BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Police Cases Involving Starling, Nunn Evoke Thoughts of Great Bout

There was a sad irony to news this week that boxers Michael Nunn and Maron Starling were involved in separate incidents requiring police last Saturday.

They are boxers on the downsides of outstanding careers who once fought one another to almost complete exhaustion, then embraced at the final bell.

In fact, it was that fight--at the Mirage in Las Vegas on April 14, 1990, that started Nunn on his slide. There, he and his management group, Ten Goose Boxing of Van Nuys, came to a final, angry parting of the ways.

Starling, the brilliant defensive boxer from South Windsor, Conn., was trying to lift Nunn’s middleweight championship, but lost a decision.

That night, they fought like two men who hated each other for 12 rounds. But the instant it ended, they smiled and embraced, congratulating each other on the good fight.

Today, neither man has much to smile about.

Nunn was arrested again in Davenport, Iowa, his hometown, for threatening a policeman during a street fight involving about 50 others. Nunn was released from custody after posting $530 bail.

It was the third known time Nunn had been involved in a street fight in Davenport since he became a pro boxer. He has had scrapes with the law in Southern California, too.

After he failed to defeat Frank Tate for a berth on the 1984 U.S. Olympic team, the Goossens developed Nunn into a million-dollar fighter.

He earned about $4 million with them, including three $1-million purses through the fight with Starling, for which he earned $1.034 million.

But for reasons he has never fully disclosed, he suddenly bolted camp while training for the Starling fight. He accused Dan Goossen of dishonesty, but never explained what he meant.

So he left the Goossens, and shortly thereafter lost his title when he was knocked out by James Toney during a title fight in Davenport.

“Every time the kid goes to Davenport, I hold my breath,” Goossen once said.

Last month in Las Vegas, fighting for Don King on the Julio Cesar Chavez-Hector Camacho card at the Thomas and Mack Center, Nunn won a piece of the super-middleweight championship. His purse was only $100,000.

Starling, a two-time welterweight champion, was arrested the same day as Nunn on charges of harassing a woman.

Police in West Harford, Conn., said Starling had been arrested for the second time for making 12 harassing telephone calls to a woman he had lived with off and on since 1979.

In May, police added, Starling had been charged with criminal mischief for slashing the tires of a car belonging to the woman.

Starling was released on a promise to appear in court later.

For years, Starling was one of boxing’s best interviews. One time in his hotel suite, when he was training for his rematch with Mark Breland, he was asked about his motivation for Breland, having already beaten him once.

He got to his feet, poked the reporter in the chest with his finger and said: “Let me explain something to you. The difference between me and Mark Breland is, I like to fight.”

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Dio Colome’s lawsuit against the state of California is in its second week in Los Angeles County Superior Court, where Colome’s attorney, Carl Douglas, is trying to persuade a jury that a state-required neurological examination that Colome flunked unfairly deprived the boxer of up to $1 million in lost income.

Douglas is trying to show that Colome, a Dominican with a second-grade education, was the victim of a test designed for those with higher literacy levels, one that is culturally biased and improperly administered.

Colome was a semifinalist in a 1987-1988 Forum welterweight tournament, the winner of which was to earn $100,000. But on the day he was to box Felipe Canela in the semifinals, Colome was told at the weigh-in that he had failed his neurological test and was out of the tournament.

The eventual tournament champion was Derrick Kelly, who defeated Canela in the final. Colome had defeated Kelly before the tournament.

Failing the test not only cost Colome a good chance at earning the $100,000 tournament prize, Douglas has tried to show, but decreased earnings he would have made for having won the tournament.

Colome is seeking $1 million in damages.

Boxing Notes

Meeting in the aftermath of the U.S. team’s worst Olympic performance since 1956, USA Boxing elected a new president at its convention last week in Cocoa Beach, Fla. Jerry Dusenberry, the Portland, Ore., computer analyst who designed the federation’s computer scoring system, was elected to a four-year term as president. Steve Ducoff of San Antonio, chief of sports for the Air Force, was elected vice president. Oscar De La Hoya, the East Los Angeles boxer who won the only U.S. gold medal at the Barcelona Games, was voted USA Boxing’s boxer of the year for an unprecedented second time.

USA Boxing’s board sent a letter to the International Amateur Boxing Assn. recommending drastic changes in the computer scoring system used at the Olympics. The changes suggested included elimination of a time deadline for judges to score punches, throwing out the high and low scores of the five judges, and converting round scores back to a 20-point-per-round system in order to make three-point warning infractions less substantial.

Gross receipts for the Sept. 12 Julio Cesar Chavez-Hector Camacho fight in Las Vegas were $4,288,144.50, official Nevada records show. Paid attendance, 18,361, was an all-time Nevada record for an indoor fight. The gross receipts ranked ninth for Nevada. No. 1 is Evander Holyfield vs. Buster Douglas, $6,346,441. Chavez will fight Greg Haugen on Dec. 4 at Caesars Palace.

Promoters are keeping an eye on Russian heavyweight Alexander Zolkin, a 6-foot-5, 230-pound pro now boxing out of Columbus, Ohio. He is 12-0 with nine knockouts and is moving on to the obligatory match with trial horse James Tillis on Thursday at the Columbus Convention Center. Zolkin is managed by John Johnson, the former Ohio State assistant football coach who guided Douglas to his upset over Mike Tyson in Tokyo. Johnson calls Zolkin “the toughest athlete I’ve ever worked with, light years tougher than Buster.” He added: “The reason I know he’s tough is because he spent two years in the Russian army with no socks.”

Here is yet another example of why the ratings put out by boxing’s numerous “world governing bodies” are meaningless. According to Ring magazine, the World Boxing Council recently boosted middleweight Tom Tate from 22nd to 10th in its ratings, even though Tate had lost a decision to Percy Harris in December. WBC president Jose Sulaiman, according to Ring, acknowledged that Don King had requested that he move Tate into the WBC’s top 10.

There is no official count available yet, but QV Publishing says preliminary numbers show that Chavez-Camacho might have hit a pay-per-view home run. The cable industry publication said that Cox Cable in San Diego had a big night, getting 15,400 orders from an available 132,000 households, 11.5%. Continental Cable of Yuba City reported a 7% buy rate, and the TCI system in Van Nuys reportedly did an 11%. . . . Las Vegas promoter Bob Arum says he will promote many of Oscar De La Hoya’s early pro bouts, beginning with an undercard match--opponent to be determined--on the Dec. 12 pay-per-view show from Phoenix featuring Tommy Morrison-Marshall Tillman and Michael Carbajal-Scotty Olson. Arum says his De La Hoya deal is a “multi-fight deal for multiple years,” but that details won’t be announced until after De La Hoya’s debut at the Forum on Nov. 23.

Some of the “matchups” on the World Boxing Hall of Fame salute to Billy Conn Nov. 6 at the L.A. Marriott Hotel: Carlos Palomino vs. George Latka, Tony DeMarco vs. Rudy Jordan, Joey Giardello vs. Mando Ramos, Joey Maxim vs. Jerry Quarry, Danny Lopez vs. Lou Filippo, Willie Pep vs. Fabella Chavez, Bob Foster vs. Mike Quarry, and Art Aragon vs. Kenny Davis. Quipped Aragon: “Naturally, my bout with Davis is the main event.” Aragon, on the $800 ringside tickets for Chavez-Camacho: “When I fought Jimmy Carter at the Olympic for the lightweight championship of the world, the ringside tickets were $10, and if you bought one, you got a free toaster.”