Liles Saved Face by Showing Heart : Super Middleweight Displayed Courage After 2nd-Round Injury to His Upper Lip

Call it one of those oddities of life, but when your upper lip is hanging off and blood is spurting from the wound like water from a snapped-off fire hydrant and the pain is shooting across your face with such intensity that even your ears hurt, you instinctively try to protect this hanging-by-a-thread lip from further injury.

You certainly don’t want a professional boxer standing in front of you aiming heavy, crisp, snapping punches at the wound. You just don’t.

A few weeks back, Frank Liles found himself in that situation.

A two-inch chunk of his top lip had been nearly severed early in the second round by a hard, slicing elbow, with blood gushing over his face and chest and boxing trunks and down onto the dirty canvas. And right in front of him was Tim Littles, a good professional boxer who owned the elbow that caused this horrible pain in the first place, firing punches in a frenzy, all of them he later admits aimed directly at the gaping lip wound.

Liles was given a load of chances and many strong suggestions by the referee and ringside doctors to pack it in for the night and have the lip that he had owned for 27 years and had grown, well, attached to, sewn back on, if they could find enough thread. Liles said no. He would continue to fight. And for the next several rounds this is what Liles did: He tried, by moving constantly away from Littles and clinching and grabbing, to protect the flopping, grotesquely injured lip. He succeeded, sustaining no more damage, and it should be noted that any more damage could likely have resulted in the lip departing his face.

Later, in the final five rounds of the nationally televised bloodfest, Liles began pounding Littles with punches born of the stark, painful fury he had endured--heavy, thunderous blows to the head that had Littles staggering in the 11th round and had him stumbling badly in the 12th round.

Because of the early rounds of the bout, which Littles won easily, Liles lost that fight on the score cards July 7 at the Hollywood Palladium, a unanimous decision for Littles--the U.S. Boxing Assn. super middleweight champion--handing Liles his first loss in 22 pro fights. But in those 12 rounds, Liles showed something he hadn’t shown--hadn’t needed to show--in his 21 victories.

He showed great courage.

And for this, he won the unqualified respect of the boxing world.

Yeah. Sure.

“He ran like a girl,” said veteran boxing figure Lou Duva, who trains heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and was in Littles’ corner for the fight against Liles.

“He got nailed early and spent the rest of the night running. Let’s call it the way it was. You saw it. The guy quit. Tim Littles fights better guys than him in the gym every day. It was ridiculous.”

Liles, of Sherman Oaks, entered the bout as the World Boxing Council’s No. 6-ranked super middleweight contender.

Littles was No. 14. Dean Lohuis, the WBC’s ratings adviser for North America, wasn’t quite as harsh on Liles as Duva was. But close.

“This will drop Liles to No. 14 or 15,” said Lohuis, who watched the bout. “Littles was 14th and my recommendation will be that they trade positions. Liles was tentative, even though he seemed to clearly have more talent than Littles, who is just a crude, brawling type.

“Even though Liles came on in the late rounds, he clearly lost the fight. Now he’s got to prove that he can beat guys like that, beat a few guys ranked in the top 10, before he’ll get ranked in the top 10 again.”

And from Littles, who had been beaten three times by Liles in amateur boxing: “I think he quit. He started running and never stopped. I expected much more from a guy like him. He’s ranked sixth or seventh, and that’s supposed to mean something. I’m ranked 14th and the guy runs from me for 12 rounds. This guy definitely knew somebody to get ranked that high.”

And you thought movie critics were tough. Didn’t anyone notice that the guy was in serious danger of losing a lip, of having to go through life with his top teeth showing even when he wasn’t smiling?

Hours after the bout, it took more than 20 stitches to put Liles’ top lip back together. But the wound was so severe that a day later he was taken to a plastic surgeon where the sutures were removed and a new set of two dozen put in, saving Liles from permanent disfigurement.

“I was obviously trying to protect my lip where I could,” Liles said.

“I could feel a huge opening on top of my mouth. I knew it must have been pretty bad. And the blood. When I’d come back to the corner, people just stared at it. My cornermen and even the doctors. I could see in their face that this wasn’t an ordinary boxing cut. And it took me a while to adjust. I was a little reluctant to fight inside.”

By the sixth round, Liles said, the pain subsided a bit. And he said he knew he had a lot of work to do.

