BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Tip of the Hat Would Help Stop Blood Flow in the Ring

Last Monday night, 5,699 Forum spectators, who paid from $20 to $125 for their seats, believed they were going to see a championship fight between Genaro Hernandez and Raul Perez.

Instead, all they got to see was a guy bleed.

Twenty-six seconds into the first round, the foreheads of Genaro Hernandez and Raul Perez collided, and Perez wound up with a cut so deep it severed an artery above his left eyebrow.

A few seconds later, Perez’s face, shoulders and upper body were covered with blood.

The bout was stopped at 28 seconds and called a technical draw, with Hernandez retaining his championship.

Neither fighter had thrown a right hand.

Sermons have been delivered on the subject before, but here we go again:

Pro boxers should wear headgear in competition.

Headgear has nothing to do with protecting a boxer from neurological injury, as many believe. And headgear does not prevent bloody noses or mouths.

But headgear does prevent cuts over the eyes, the kind that stop bouts.

And in this era of AIDS, and with no proof to the contrary, cuts could stop lives. Evidence that headgear greatly reduces cuts is overwhelming.

At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, the second Olympic boxing tournament in which headgear was mandatory, one bout in 423 was stopped because of a cut.

The International Amateur Boxing Assn. mandated headgear in 1983.

We’re not talking about the big, cumbersome headgear pros already use in gyms. We refer to competition headgear--the thin, light headgear, the best of which seem to be worn by boxers from Eastern European countries and Cuba.

For years, one referee has pressed the California Athletic Commission to require pros to box with headgear. No pro jurisdiction in the world, as far as is known here, requires headgear.

Hank Elespuru, 68, has refereed for 30 years and has taught boxing classes at Cal State Sacramento since 1955.

“I’ve been in favor of headgear in pro boxing for years, even long before people started worrying about AIDS,” Elespuru said.

“That cut Perez had Monday at the Forum was the second-worst I’ve ever seen. I had a Sugar De Leon-Yaqui Lopez fight in 1983 in San Jose with a cut worse than that. Lopez was bleeding so bad it frightened the doctor.

“For kids to be subject to cuts that bad--it’s inexcusable.

“Boxing looks so inhumane that way. And it’s absolutely unnecessary. There’s a lot of old-school boxing resistance against headgear, but after one or two rounds, you don’t even notice it (headgear).

“Football and hockey players wear helmets. Why shouldn’t boxers where headgear?”

In a book due out next week, lawyer/author Mark Shaw quotes Mike Tyson’s prosecutor, Greg Garrison, as saying the Indiana Court of Appeals will turn down, by a 3-0 vote, Tyson’s request for a new trial.

Tyson was convicted and sentenced last year to a six-year prison term for raping Desiree Washington. Shaw covered the Indianapolis trial and has watched the appeals process.

His book, “Down for the Count,” takes readers inside the jury room for a look at how jurors determined the former heavyweight champion’s fate.

Shaw said the Appeals Court ruling on a second Tyson trial is expected “any time between now and mid-May.”

Zack Padilla’s stirring upset decision over Roger Mayweather in Las Vegas last Saturday was the latest chapter in a remarkable boxing comeback.

Padilla, of Azusa, was invited to the U.S. Olympic trials in 1984.

He turned pro in 1985, but had more fights with his manager and trainer than he did with opponents.

“I got very discouraged, so I left boxing,” he said. “I was out of it for five years. I worked on truck loading docks. I did pick-and-shovel jobs, and I even worked on trash trucks. The most I made in those five years was $10.25 an hour.”

After earning $4,500 and $6,500 for his last two fights, Padilla, 30, can look for bigger paydays.

He will earn $25,000 for his scheduled June 7 title fight against Carlos Gonzalez, on the undercard of the George Foreman-Tommy Morrison fight.

Padilla, a junior-welterweight (140 pounds), is 16-1-1 overall and 9-0 in his comeback, which started in 1991.

“I owe everything to my wife, Jeannette,” he said. “She encouraged me every day, when I decided to box again. The hardest part was losing the weight. I was 200 pounds when I started.

“I’m proud of what I’ve done. How many guys can lay off five years, then come back and do what I did? In a way, I feel like I’m a champion now.”

He’s right. Few gave him much of a chance against Mayweather, who had had 21 fights when Padilla turned pro. Mayweather is 43-8.

“In the first round, Mayweather hit me with his best shot--a right uppercut,” Padilla said. “I felt it, but after that I knew he couldn’t knock me out. So that enabled me to stay in his face and put pressure on him all the way.”

Boxing Notes

Ten Goose Boxing’s Dan Goossen says Hector Lopez’s loss by decision to lightweight champion Miguel Angel Gonzalez was a great fight. Lopez, of Tarzana, fought Gonzalez in Mexico. He had Gonzalez reeling in the fourth round, but couldn’t put him away. “This was a fight-of-the-year candidate, as good as Carbajal-(Humberto) Gonzalez,” Goossen said.

Before he left office, former USA Boxing President Billy Dove wrote a letter to International Amateur Boxing Assn. President Anwar Chowdhry last September and told him, in part: “I would be remiss if I did not advise you that the Olympic boxing competition in Barcelona did major harm to the sport and the overall image of AIBA. The negative comments generated throughout the world through (the media) have been very critical of AIBA and imply that it is an irreversibly corrupt organization.”

Elmo Adolph, one of the best amateur boxing referees in the United States, recently moved over to the pro ranks. Adolph, from Destrehan, La., was the only U.S. referee at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “I’m 59, and the amateurs bar you from international competition when you turn 60,” he said. “Hopefully, the pro people will see my work and I can get some prominent pro bouts.” . . . The California Athletic Commission fined Las Vegas fight manager Akbar Muhammad $200 for “excessive coaching” from his ringside seat at a Jan. 3 Palladium show.

Tommy Morrison is training for is June 7 match with George Foreman at the Virginia Military Institute at Lexington, Va. Foreman will begin work soon at St. Lucia, in the Lesser Antilles.

Riddick Bowe’s manager, Rock Newman, apologized to the Nevada Athletic Commission on Thursday for punching photographer Doug Pizac in the moments after Bowe defeated Evander Holyfield last November. Newman had been fined $35,000 by the commission, and Pizac has sued Newman.