BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Tyson Has Proved His Mettle, Giachetti Says

Like many other boxing followers, Richie Giachetti watched the TV replay of the second Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddock fight the other night.

Not that Giachetti needed to know how it turned out. He was there. His seat was about three feet from the southeast ringpost, Mike Tyson’s corner. He has been Tyson’s trainer since shortly after Tyson lost his heavyweight title to Buster Douglas in Tokyo.

In the days when he trained another heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes, the effusive Giachetti was always in boxing reporters’ top 10-interview rankings. Giachetti always had something to say. About anything .

All that stopped when he boarded the good ship Tyson, however. In the post-Tokyo era, the number of unreturned reporters’ calls to Giachetti has probably reached triple digits. Remember, Tyson’s first trainer, Kevin Rooney, got canned because he couldn’t resist acerbic comments to the media about Tyson’s wife at the time, Robin Givens.

Taking no chances, Giachetti buttoned his lip and pulled the phone plug.

But after Tyson-Ruddock II, won by Tyson Friday on a unanimous decision, Giachetti is steamed. He is fuming at the boxing media for the assertion by some that his fighter hasn’t been the same since the knockout by Douglas 16 months back.

He figured that knock had been put to rest after Friday, after Tyson won by a wide margin on all three judges’ scorecards, even after having three foul points deducted by the referee.

“I can’t understand what these people are looking at,” Giachetti said. “I watch the replay and I see three or four times where Ruddock is out on his feet. Here’s the thing--Mike goes out there with the second-best heavyweight in the world, dominates most of the rounds, dominates the fight, knocks him down twice, breaks his jaw and puts him in the hospital.

“Now, he’s fought Ruddock 19 rounds, and I think Mike won 16 of them, if you take away the point deductions.

“Now, were they (Tyson’s media critics) at the same fight I was? I mean, what do they want from this guy? Here’s Ruddock, who everyone agreed had the greatest single shot in boxing, his left hook, and he tags Mike several times right on the button with it, and Mike doesn’t go down.

“I used to think Larry (Holmes) had the greatest chin I ever saw. After Friday, I changed my mind. No one, ever, had a better chin than Mike’s.”

One knock on Tyson is that he has stopped throwing multipunch combinations since the Douglas bout, that he is trying to take out opponents with one or two punches.

Said Giachetti: “He did exactly what I wanted him to do. Whatever you do, I told him, don’t finish off a combination against that guy with a missed right hand. I didn’t want him getting countered by that left hook.”

Another knock is that Tyson doesn’t jab enough.

Giachetti: “I want him to jab more, too. Fighters with good, hard left jabs are my trademark. Larry had a great jab. But when you’re fighting a 6-5 guy who’s laying out his left like a stiff arm--that’s called measuring, by the way, and it’s a foul, and (referee Mills) Lane never called it--that comes into play.

“The whole thing is, Ruddock is a great fighter, too, and part of his job in that fight was to try and take Mike out of his game plan, and he knew that one of the things Mike wanted to do was use his jab.”

Giachetti, who lives in Cleveland, said the two knockdown right hands Tyson used on Ruddock constituted a new weapon.

“I wanted Mike to have a short, quick right hand that he could throw at any time, even when he’s off-balance,” he said.

“We call it our ‘going down-the-middle’ punch. See, Mike is so strong that I felt he could knock down anyone with a short, quick lead right. . . . and he proved it against Ruddock. We worked on it before the first Ruddock fight, but he threw it only three or four times that night.

“Friday, he threw it a lot, and it worked big time.”

Giachetti, 51, has nothing to do with negotiating for future Tyson fights. But he offers this explanation for the interminable delay in staging a Tyson-Evander Holyfield heavyweight championship bout.

“Ask yourself this question,” Giachetti said, “Would the Duvas be eager for Holyfield to take a fight with Razor Ruddock? Forget it. Holyfield is the third-best heavyweight in the world.

“The delay is because the Duvas (Dan and his father, Lou, Holyfield’s promoter and trainer) want all the money in the world for their guy because they know Mike is going to knock him out. It’s as simple as that.

“The Duvas aren’t dumb, they know Tyson-Holyfield will be Holyfield’s farewell fight and they’re trying to get him the biggest payday they can.

“And please, don’t tell me Holyfield is eager to stand in there and trade (punches) with the baddest heavyweight in the world, either.”

Giachetti was the target of one of the many rumors swirling about Tyson when he trained for the second Ruddock match--that Giachetti would be fired and replaced by New York trainer Panama Lewis, who once served a prison sentence for removing the padding from a fighter’s gloves.

“Absolutely nonsense,” Giachetti said. “Mike came up to me after the fight and said: ‘Good job, Richie, you’re my man.’ ”

Tyson’s estranged manager, Bill Cayton, is negotiating with both Caesars Palace and the yet-to-be-built MGM Grand Hotel, both in Las Vegas, for what would be the Boxing Hall of Fame. Cayton owns exhibition rights to virtually every significant boxing film dating to the 19th Century. He wants to cut a deal with someone who will build a boxing hall of fame around his film collection.

Presently, there are several boxing museums in the United States, all of which call themselves the sport’s “hall of fame,” but they contain only memorabilia.

“You walk in those places and you see old gloves, posters and jockstraps,” Cayton said. “Until the public can see films of these great old fighters, there is no boxing hall of fame.”

Attention, Mills Lane, Richard Steele and other referees who work major boxing events: Harry Ertle, the referee for the 1921 Jack Dempsey-Georges Carpentier bout, boxing’s first million-dollar fight, was paid $2,500--about what referees are paid for a heavyweight title fight today.

Given the inflation rate, to say nothing of how much more boxers are earning, and the millions in pay-per-view revenue, shouldn’t referees be making a little more? Just asking . . . Boxing Notes

The Forum might promote a Thomas Hearns-Virgil Hill rematch, but not with the same purses. The Forum promoted the Hearns-Hill match last month in Las Vegas and lost at least $2 million. When the official pay-per-view numbers come in, the loss could be even bigger. Said Hill’s manager, Gary Martinson: “I’ve talked to Harold Smith (Hearns’ adviser) and he agrees the best money fight out there for Tommy is a Hill rematch, and the Forum agrees with that, too. But Tommy would have to be paid much less for the Forum to do it.” Hearns was paid $3.5 million for the first bout, Hill $1.3 million.

On the Mike Tyson-Razor Ruddock II replay, we counted 13 world-class left hooks by Ruddock or left uppercuts that appeared to connect on Tyson’s chin--three in the eighth round and 10 in the first 10 rounds. . . . Brock Newman, heavyweight Riddick Bowe’s promoter, on a Tyson-Buster Douglas rematch: “If they fought again, the same thing would happen. Douglas would win, because he’s a tall fighter with a good jab. That’s why Riddick will beat Mike, too.”

For three outstanding Southland amateur boxers, next week’s Olympic Festival boxing tournament will be their only Southland appearance in a major amateur event. Oscar de la Hoya (lightweight), John Bray (heavyweight) and Shane Mosley (light welterweight) have boxed throughout the rest of the United States, as well as in overseas amateur matches, but never here. Preliminary sessions of the four-team tournament will be held next Saturday and Sunday at Loyola Marymount, with the finals at the Forum on July 16.

July 27 on HBO: Pernell Whitaker vs. Poli Diaz and Michael Moorer vs. Alex Stewart, from Norfolk, Va.