“I knew I had to hurt him, and I did,” Liles said. “I came so close in the 11th and 12th rounds to knocking him out. I really had him hurt.”

Dan Goossen, Liles’ manager for the past two years, has heard the criticism. He shakes his head. And he seethes.

“Lou Duva has been around so long that he can say anything and get away with it,” Goossen said, his voice strained. “If he says it, it must be true. No one questions Lou. He used the word ridiculous to describe Frankie’s effort? Well, that was a ridiculous thing for him to say. But I guess a guy with his stature can get away with it.”

The cruel nature of boxing is such that despite the freakish nature of the injury that contributed heavily to the outcome, the record shows only the loss.

A loss to a guy ranked far below him. If he had won, Liles was in line for entry into the world of big-money boxing. A bout against former middleweight champion Michael Nunn had been negotiated, according to Goossen.

Now, Liles, 27, faces a long period of physical recovery followed by a much longer, and likely just as painful, climb back into the championship picture. He spent a few weeks to rest and heal at his mother’s home in Syracuse, N.Y., and will return to the gym in Van Nuys, he said, by Friday.

After Liles gets medical clearance to resume sparring and fighting, what appears ahead is a half-dozen or more efforts against quality opponents by the left-hander with the 6-foot-1, chiseled frame, perhaps a year or more of grueling work in the gym and even more grueling bouts.

“This fight proved something to me,” he said. “It proved I can deal with problems. It proved my heart. And I also proved to myself that I have no trouble going 12 tough rounds. I used to think of the 11th and 12th rounds as the area that only the legends excelled in, the Marvin Haglers and Tommy Hearns. Now I know I can do that.”

And if the physical obstacles weren’t enough, Liles is also embroiled with manager Goossen and his brother, trainer Joe Goossen, in an emotional dispute. Against Littles, Joe Goossen was notably missing from Liles’ corner. Six weeks earlier the two had unofficially parted after a two-year partnership, Goossen heading to a training camp at Big Bear Lake with boxing brothers Rafael and Gabriel Ruelas and Liles staying in Van Nuys, being trained by former California heavyweight champion Jack O’Halloran.

Both sides have tried to downplay the situation, but it is obvious a great divide has come. Liles believes he has not received adequate attention. Rafael Ruelas, a highly ranked lightweight, and Gabriel, the WBC’s No. 1-ranked junior lightweight, get a huge amount of Goossen’s time at the gym. What time is left over for Liles is not enough, Liles believes.

“Rafael and Gabriel are special to me,” Liles said. “They’re like brothers to me. I love them. Them getting most of Joe’s time in the gym really doesn’t bother me.

“But I also have to look out for my career. Jack O’Halloran and I were made for each other. I’ll stay at his house before fights and train, really, 24 hours a day.

“I always relied on my ability alone. Now, there’s more.”

Joe Goossen said the break came suddenly.

“We were all going to camp at Big Bear. It was all set,” he said. “And Frankie just didn’t show up. With Gabriel and Rafael fighting about the same time, I couldn’t be chasing this guy all around town asking him what the deal was.”

In the fight between Liles and Littles, Goossen, despite being in the building--Rafael Ruelas had fought earlier--barely glanced.

“I didn’t watch most of it,” he said. “Maybe four or five rounds.”

But, Goossen acknowledged, the trouble between them had been simmering for a while.

“We had some problems with schedule and format,” Goossen said. “The training schedule I had set up, Frankie didn’t always agree with. I think he can still come back and do some great things, maybe be a world champion. But there are some details to work out. You’re either with me or you’re not.”

O’Halloran, retired for more than a decade but still a regular at the Goossens’ Ten Goose Gym in Van Nuys where he met Liles, said Liles will not .

“It’s sad that Joe doesn’t have the time for this kid,” he said. “Joe’s a great trainer, but he just didn’t have the time Frank needed. Frank needs a lot of time, each day, to get rid of some of his amateur habits and learn the game.”

Dan Goossen isn’t quite ready to give up on Liles, though.

“Frank and I will sit down and talk,” he said. “I hope we can resolve this. Sometimes a fight like he just had makes a fighter better. Stronger. Sometimes, though, it ruins a boxer forever. They never come back the same. But I’ll do whatever I can for Frank Liles, if that’s what he wants. Frank Liles is a good man. And a tough man.”

Ah. Someone has noticed.