Hipp’s Heavyweight Climb Continues in Irvine : Boxing: Looking for opponents to help him move up in the rankings, fighter takes on Woods Monday in Bren Center.

One day, Joe Hipp hopes to be on top of the boxing world. He’s learned, however, that moving up the ranks of the heavyweight division isn’t easy.

The World Boxing Council ranks Hipp (20-1) among its top 20 heavyweights, but without backing from one of the sport’s powerful promoters, he’s found it difficult to get the type of matches he needs to move ahead.

“I know if you just keep fighting and fighting, sooner or later you’re going to be up there,” Hipp said. “You just need to keep winning. If I keep winning, everything else will take care of itself.”

Hipp, who trains in Tacoma, Wash., gets another chance to work on his theory Monday night, when he meets Cleveland Woods in the main event of the monthly LBNT Pro Sports boxing series at the Bren Center. The seven-fight card begins at 7 p.m.

In July, 1989, Hipp defeated Woods in a five-round decision in a fight televised by ESPN from Las Vegas. Woods (13-2) lives in West Covina.

Hipp, who was born in Browning, Mont., on a Blackfoot Indian reservation, moved with his family to Yakima, Wash., when he was 2. He followed two older brothers into amateur boxing at 10, but he also found other athletic diversions. He played defensive end for the football team at Davis High School, where he also wrestled.

After graduation, Hipp helped with a brother’s landscaping business while continuing his amateur boxing career. As an amateur, Hipp was 110-9 with 70 knockouts and won the 1987 West Region Golden Gloves title.

Hipp won his first professional fight in 1987. In his second, however, Veri Katoa of Nevada broke Hipp’s jaw, forcing him out of the ring for eight months. Since then, he has won 19 consecutive matches. He won 14 by knockout, including his past six opponents, and he’s beaten Katoa twice.

Hipp, 28, said he has become more focused since switching managers and moving to Federal Way, a suburb of Seattle, in January, 1990. In 10 victories under the management of Tacoma businessman Roland Jankelson, Hipp has eight knockouts.

Hipp, a left-hander, punishes opponents with body punches, which often come in flurries.

“He was always a good puncher because he’s a big, strong guy,” said Pete Roybal, his trainer. “But I think he’s punching a lot harder now.”

Roybal and Jankelson credit Hipp’s improvement to a new training program that has their fighter working out three times a day. Thanks to the regimen, which includes running, weight training and aerobics, Hipp has shed 30 pounds from his 6-foot-1 frame and now weighs about 230.

Earlier this year, Hipp suffered a brief setback when he fractured his eye socket in a training session. Surgery kept him out of the sparring ring for two months. In his return match earlier this month, he scored a first-round knockout of Bill Duncan in Phoenix.

Jankelson, who managed Pinklon Thomas in the early stages of his career, believes Hipp should be in line for a shot at a title fight midway through 1992.

“The best guys don’t necessarily get the first opportunity in this business,” Jankelson said. “That’s the way it is. But when you’ve got the kind of product that we do, the public will recognize it, and he will get enough exposure that the public will demand that he gets his chance.

“We just think he reached a class that places him above the other young heavyweights. But Cleveland Woods doesn’t believe that.”