BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Death Further Closes Curtain on Era

There aren’t many left now, the great boxing champions of America’s Depression years.

Billy Conn, a 1930s champion, died in May, and another champion died in a Fresno area nursing home Tuesday. Young Corbett III was 88 and had been ill for more than a decade.

Corbett, whose given name was Ralph Giordano, was an Italian immigrant who grew up selling newspapers on the streets of Fresno.

He became one of the great battlers of a period when America had a lot of great battlers.

Many of the boxing halls of fame enshrine fighters beaten by Young Corbett III. His victims included Fritzie Zivic, Jackie Fields (twice), Ceferino Garcia (twice), Mickey Walker, Gus Lesnevich, Conn and Fred Apostoli.

Corbett must have been a champion for years, right? No. For only 96 days.

He won his welterweight title by beating Jackie Fields in February of 1933 in San Francisco. Then he signed to defend it in Los Angeles on May 29 against Jimmy McLarnin.

McLarnin, from Ireland by way of Vancouver, was a Los Angeles favorite. In the first round, he knocked out Corbett with a left hook to the chin.

Four years ago, McLarnin recalled the most famous victory of his career.

“Young Corbett was a great fighter, but he made one mistake,” McLarnin said. “He took me for a pigeon.

“My manager, Pop Foster, noticed Corbett had a habit of leaning forward slightly just before he threw his right hand. So I planned to let him do that a few times, sort of sucker him in to me.

“And that’s exactly how it happened. When he did it the third time, bing! I got him. A perfect punch. Right on the chin. He went down flat, but got up. He could barely walk, and the ref stopped it.”

In 1933, new three-bedroom homes in West Los Angeles were going for $3,200. A new Ford V-8 cost $490.

In that era, the names of the great fighters evoked the richness of a melting pot and the American dream: Canzoneri, Sharkey, Ross, McLarnin, Escobar, Arizmendi, Carnera, Petrolle, Apostoli, Baer, Zivic. . . .

In this era, few pay as much attention to ethnicity. Instead, boxing is fueled only by money.

Young Corbett III probably didn’t make $250,000 in his 21-year, 151-bout career. Last Saturday in Las Vegas, Michael Carbajal, a light-flyweight, made $250,000 for one fight.

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Attention 200-pound high school athletes: Alex Sherer, the noted boxing trainer who engineered Thomas Hearns’ 1991 upset of Virgil Hill, says the 1990s are shaping up as the decade of golden opportunity for big, young athletes willing to work hard.

“There are only three heavyweights today who can really fight,” Sherer said.

“You’ve got Riddick Bowe, Michael Moorer and Lennox Lewis. That’s it. Everyone else has a lot of flaws. Tommy Morrison has a big left hook, but no right and suspect stamina.

“The point is, you take the right kind of big kid, say an 18-year-old, a good athlete who is willing to work hard . . . with the right trainer and manager, he could make millions of dollars.

“Remember, this isn’t the ‘60s or ‘70s, when there were eight to 12 outstanding heavyweights--guys you had to beat to get to the top. There are no (Jimmy) Ellises, (Henry) Coopers, (Ron) Lyles, (Ernie) Shavers around today.”

Boxing Notes

Junior-welterweight David Kamau (19-0) of Los Angeles and South Africa will fight Luis Rodriguiez (20-4) of Phoenix in the Forum’s feature bout Monday. . . . After he boxes Renaldo Carter Aug. 14, Oscar De La Hoya and four of his 1992 Olympic boxing team teammates will fight on the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel charity card for the American Diabetes Assn. De La Hoya is scheduled to box Angelo Nunez (10-4-3). Olympians Larry Donald, Montell Griffin, Pepe Reilly and Vernon Forrest also will box.

