BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Southern Californians Count Down to Barcelona Olympics

For Oscar de la Hoya, few days remain until his summer in Spain.

It’s fewer than 100 days until the Barcelona Olympics’ opening ceremony, and fewer than 50 until the U.S. Olympic boxing trials. Their fast approach has whetted his appetite, increased his eagerness, sharpened his training.

At the Brooklyn Gym in East Los Angeles the other day, young boxers stood quietly at ringside and watched the lightweight gold medal hopeful do routine work with his trainer, Robert Alcazar.

Passers-by on the busy intersection of Brooklyn and State streets, a block from White Memorial Hospital, stopped by the relatively new gym to watch. Brooklyn gym is a bright, sunny place; a gym that was once an auto repair shop.

The gym doesn’t fit the stereotype of such places. It has five blue garage doors, and they are all open when boxers train.

De la Hoya, 19, a two-time national champion, stepped on a broken bottle while training in Florida two weeks ago and cut his foot. This was his first day back in the gym. He punched Alcazar’s mitts, worked on footwork and jumped rope.

Afterward, he said a loss to Germany’s Marco Rudolph at amateur boxing’s World Championships last November in Australia has made him a better boxer. It was de la Hoya’s only amateur defeat since leaving the Junior Olympics ranks in 1988.

“That (the 17-13 decision) changed everything--my training, the way I think, the way I prepare,” he said. “It was actually a good thing for me. I was losing my enthusiasm for boxing. But that woke me up. Now, I can’t wait to get to the gym.”

Southern California boxing gyms are full of legitimate Olympic hopefuls. Counting de la Hoya, there are eight Olympic team contenders hereabouts.

Van Nuys heavyweight John Bray is a three-time national champion but must qualify for the June 10-14 Olympic trials at the Western Olympic Trials, May 24-30.

De la Hoya was awarded an at-large berth in the Olympic trials at Worcester, Mass. Light-welterweight Shane Mosley of Pomona, light-middleweight Robert Allen of Camp Pendleton and light-heavyweight Montell Griffin of Midway City made it by winning U.S. championships.

Super-heavyweight Reginald Blackmon of the U.S. Navy, San Diego, qualified by winning a U.S. military championship.

Other prominent Southland boxers trying to qualify by winning either Golden Gloves or Western Olympic trials championships are welterweight Pepe Reilly of Glendale and light-heavyweight Jeremy Williams of Long Beach.

Jack Dempsey, the 1880s middleweight champion who was the subject of an article in Thursday’s Times, inspired boxing’s most famous poem.

“The Nonpareil’s Grave” was written four years after Dempsey’s 1895 death by his lawyer, M.J. MacMahon of Portland, Ore.

Dempsey was buried at Calvary Cemetery, near Portland. Apparently, MacMahon believed Dempsey’s headstone was inadequate.

The poem was first published anonymously, in the Portland Oregonian in 1899. Later, it appeared in many other American, British and Irish newspapers. Today, it can be found in almost any book of boxing literature.

MacMahon wrote a letter to Ring Magazine in 1928, explaining:

“I wrote this poem with no other object in mind than to get the sports fraternity of the world interested in contributing toward a fund to help build a monument over one of the greatest fighters the world has ever seen.”

Dempsey’s family bought a bigger monument before MacMahon’s poem generated much money. Later, the poem was carved onto Dempsey’s headstone.

The Nonpareil’s Grave

Far out in the wilds of Oregon,

On a lonely mountain side,

Where Columbia’s mighty waters

Roll down to the ocean side;

Where the giant fir and cedar

Are imaged in the wave,

O’ergrown with firs and lichens,

I found Jack Dempsey’s grave.

I found no marble monolith,

No broken shaft, or stone,

Recording sixty victories,

This vanquished victor won;

No rose, no shamrock could I find

No mortal here to tell

Where sleeps in this forsaken spot

Immortal Nonpareil.

A winding wooded canyon road

That mortals seldom tread,

Leads up this lonely mountain,

To the desert of the dead.

And the Western sun was sinking

In Pacific’s golden wave

And those solemn pines kept watching,

Over poor Jack Dempsey’s grave.

Forgotten by ten thousand throats,

That thundered his acclaim,

Forgotten by his friends and foes,

Who cheered his very name.

Oblivion wraps his faded form,

But ages hence shall save

The memory of that poor Irish lad

That fills poor Dempsey’s grave.

Oh, Fame, why sleeps thy favored son

In wilds, in woods, in weeds,

And shall he ever thus sleep on,

Interred his valiant deeds?

‘Tis strange New York should thus forget

Its ‘bravest of the brave’

And in the wilds of Oregon,

Unmarked, leave Dempsey’s grave.”

Boxing notes

Tonight’s state Golden Gloves winners at Lincoln Park advance to the national Golden Gloves championships next weekend in Chicago. Those winners qualify for the Olympic trials June 10-14 at Worcester, Mass.

Friday’s state Athletic Commission meeting, scheduled for Sacramento, was canceled for lack of a quorum. Three members reported they were unable to attend: Jerry Nathanson, Carlos Palomino and Willie Buchanon. . . . Tony Tubbs, who briefly held a piece of the heavyweight championship in 1985, has been suspended in Nevada after testing positive for cocaine Feb. 16. The Nevada Athletic Commission suspended him for six months and assigned him to perform 100 hours of community service work. He tested positive for cocaine after winning a 1989 fight in Santa Monica over Orlin Norris. . . . Dept. of Why Bother: Ten Goose Boxing’s April 2 show at the Reno/Sparks Convention Center, which headlined Arleta lightweight Gabriel Ruelas, drew a paid crowd of 196 and gross revenues of $2,442. The following night in the same building, official Nevada figures show, the Greg Haugen-Ray Mancini pay-per-view show drew 5,117 paid and $444,216.50.

Flyweight champion Michael Carbajal of Phoenix will box a foe ito be determined in a 10-round non-title fight on the June 19 Evander Holyfield-Larry Holmes card at Caesars Palace. Newport Beach promoter Bob Rey still has a suit pending that seeks to prevent Holmes from fighting Holyfield. Rey claims his firm, LBA Associates, has a valid contract to promote Holmes’ fights and is seeking $15 million in damages. . . . Alexandre Zolkin, the 6-5, 230-pound Moscow heavyweight by way of Columbus, Ohio, is managed by John Johnson, who guided Buster Douglas to his knockout of Mike Tyson in Tokyo. He is trained by J.D. McCauley, Douglas’ uncle and former trainer. Zolkin, 27, is 10-0 after recently stopping Rickey Parkey, and Johnson had this to say: “He’s better than Buster (Douglas), and that doesn’t even include the conditioning factor.”

A Las Vegas judge recently ordered $50,000 of Iran Barkley’s $500,000 purse from his March 20 victory over Tommy Hearns put into a trust account, pending an arbitration hearing between Barkley and his estranged manager, Ahmed Bey. Bey, who says he had 14 months remaining on his contract with Barkley, said Barkley fired him days before the Hearns fight.

Ruelas’ promoter/manager, Dan Goossen, is negotiating with Australian promoter Bill Mordley on a summer fight in Sydney between Ruelas and Jeff Fenech, who recently lost his junior-lightweight title to Azumah Nelson.