BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Bidding Is High for Services of De La Hoya

Here’s a tip for everyone who assumed that Olympic gold medalist Oscar De La Hoya of East Los Angeles would turn pro with Shelly Finkel, the New York manager who has sponsored De La Hoya the last two years:

Dont bet on it.

Word is that De La Hoya, 19, and his father, Joel, are listening to all offers, which are said to be up to $1 million for signing, plus other incentives. Such as houses and cars. And a movie deal. De La Hoya won the lightweight gold medal last month at the Olympics.

In contrast to others known to be vying for De La Hoya’s signature on a contract, Finkel hasn’t done badly in managing the careers of U.S. Olympic medalists.

Evander Holyfield is the undisputed heavyweight champion, and Pernell Whitaker, until he vacated the title recently, was the undisputed lightweight champion.

Finkel began following De La Hoya two years ago. Then a Garfield High School student, De La Hoya was a high-ranking amateur featherweight. By the summer of 1990, when De La Hoya won a Goodwill Games championship in Seattle, Finkel was helping him with travel expenses for members of his family.

But as the only American gold medalist from Barcelona, De La Hoya is suddenly a very hot property.

Naturally, Finkel isn’t happy at the prospect that his loyalty doesn’t seem to count for much during what seems to be the auctioning off of De La Hoya to the highest bidder.

“Oscar and his father know that whenever they’ve needed me the past two years, I’ve been there for them,” Finkel said. “Naturally, I hope they remember that.”

Said to be doing most of the talking now in the battle to sign De La Hoya is New York fight manager Bob Middleman, who is negotiating for New York mortgage banker Steve Nelson.

Middleman recently conferred with Forum boxing chief John Jackson.

“Middleman told me his group was close to signing De La Hoya,” Jackson said. “He also asked if we were interested in having his pro debut, and our answer, obviously, was yes.”

Middleman is a New York boxing booking agent who has a background in the music business. Nelson once managed James (Bonecrusher) Smith, who at one time had a piece of the heavyweight championship.

Joe Sayatovich, from underneath his ever-present cowboy hat, watched his world champion junior-middleweight, Terry Norris, finish nine fast-paced rounds of sparring at his hot gym in the high desert mountains of eastern San Diego County.

Then Sayatovich said his two biggest problems these days in managing Norris are:

--Finding sparring partners.

--Keeping sparring partners.

“It’s got to the point where we’re paying these guys $500-$700 a week, plus room and board, but we’re now promising them a bonus of $1,500-$3,000 if they stay for the duration of training camp,” Sayatovich said.

Norris, 32-3, will defend his championship Sept. 26 against Simon Brown, 36-2, at Caesars Palace.

It will be Norris’ seventh defense, and his first since his victory last May of Meldrick Taylor. And it will be his second consecutive $1-million-plus payday, which is somewhat better than what sparring partners get these days.

Leroy Owens, a 170-pounder from Las Vegas, had finished going two rounds with Norris. He leaned over the ring’s top rope, exhausted.

He looked over at Norris, who was preparing for the next two-round sparring partner, Rolan Williams.

“Man, look at him,” Owens said. “He ain’t even breathing hard.”

Norris, in superb condition, sparred with four fresh boxers and steadily wear them down.

“He’s working great,” said Williams, exhausted after going three rounds. “He’s very strong, very sharp. He goes to the head first, then the body. Only the great fighters do that.

“And he comes in on you with his hands high, at his head. Then the first punch you sometimes don’t see. It’s that short left uppercut.”

Williams, who has a 23-9 record, also weighs 170 pounds.

“There isn’t anyone around at Terry’s weight (152-154 pounds) who can stay with him,” Sayatovich said.

“We had a guy in here last week from the Kronk Gym in Detroit, sort of a cocky kid. When he met Terry, I could tell he was thinking: ‘This little guy is Terry Norris? Hey, I can fight him.’

“He was gone after two days. They can’t take the whacking. So we only bring in 165-, 170-pound guys.”

Norris, who rarely has much to say about anything, doesn’t have much to say about his opponent, either, although he’s been watching video of Brown’s fights. Brown, a Jamaican fighting out of Maryland, was 9-1 in world welterweight championship fights, having recently lost his title to Buddy McGirt.

Norris shrugged when asked about him.

“He’s easy to hit,” he said. “He holds his hands far apart. So I’ll go down the middle on him. He’s probably easier to hit than Taylor was. At least, Meldrick moved around a little bit.

“Brown is a tough, determined guy, though, and he takes a good shot.”

One by one, Norris’ battered sparring partners left the second-floor gym on Sayatovich’s cattle and horse ranch, 50 miles east of San Diego.

But even when the last man left, Norris remained.

He hit trainer Abel Sanchez’s sparring mitts for 20 minutes, then did 20 minutes of sit-ups. Then he finished off with 15 minutes of fast-paced rope jumping.

In the quiet of the afternoon, when the sparring partners walked away from the gym, the only sound on the desert was coming from the open upstairs window--the tap-tap-tap of the champion’s jump rope.

What a contrast in class, the promotions of Julio Cesar Chavez-Hector Camacho (Sept. 12) and Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe (Nov. 13).

How about night and day?

When we last saw Holyfield and Bowe, they were standing side by side in Homestead, Fla., helping unload supplies from a truck for hurricane victims.

When we last saw Camacho, at a Los Angeles news conference, he was standing on a stage, above about two-dozen Chavez partisans, making vulgar gestures toward them and threatening to take off his clothes.

Boxing Notes

Most ringsiders at last Saturday’s James Toney-Mike McCallum fight in Reno scored the match for Toney, but one who did not was McCallum’s manager, Milt Chawsky, who protested the result--a majority decision for Toney. Two judges saw it 118-110 and 117-110 for Toney and a third called it even. . . . If Toney can manage his weight, which he probably can’t, he will be looking at a big-money fight with Terry Norris in about six months. But 20 minutes after the McCallum fight, as he was eating his way through a sack of cheeseburgers, Toney told writers he could no longer make 160 pounds and would move up to super-middleweight. When apprised of that, Norris’ manager, Joe Sayatovich, commented: “Toney’s promoter is Bob Arum. Believe me, Toney will weigh 160 for his next fight.”

Art Serwano, knocked unconscious for the second consecutive time in a bout at Adelanto last weekend, has had his license yanked by the California Athletic Commission. . . . Symptomatic of professional boxing’s need for standardized record-keeping nationwide was the printed matter distributed to media and spectators at a recent Forum boxing show. For an undercard 10-rounder between Raul Contreras of Fresno and Vicente Gonzalez of Bell, the Forum had Contreras down for a 13-2 record. But respected Southland boxing statistician Dean Lohuis had a 4-3-1 mark for Contreras. The Forum’s program said parenthetically: “Since we can’t confirm it, we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.” There’s a big difference between 13-2 and 4-3-1.

And speaking of records, the Forum might get a record crowd when Jorge Paez fights Rafael Ruelas on Oct. 19. Paez, the Mexicali circus clown-boxer whose outrageous costumes and routines in the ring have drawn scorn from boxing purists, could pull a big crowd. The Forum is hoping for 10,000-12,000.