BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Toney’s Real Manager Says She Is Gaining Respect Daily

Fight manager stereotyping:

Cigar, bad breath, talks too loud, awful clothes, shameless liar, terrible table manners, drinks too much and always uses pronoun “we” when referring to his boxer’s fights.

Then there is the manager of James Toney, who will fight Iran Barkley tonight at Caesars Palace.

And one of the first thoughts that occurs is: “Hey, someone should make a movie about these two.”

And that’s exactly what film producer Laura Ziskin (“The Doctor,” “Pretty Woman,” “No Way Out,” “The Eyes of Laura Mars”) is doing. Working title: “The Lady and the Champ.” The screenplay is being written.

The lady is Jackie Kallen, and her champ is James Toney.

She doesn’t smoke cigars, have bad breath, talk too loud, doesn’t lie, doesn’t eat with her hands and calls Toney “James.”

There have been female managers in this sport before, but none who have achieved what Kallen has--guiding a relatively unknown contender to a championship and watching him defend his middleweight championship six times.

She has taken him from being a boxer earning three-digit purses to seven digits. He will earn $1 million tonight.

She talked Friday about sexism in boxing, and said she simply rolled with the punches. Kallen, who lives in West Bloomfield, Mich., has managed Toney, from Ann Arbor, Mich., since 1989.

Kallen, who has been married to the same man for 26 years, said boxing was actually an extension of her own family history, which was male-dominated.

Her husband is a contractor, and she has two sons.

“My father was one of three brothers, my husband is one of four brothers, and I have a brother. I have two sons. My dog is even a male. I’ve always been around men, talking about sports. It was really difficult at first for me to deal with boxing men, because they had a problem dealing with me.

“I’ve gotten to the point now where most men will concede I do know what I’m doing. I feel like I’m getting more respect every day now, but it wasn’t that way it was when I started out. “At a couple of James’ fights early on, they wouldn’t let me enter the ring after he’d won, like male managers get to. No place for women, they told me.

“A sportswriter told me in Atlantic City once: ‘The only women who belong in the ring are ring card girls.’

“One time in Jacksonville, Fla., I tried to go in James’ dressing room because I wanted to see his hands get wrapped. A security guard wouldn’t let me in. ‘Sorry, no wives or girlfriends,’ he said.”

“I had to get a member of the commission to tell the guy to let me in.

“And this still happens all the time. Some guy will ask me: ‘OK, who’s Toney’s real manager? Who’re you fronting for?’ ”

In the early 1970s, Kallen, now 46, was writing a twice-weekly entertainment column for a Detroit area newspaper, the Oakland Press.

“In 1976 I started doing sports features from a woman’s perspective, and I wound up writing a story about a young Detroit boxing prospect named Tommy Hearns. One of his fights was the first one I ever saw, and I loved it.

“I like football and basketball, but there’s an intensity to boxing that you can almost taste or smell. And I came to love boxing’s work ethic--the boxer who’s most prepared wins most of the time.

“In a way, I envy boxers. I’ve met people I’d like to punch, too. But boxers get to really do it.

“Any how, on my own time, I began working with Tommy’s PR and helping his manager, Manny Steward, by writing bios for him on his other fighters. One thing led to another and I wound up managing my first fighter around 1980--Bobby Hitz.”

She first saw Toney in 1989, when he was a 6-0 undercard fighter.

“His spirit, I like that about him the most that first day,” she said.

“I was working with Hitz (long since retired) that day when I saw Toney kick his spit bucket because he was unhappy with the way he’d sparred. Then I heard he’d punched his locker, too. I liked that.

“I also liked the fact that he lived with his mother at the time.

“I learned his manager had been killed in a drive-by, drug-related shooting two or three months before. I met James, and we hit it off. He’s a quiet, moody guy. I’ve been with him four years, and he’s still that way. He doesn’t share his feelings easily. I’ve learned to deal with that.

“But we have an honest, open relationship that’s worked very well. I’m close to his mother, Sherry, who lives in Ann Arbor. James and his fiance, Sarah, had a baby girl last Saturday, Jasmine Nicole. I feel like a grandmother.”

Her fighter’s breakthrough match was a surprise victory by decision over Merqui Sosa two years ago. In a sense, she out-smarted two Top Rank matchmakers in that one, Ron Katz and Bruce Trampler. Sosa was being developed into an ESPN star at the time.