A recent survey showed that roughly half of all pay-per-view television revenues were from boxing. . . . Applications will close July 30 for the Nevada Athletic Commission’s executive director’s job. Salary: $53,000. . . . Walter Stewart, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health, has applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health to conduct a study of the brains of pro boxers. He wants to determine the possible role of head injuries as causes of Alzheimer’s Dementia. Recently, Stewart wrote the California Athletic Commission, inquiring how he could obtain the brains of boxers after their deaths.

De La Hoya and Paul Gonzales were champions in separate Olympics and both are from East Los Angeles, but they hardly are buddies. Seems Gonzales is miffed over an alleged slight by De La Hoya and recently knocked on De La Hoya’s front door, demanding an apology. . . . The last fight at Madison Square Garden was a middleweight match between Lonnie Bradley and Marcel Huffaker. In the last round of the last bout, Huffaker was counted out after he was felled by a left hook. The July 8 bout ended a boxing era spanning the championship reigns of John L. Sullivan and Riddick Bowe. The Garden is disbanding its boxing staff, although the building could still be rented by other promoters.

Trainer Alex Sherer reports that Thomas Hearns is back in his Detroit gym, lifting weights and hitting the bags. Hearns had a long layoff after hand surgery last year. “Tommy wants a cruiserweight title fight with Al Cole in late fall or early winter,” Sherer said. . . . Jimmy Thunder, a Samoan-born, 227-pound New Zealand heavyweight, stopped American Mel Bowen in the fifth round recently, improving to 16-4. . . . Rocky Pepeli, Dan Goossen’s heavyweight, should give it up after losing decisively to Jesse Ferguson on Thursday night in Biloxi, Miss. Ferguson keeled over in front of Riddick Bowe last March. . . . Norm Kaplan says his heavyweight, San Fernando’s Alex Garcia, will fight James Waring on Tuesday night at the Riviera in Las Vegas. Garcia will try to bounce back from that shocker of last June when he was beaten by Mike Dixon. . . . Next scheduled meeting of the California Athletic Commission is Aug. 20.

Marc Ratner, acting executive officer of the Nevada Athletic Commission, on Bob Arum’s plans to hold regular cards at Los Angeles’ remodeled Olympic Auditorium: “If he’s talking about major shows in L.A., remember one thing--Nevada has no state income tax. If he’s talking about, say, a Riddick Bowe fight in L.A., how eager to you think Bowe will be to pay that 10% state income tax? So I think we have a good chance of keeping the major fights here, but there’s no question that regular Arum shows at the Olympic will hurt us.”

Who’s telling the truth? Arum, De La Hoya’s promoter, says any De La Hoya-Genaro Hernandez title fight for Hernandez’s World Boxing Assn. junior-lightweight crown won’t be held before early 1994, possibly at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. Yet De La Hoya’s co-manager, Steve Nelson, on the same day Arum spoke, said: “We’re still talking to Hernandez’s manager (Nori Takatani), and we’ll continue to talk.” . . . Herb Stone, manager of Costa Mesa junior-lightweight Rudy Zavala, says he will sit down with his fighter next week and have a long talk. Among subjects up for discussion: Retirement. Zavala was knocked down three times in the third round and stopped by Kennedy McKinney last Saturday in Memphis.

Much has been written and said about those who run the Boxers and Wrestlers Fund failing to step forward to help Azusa boxer Johnny Chavez after he suffered two major retina injuries in a bout last November. The fund has a balance of more than $250,000. Yet the fund’s administrators, Gordon Del Faro, Norm Lockwood and Bob Voight, failed to offer any help to Chavez, whose medical bills exceed $70,000.

However, a small group called the Southern California Managers and Coaches Assn., with a membership of about 25, recently passed the hat at one of their meetings and came up with $200 for Chavez. “Those guys who run that B&W; fund never contacted Chavez, never even picked up the phone to call him,” said Johnny Flores of the Managers and Coaches Assn.

Calendar

Monday: David Kamau vs. Fernando Rodriguez, junior-welterweights. Scotty Olson vs. Silverio Porras, light-flyweights. Forum, 7:30 p.m.