BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : Heavyweights Not Rushing Into Anything

Can hardly wait for a Riddick Bowe-Lennox Lewis heavyweight unification fight? With varying degrees of enthusiasm, the camps of both fighters want to give it to you. The pay-per-view and cable chieftains are begging for it.

Now throw those facts into a box and let the months roll past, because in the heavyweight division, by time-tested law, he who hesitates is boss. And usually ends up with the most cash.

Even in the most optimistic calculations now circulating, the earliest Bowe and Lewis will step into a ring together is fall of 1994. Anybody hear spring of 1995?

Take Bowe, the World Boxing Assn., International Boxing Federation and generally accepted people’s champion: His manager, Rock Newman, has cautiously guided Bowe to two fluff defenses--quick knockouts of Michael Dokes and Jesse Ferguson--after winning the title.

“I think Newman’s done a brilliant job,” said Bill Cayton, who managed Mike Tyson in Tyson’s glory days and now manages Tommy Morrison, among others.

“Although it may not be in the best interests of boxing to have him fight the likes of Dokes and Ferguson for his first two defenses, the basic objective of this business is to make the most money with the least risk. And Rock Newman has done a brilliant job of that.”

Up next? More millions in the Nov. 6 date against Evander Holyfield, the man he defeated to win the undisputed title. Bowe later had the WBC title stripped because he refused to fight Lewis.

After that, Bowe has a mandatory defense due against WBA and IBF No. 1-ranked challenger Michael Moorer, probably in the spring.

Said HBO’s Seth Abraham: “I will tell you very bluntly what I said to Rock Newman. I said, ‘OK, you had your two free passes around “Go” when you fought Dokes and you fought Ferguson. And we OK’d it. So you collected your money when you went around the Monopoly board at no risk. But you will squander the appeal of Riddick Bowe if you try to fight Moe, Larry and Curly.’ ”

Take Lewis, the World Boxing Council champion: He has spurned offers from the Bowe camp that are alternately termed generous or grossly unfair, depending upon the alphabet title of your option. Lewis is fighting Frank Bruno this fall. After that, Lewis has a March, 1994, date scheduled with Morrison.

Add those months up, and voila , the time for a Bowe-Lewis undefeated matchup for the unified heavyweight title is fall of 1994.

Chisel that date in stone at your own risk.

Why is this important? Because when the heavyweight house is in order, everybody is happy, wealthy and wise.

“Our end game is not complicated: it’s getting Bowe and Lewis in the ring together to unify the crown on either one of them,” said Abraham, who has four fights left in a long-term package the pay-cable network signed with Bowe.

“Unfortunately, we can’t do it now for business reasons beyond our control. So the earliest that I see this is the fall. That’s clearly where we are pointing. Somewhere, somehow, by the fall of ’94. Otherwise, the public’s going to lose interest.

“If the public loses interest in the heavyweights, everybody suffers, from James Toney to Oscar De La Hoya to Michael Carbajal. Because the sport simply recedes in the public mind.”

Underneath Lewis, Bowe, Moorer and Morrison--who are not exactly Ali, Frazier, Norton and Foreman--scramble a handful of big hitters who have the limitations of inexperience, awkwardness, no charisma or all of those combined.

Ray Mercer, the fighter indicted for attempted bribery of Ferguson while Ferguson was in the process of easily defeating him, has an October fight scheduled with . . . Ferguson.

Long Beach’s Jeremy Williams, trained by Kevin Rooney, Tyson’s former trainer, was working his way into the upper echelon, but blew a possible HBO appearance with a lackluster defeat of Frankie Swindell July 29. Williams, according to Cayton, his manager, has a series of fights scheduled for the USA network to try to nudge him back into top-10 consideration.

Others mentioned as potential threats for ’95 or beyond include Shannon Briggs, Jorge Luis Gonzalez and Lionel Butler.

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One possible motivation for getting that heavyweight division unified before 1995: Tyson, the last man to dominate boxing, figures to be released from prison before summer of that year.

If a Bowe-Lewis fight stirs it up, what kind of audience might a Tyson comeback attract? Against the Bowe-Lewis winner? Cayton evokes the memories of Ali’s almost four-year layoff because he refused induction to compare.

“I think he’ll be the hottest thing in the world,” Cayton said. “His first fight when he comes out, no matter who he fights, will be the biggest fight, by far.

“Ali had lost a lot of skills. . . . the three years nine months was more debilitating for him than three years will be for Mike Tyson.”

Boxing Notes

Oscar De La Hoya and HBO, who have been negotiating for a while, are about to announce a “giant, multiyear, multidivision” agreement to televise a series of fights on either the cable channel or TVKO, its pay-per-view arm. The HBO-televised De La Hoya-Roy Jones co-main event from Bay St. Louis, Miss., earlier this month served as a one-fight tryout, and with a rating that was good enough to seal HBO’s bid. “I am so impressed with him,” HBO’s Seth Abraham said. “He is going to be a big deal.”

Julio Cesar Chavez, in town promoting his Sept. 10 fight against Pernell Whitaker, sounded serious Wednesday when he declared that he very much wants to fight again in Los Angeles--he won two titles at the Forum and considers L.A. his American base. Only next time he wants to fight in the Coliseum, “probably a rematch against Meldrick Taylor,” he said.

There was a notable absence from Chavez’s media conference, though. “This is going to be a very quick press conference,” Chavez said at the start of his remarks, “Don King is not here.” King, who gave a classic, 30-minute filibuster at the New York news conference only a day earlier, stayed in New York.

Including the De La Hoya-Channel 13 show at the Beverly Wilshire hotel Friday night, the Hollywood Palladium card Wednesday and Saturday’s Forum card, Los Angeles had three fight cards in four days with two on local free television.

Though the Palladium show ended anticlimactically--when the Cecilio Espino-Rudy Bradley main event was ruled a technical draw after Espino received an unintentional head butt that opened a serious cut over his left eye--it featured a furious, eight-round featherweight brawl between Chico Castillo and Jesse Magana. In a toe-to-toe match, Castillo won a unanimous decision. . . . In an early fight that raised eyebrows, 18-year-old junior-lightweight Juan Lazcano took an impressive unanimous decision over Rudy Cruz.

Robert Alcazar, De La Hoya’s trainer, could only laugh when several of his equipment bags and a reporter’s computer were stolen out of the makeshift media/locker room set up at the Beverly Wilshire for Friday night’s show. “In East L.A., we never get anything touched,” Alcazar said. “We come to Beverly Hills, and nothing’s safe.”

The Nevada Boxing Commission tabled any disciplinary action against Hector Lopez, the 1984 silver medalist from Glendale who recently tested positive for marijuana. His original hearing was scheduled for last Friday. Lopez is currently in the middle of an in-house treatment program and informed the commission he will come before them personally sometime in September, when his in-house treatment is over. Until he does, he is banned from fighting anywhere in the world.