De la Hoya Opens Trials With a Favorable Draw

Oscar de la Hoya and seven other Southern California athletes are among 96 who will begin boxing here tonight and Thursday for berths on the U.S. Olympic team.

Their hoped-for path to Barcelona traveled through a plastic shopping bag filled with numbered Ping-Pong balls Tuesday, USA Boxing’s low-tech but traditional means of setting pairings for the five-day tournament.

De la Hoya, the 19-year-old Garfield High graduate who is a two-time national champion at lightweight, pulled a ball out of the bag with a 3 on it, matching him tonight with a Houston fireman, Lewis Wood.

Also tonight, Pepe Reilly of Glendale, 1991 national champion at welterweight, meets Patrick Byrd of Flint, Mich., son of Olympic team Coach Joe Byrd.

Conceivably, though not probably, half the 12-boxer U.S. Olympic team could be made up of Southland boxers. De la Hoya is considered a solid favorite here, Reilly slightly less so.

Six other Southland boxers drew opening-round bouts Thursday, including super-heavyweights David Bostice of San Bernardino and Reginald Blackmon of the San Diego Navy team; light-heavyweights Jeremy Williams of Long Beach and Montell Griffin of Midway City; Camp Pendleton Marine light-middleweight Robert Allen, and junior-welterweight Shane Mosley of Pasadena.

The hard-hitting, aggressive Allen, in fact, finds himself in the most-anticipated bout of the tournament. He was matched with the Olympic team favorite at 156 pounds, Raul Marquez of Houston.

When those two drew matching balls, there were cheers and whistles from the 94 other boxers in the hotel meeting room.

“That’s just the way I wanted it, the toughest one first,” Marquez said. “Let’s get it on.”

De la Hoya is the solid favorite at 132 pounds, and isn’t expected to encounter much difficulty tonight from Wood. When asked about his opponent, De la Hoya shrugged and said, “I never heard of him.”

Rated just behind De la Hoya among lightweights is Patrice Brooks of St. Louis, and De la Hoya is 2-0 against him. Some expect De la Hoya to meet rapidly improving Anthony Christodoulou of Syracuse in the final.

De la Hoya is bouncing back after losing to German Marco Rudolph on a 17-13 decision at the World Championships in Sydney last fall. That was his first defeat in four years, or since losing a 1987 decision in the Junior Olympics.

Reilly, who was suspended for a year when he tested positive for steroid use after he had won a 1991 national championship, reached the trials by winning the national Golden Gloves championship in Chicago last month.

Many here call the welterweight competition the toughest of the tournament.

“I’d call Reilly the favorite in the 147s, but I’d also say it wouldn’t surprise me if any of the other seven welterweights won here,” said Bruce Mathes, USA Boxing’s competition director.

Reilly was unstoppable at the Golden Gloves. He won five times, four by 5-0 judges’ margins, a fifth by 4-1. He’s a long-legged, 5-foot-11 boxer with a thumping left jab. He also scores often and painfully with left hooks to the ribs.

Eric Griffin, possibly the world’s best amateur boxer, also boxes tonight. The current world champion at light-flyweight (106 pounds), Griffin has come all the way back from the 1988 Olympic team boxoffs, when he was sent home after testing positive for marijuana.

“I could have turned pro in 1988, but I decided to clean up my act, start all over and do it right,” he said.

“I still want to win a gold medal--that hasn’t changed.”

Griffin, from Broussard, La., was the only American to win a gold medal at the World Championships, a title he has won twice. He’s also the only American currently rated No. 1 in the world.

Griffin opens tonight with Bradley Martinez, a soldier from Ft. Huachuca, Ariz., against whom Griffin is 3-0.

Although Griffin is the only U.S. boxer to have won a gold at the last World Championships, he and four other Americans--De la Hoya, Vernon Forrest, Marquez and Larry Donald--won titles at the World Championships Challenge matches in Tampa last March.

The eight boxers in each weight class arrived here by six different paths. Champions and runners-up from the national championships qualified, Armed Forces champions, national Golden Gloves champions, and eastern and western Olympic trials champions were all automatic qualifiers.

In addition, two in each class were given at-large invitations, set aside for those who hadn’t qualified because of competition conflicts but had shown promise in previous international competitions.

Winners here Sunday aren’t quite on the Olympic team. Trials winners and their “most noteworthy opponents” will meet in Phoenix June 26-28 in boxoffs for the Olympic team. “Most worthies” are usually, but not necessarily, runners-up in the trials.

A Worcester winner who also wins in Phoenix is on the plane to Barcelona. Most worthy opponents must beat trials winners twice in Phoenix to make it.

Computer scoring mandated by the International Olympic Committee will be used here. Push-button boxing scoring was brought in after two controversial decisions in gold medal bouts marred the tournament at the 1988 Olympics.

For a punch to be registered as a scoring blow, three of five judges must push a button within one second of each other. A backup panel of five judges will also score each bout with a second computer system, in the event of an electronic failure in the front-line system.

Thus far, the system has been remarkably free of controversy. At the World Championships last November in Sydney, Australia, no controversial decisions were rendered. It was the same at the computerized national championships last February in Colorado Springs.

“The computers are here to stay, and I think the coaches and boxers are generally happy with it,” said U.S. Marine Corps Coach Roosevelt Sanders.

“Not many of us liked it at first, but no one was explaining it to us at first. Now that we know how it works, we like it better. It works.”

IOC President Juan Antonio Samaranch told the International Amateur Boxing Assn. (AIBA) after Seoul that it faced expulsion from the Olympics if it didn’t eliminate biased scoring.

These Olympic trials are being played out as almost a sideshow to a major clash brewing between Olympic team Coach Joe Byrd and three-time former Olympic Coach Pat Nappi.

USA Boxing President Billy Dove wants to appoint Nappi as an “adviser” to Byrd and his staff, a proposal meeting resistance. Nappi, 74, coached 13 gold medalists at three Olympic Games, but he’s considered an old-school sort by many boxers and coaches.

Dove’s proposal will be voted on by the federation’s board of directors in Phoenix.

Nappi, who carries the title of “national coach” with USA Boxing, is encountering the same resistance he did in 1988, when then-president Col. Don Hull tried to send him to Seoul as an adviser . . . until then-Olympic Coach Ken Adams pointedly asked Hull not to send him. Nappi stayed home.

If Byrd has his way, Nappi will stay home again.