Forum’s vice president in charge of boxing, in a letter that he was risking the Forum’s promotion license if it was dealing with Smith.

Jackson denied negotiating with Smith for the Hill-Hearns fight.

“We talked directly with Tommy Hearns and with Hill’s manager, Gary Martinson,” Jackson said. “That’s what I told the commission when I wrote them back, and I also pointed out that this fight is taking place in Nevada, not California,” he said.

Pedro Fernandez is a free-lance boxing writer who has a column in a widely read boxing newsletter, Boxing Update. A former amateur boxer and San Francisco policeman, Fernandez, 33, writes with a hip, often sarcastic style that rubs some people the wrong way.

Like the people at Ten Goose Boxing in North Hollywood.

Ten Goose trainer Joe Goossen, unhappy over being needled recently in Fernandez’s column, called him three times Wednesday and threatened him on the third call, according to Fernandez.

The Goossens are calling it a joke. But it’s no joke to Fernandez, who reported it to the police.

Goossen, both parties agree, was unhappy about Fernandez publishing a previously printed rumor that Goossen wore facial makeup and then commenting that Goossen “didn’t care about his fighters.”

Goossen spoke with Fernandez Wednesday on his first call, then left messages on Fernandez’s answering machine on two subsequent calls. The writer has since played them for several people over the phone. On Wednesday, he filed a complaint with the South San Francisco Police Dept.

The second Goossen message Fernandez recorded was preceded by several seconds of concussive sounds that Fernandez said he interpreted as gunshots. The sounds are followed by a voice that sounds very much like Joe Goossen’s, saying: “ . . . and, uh, we can do that, too.”

Goossen and his brother, Ten Goose chief Dan Goossen, said the sounds on the message were “one of our fighters hitting a heavy bag in our gym.”

“It’s unbelievable anyone would interpret it to be anything else,” Dan Goossen said.

Apparently, Mike Tyson didn’t learn a thing during the Evander Holyfield-George Foreman promotion. For six months, neither Holyfield nor Foreman had a mean-spirited thing to say about the other.

Yet on Day 1 of the hype buildup for Tyson-Razor Ruddock II, the former heavyweight champion brought everyone back to Mike’s World, which is not very pleasant.

In a news conference televised to four cities Wednesday, Tyson insulted Ruddock repeatedly, either pointedly or by innuendo.

And then, Tyson said he would kill Ruddock. Before their last fight, Tyson had said, “If I don’t kill him, it won’t count.”

Ruddock generated applause when he finally said: “You know, Mike, there’s something you can’t buy with money and that’s class--and you ain’t got none of that.”

And speaking of heavyweights, New York promoter Lou Falcigno’s experiment with heavyweight Yuri Vaulin is apparently over.

In his first major test, on the Holyfield-Foreman undercard, Vaulin, of Latvia, was matched with unbeaten Tommy Morrison. Vaulin, to the surprise of nearly everyone, won the first four rounds.

But when he took two punishing body shots from Morrison in the fifth, Vaulin abruptly quit.

“He just doesn’t like getting hit,” Falcigno said. “I told him he could continue to box for us if he wants, but that he’ll have to get a job. I won’t pay him a salary ($25,000 a year) anymore. He told me he wants to keep boxing and drive a truck for a living.”

Boxing Notes

Paul Kagan Associates of Carmel, publishers of the respected Pay TV Newsletter, is calling the pay-per-view gross for Evander Holyfield-George Foreman $48.9 million, easily topping the previous record, $38.6 million, for Holyfield-Buster Douglas last October. . . . East Los Angeles amateur and Olympic hopeful Oscar de la Hoya has split with his trainer, Al Stankie. The fighter’s father, Joel, is taking applications for a new trainer. It’s a long line.

Mexico boxing expert Bruce Williams says this about Tijuana welterweight sensation Luis Ramon Campas (32-0): “I’d love to see Campas vs. Meldrick Taylor in about nine months. Campas has the power to flatten (Taylor), and he’s still learning.” . . . John Branca, the Florida boxing activist campaigning for a national boxing commission, cites the following active boxers and their records as reasons such a commission is needed: Billy Evans, Red Lake, Minn. (1-22-1); Wali Abdullah, Philadelphia (0-13); Jesse Abrams, Des Moines, Iowa, (10-37-4); and Sam Black, Little Rock, Ark., (16-108-4).

Jorge Vaca will fight Quincy Taylor in a light-middleweight main event Monday at the Forum.