BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : It Takes Lots of Pounds for Lots of Money

Last Saturday’s Terry Norris-Meldrick Taylor fight in Las Vegas confirmed two salient points about boxing, both of which have held up for about 10 years:

--If you’re a promoter and you want to sell a lot of tickets to a fight, make sure the participants are heavyweights.

--Often, courage is a fighter’s worst enemy.

First point: Paid attendance for the junior-middleweight fight, an attractive matchup of two young, talented champions, was 7,000 in the Mirage’s 15,000-seat outdoor stadium.

In the decades before television, heavyweights ruled. They still do. The 1952 Ring record book listed 21 fights that drew crowds of more than 50,000. All of them were heavyweight bouts.

More recently, of the 10 highest-grossing pay-per-view boxing events, five were heavyweight fights--including the first four. Four of the remaining five involved a smaller fighter with special star quality, Sugar Ray Leonard.

Norris may have achieved star status with his surprisingly easy four-round victory over Taylor, but he had to have been at least a bit disheartened by the sight of a half-filled stadium.

His manager, San Diego drywall contractor Joe Sayatovich, partly blames the recession.

“Over the last three years, I’ve laid off 400 guys, and I know if they were still working for me, about a hundred of them would have come to the fight,” he said.

Second point: Taylor’s courage got in the way of his game plan last Saturday night. Bravery reduced his chances of surviving the battering he took in the fateful fourth round, when referee Mills Lane stopped the fight.

When Norris hurt him badly in the round and twice knocked him down, Taylor relied on his heart instead of foot speed or his arms. He chose to stand and fight, and Norris chopped him down.

“He was too brave for his own good,” lamented Taylor’s co-trainer, George Benton. “He got up too quick after the knockdowns. He should have grabbed him by the kneecaps, any place . . . and held on. But Mel wanted to fight him.”

Sayatovich said Thursday that negotiations were continuing on a Norris-Buddy McGirt fight for September or October. The fight will not be in New York, as Madison Square Garden would like.

“I’ve earned the right not to have to fight a guy in his hometown,” said Norris, who lives in Alpine, Calif. McGirt holds a piece of the welterweight championship, and Norris is a partial junior-middleweight champion.

Norris, according to Sayatovich, has approved Atlantic City, N.J.; Las Vegas, Palm Springs or San Diego as possible sites for a McGirt fight. Still to be determined are two other important elements: Money, and at what weight the two would fight.

California’s much-maligned neurological tests, required yearly of all pro boxers in the state, face a court challenge in Los Angeles beginning June 1.

Dio Colome was a pretty good welterweight in 1988, until he failed his neurological examination and was denied a license to box in California. He then passed several exams by independent neurologists. Still no license.

He sued the state, claiming it had denied him a right to earn a living.

Carl Douglas, Colome’s attorney, says Colome seeks $75,000 in lost 1988 earnings plus “hundreds of thousands of dollars” in emotional damages.

Speaking of money, Taylor--who earned $2 million last Saturday night--has owed the California boxer pension plan $3,000 since last Sept. 13, according to the California Athletic Commission staff.

Taylor fought Ernie Chavez of Westminster in Sacramento on a show promoted by Don Chargin. The official contract for the fight filed with and approved by commission staff member Rob Lynch, showed Taylor earning $1,000. Chavez was down for $17,500.

Later, when it came out that Taylor’s purse was actually $100,000, questions were raised about how the $1,000 figure wound up on the contract, and whether Taylor paid taxes on $1,000 or $100,000.

Dan Duva, Taylor’s promoter, taking umbrage at any suggestion that Taylor hadn’t paid his taxes, recently produced a “Notice to Withhold Tax at Source” form dated Aug. 27, 1991, from the California Franchise Tax Board.

It shows that $5,000 was to be withheld from Taylor’s purse. But according to executive officer Richard DeCuir of the commission staff, Taylor still hasn’t paid the required 3% of his purse to the pension program, despite having been reminded last January by letter that he owed the money.

Duva said Friday he had not heard from DeCuir, adding: “As far as I know, we paid all the taxes and fees we owed. If we owe something else, they should contact us.”

Boxing Notes

Terry Norris, on his performance against Meldrick Taylor: “I’m still a young (24) guy. I still have a lot to learn. I want to watch the video and study my mistakes. I want to see if on any of the right hands I missed him with, he could have countered me.”

Andy Stankiewicz, the New York Yankees’ infielder, is the 27-year-old son of Al Stankie, the former Los Angeles policeman who guided Paul Gonzales of East Los Angeles to a 1984 Olympic boxing gold medal. A shortstop-second baseman, Stankiewicz was a 12th-round draft choice in 1986. He went to Santa Fe Springs St. Paul High. . . . An early candidate to play the role of Mike Tyson in a proposed film of his life is Ten Goose Boxing heavyweight Lionel Butler. The film project is based upon Tyson biographer Montieth Illingworth’s book, “Tyson: Money, Myth and Betrayal”

In the Bobby Czyz-Donny Lalonde fight in Las Vegas last weekend, Lalonde was knocked across the ring and struck the back of his head against a television camera on the ring apron. Some commented that it’s surprising it doesn’t happen more often. Said California Athletic Commission official Steve English: “If we see a cameraman is not standing in the corner on the wooden platform assigned to him, our referees are authorized to stop the bout until he moves to the platform.”