“All of us were confident he’d beat Sosa,” Kallen said. “And we knew if he did, James could get a fight with Michael Nunn.”

That happened four months later. And in another stunner, Toney knocked Nunn out.

“James got $5,000 for the Sosa fight, then $50,000 for the Nunn fight,” she said.

“We knew Nunn would move around the ring a lot, so James’ game plan was to put pressure on him all the time and when Nunn started to wear down in the late rounds, that’s when he’d try to take him out--and that’s just how it worked out.”

Kallen is intent that Toney never wind up on the street of broken dreams, like so many fighters.

“We’ve got James in a very good investment program,” she said. “He puts a lot of money in annuities and he buys mortgages. He wants to keep winning, win a light-heavyweight championship, then retire undefeated. “I’ll feel I’ve done a good job at that point if he and his family are financially secure. So many kids in this business get beat up for a period of years, then wind up with nothing to show for it but the scars over their eyes, and the bruises on their broken hearts.”

One more time with Riddick Bowe and Michael Dokes:

The biggest surprise of the night last Saturday in Madison Square Garden was certainly not Bowe stopping Dokes in one round. No, it was the sound of thousands in the crowd of 16,332 booing the referee for stopping the mismatch.

Some actually went running for the box office, demanding refunds of tickets that had cost from $25 to $400.

This, from fight fans once thought to be the savviest in boxing.

All week, reporters chronicled Dokes’ prowess with a knife and fork in New York restaurants. It was also reported that Dokes, who weighed 244, quit serious training six days before the fight.

As for referee Joe Santarpia’s decision, it was a good call. Dokes was helpless, one good shot away from an ambulance ride.

Boxing Notes

Mexico City sources say 50,000 tickets have been sold for the Feb. 20 card that will feature Julio Cesar Chavez vs. Greg Haugen and Gabe Ruelas vs. Azumah Nelson. A sellout, 130,000, is expected, promoters say. About 40,000 seats in Azteca Stadium are priced at $15, and 24,000 at $1.50.

However, one Forum fight regular was unsuccessful this week in trying to buy tickets in Los Angeles for the Mexico City show. The fight buff, who asked not to be identified, said he tried to buy nine $145 tickets, but couldn’t find a single ticket agency handling the show. He finally called promoter Don King’s New York office and was given a Mexico City number, which turned out to be Azteca Stadium. When he asked about tickets, someone hung up on him, he said.

With a Riddick Bowe-Lennox Lewis fight apparently on hold, Alex Garcia of San Fernando might be Bowe’s next challenger. Garcia (29-1) will fight Mike Williams (20-2) of Houston on USA Cable Tuesday. Garcia’s Los Angeles manager, Norm Kaplan, said he talked with Bowe’s manager, Rock Newman, Thursday night. Garcia first needs to beat Williams, who used to give Mike Tyson fits as a sparring partner and has lost only to Tim Witherspoon and Buster Douglas.

Famed New York fight trainer Al Silvani, 82, is recovering from abdominal surgery at St. Joseph’s Hospital in Burbank. He handled Jake LaMotta, Rocky Graziano, Tami Mauriello, Alexis Arguello and Nino Benvenuti, among others.

Veteran Fontana light-heavyweight Mike Sedillo (26-6-1) will fight Leeonzer Barber (16-1-0) of Detroit in Beijing on Feb. 26. Also on the “China Card” are some old heavyweights: Bert Cooper vs. Mike Weaver, Terry Davis vs. David Bey and Tony Tubbs vs. Kevin Ford.

The formation of an organization that will help down-and-out former boxers was announced in New York this week. Beneficial Organization for Ex-Fighters, B.O.X., will be chaired by Randy Gordon, executive director of the New York State Athletic Commission. Board members include Jerry Buss, Al Bernstein, Gene Hackman, Archie Moore and Bert Sugar. Details: 914-347-7373. . . . The Las Vegas Hilton recently polled 2,400 visitors to its sports book on the “most shocking” sports upsets of the last 25 years. No. 1: The U.S. hockey team’s victory over the Soviet Union at the 1980 Olympics. No. 2: Buster Douglas’ 1990 knockout of Mike Tyson. No. 7: Leon Spinks’ 1978 victory over Muhammad Ali.