One Ring Might Not Be Big Enough

Mexico City, Feb. 20: The crowd at Estadio Azteca will be upward of 120,000, making the Super Bowl look like a company picnic. The card will include Julio Cesar Chavez, champion boxer, Mexico’s hero. It also includes “Terrible” Terry Norris, himself a champion, the man who put Sugar Ray Leonard out to pasture, a Texan fighting out of California.

They, uh, aren’t friends.

The name-calling commenced Thursday inside a Los Angeles cafe with Norris’ manager, Cowboy Joe Sayatovich, stepping forward in his Stetson, gesturing contemptuously toward Chavez and saying: “If Julio doesn’t want to get in the ring, we’ll find someone with the nerve who will.”

This got Norris going. Norris is the World Boxing Council’s super-welterweight champion. He is fed up with Chavez, the WBC super-lightweight champ, being introduced as: “Pound for pound, the greatest fighter in the world.” Terrible Terry thinks he is, pound for pound, the greatest fighter in the world. He will fight Julio in the arena. He will fight Julio down by the schoolyard. Name the place. He’ll be there.

Norris scowled. He said: “Makes me want to kick his . . . right now. He just keeps talking and talking. I’d like to shut his mouth.”

And maybe he will. And maybe he won’t. There is one hitch.

They aren’t fighting each other.

On a fantastic card with more than one main event, Chavez (84-0, with one reversed disqualification) is fighting Greg Haugen (32-4-1), who doesn’t like being ignored. Haugen is the one they sometimes call “Mutt.” He’s the former sheet-metal worker from Alaska who started entering “Toughman” competitions and whacking around guys who outweighed him by 50 pounds or more.

Mutt, too, wanted to tell the world what a wonderful fellow ol’ Julio is.

“Julio and Terry can argue all they want, but Julio, you haven’t beaten me yet,” he said. “I’m not one of those cab drivers you usually fight.”

Chavez paid about half-attention and kept playing with a toy that promoter Dan Goossen had given him--a troll doll with bushy hair that was supposed to represent Don King, only quieter. Chavez tried not to listen, although his interpreter, Gladys Rosa, translated away.

“I just hope you fight as good as you talk, Julio,” Haugen said. “Because I don’t think you’re much of anything. In fact, you talk a lot of . . . . “

Rosa filled in the blank.

“In fact, you are . . . . “ Haugen went on.

Chavez shook his head.

“You shouldn’t be so rude,” Chavez said.

Bad blood is a-flowing. The only thing that could make this fight night any nastier would be if it became a Wrestlemania sort of thing, a three-way with Chavez and Norris and Haugen all in the ring. A battle royal. Last man standing, wins.

Sayatovich takes it one step beyond. Cowboy Joe says: “Terry Norris will take on any fighter in the world and I’ll take on any manager.”

In Mexico, the event is being billed as: “The Fight of the Four Aces.” This is because Chavez, Norris, WBC middleweight champion Julian Jackson and WBC super-featherweight champ Azumah Nelson all have titles on the line.

Boxing always has its characters and its subplots. But this one could get ugly. Chavez wouldn’t mind giving Haugen a fat lip to go along with his big mouth. Haugen is willing to back up anything he says. The only time he backpedals at all is when he is accused of making insulting remarks about Mexico’s people and how many can afford tickets to the fight.

“I’d like to clear that up right now, that I never, ever said none of that stuff about the Mexican people,” Haugen said. “It’s that piece of . . . Don King who starts that stuff. He’s the one who spreads that . . . about me. The only thing I said was about Julio fightin’ nothin’ but cab drivers.”

Norris is the one who has been more polite, up to now.

But he went off on Chavez, saying that it has been building up inside him.

“I’ve had it up to here with him,” Norris said, raising his palm to his neck. “He’s unbeaten because he fights a bunch of people who been beaten. He ain’t so much to me. Chavez keeps avoiding me because he knows the day I get ahold of him will be the day he hangs up his gloves. Because I’m the man who retires people. That’s my trademark. I retire ‘em.”

Two years ago Tuesday, Sugar Ray Leonard’s latest and last comeback ended when Norris sent him sprawling in the second and seventh rounds. It was only Leonard’s second defeat. Four months later, Norris similarly persuaded Donald Curry to get out of the business by knocking him out in the ninth round.

Which is all fine and dandy, except that Norris also has been defeated three times, though not since 1989.

“They say Terry Norris is so good, but take a look at his record,” Chavez said. “He has been knocked out in his career. How can he claim that he is No. 1 when he has been knocked out?”

Maybe Chavez and Norris should simply fight and settle it, once and for all.

“I look forward to fighting him,” Chavez said, “after knocking Haugen’s head off.”