BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : Motivation No Problem for Carbajal, Gonzalez

Two fighters, a combined 216 pounds, two motivations.

They will meet in the ring Saturday night at the Forum, but Michael Carbajal, the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Council light-flyweight champion, and Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez have had other struggles to face. Other fights.

A MURDER IN THE YARD

Brothers Michael and Danny Carbajal grew up in the gang-infested Ninth Street neighborhood of Phoenix, where they have chosen to remain and be symbols of hope, not leave and be another sign of the area’s hopelessness.

Last New Year’s Eve, however, two people celebrating outside the Carbajals’ two houses got into a fight. One man won, the other scrambled away and got a gun.

Soon, Mark Smith, a friend of both Carbajal brothers, was shot dead. Michael Celaya has been charged with the shooting and is in jail awaiting a hearing on the matter.

“It was just two guys that got into a fight, one couldn’t handle getting his butt whipped, came back and shot him--and that was it,” says Michael Carbajal, who was in the area when it happened.

But this, the Carbajals said, has in no way changed their desire to stay in the neighborhood in which they grew up.

“Nothing has ever made me think about leaving,” says Danny Carbajal, Michael’s trainer. “It could’ve happened anywhere.”

And the brothers chafe at suggestions that the killing was gang-related.

“That’s the question that comes to everyone’s mind,” Danny Carbajal says. “Gangs. It had nothing to do with gangs. Nothing. It was stupid, that’s what it was.”

Since knocking out Gonzalez in their famous March 13, 1993 fight, Carbajal has suffered a few tragedies. In August, he lost his father Manuel to a heart attack. Now, he has dedicated Saturday night’s fight to the man he knew as ‘Smitty.’

“He was a good friend of the family,” Carbajal says of Mark Smith. “It’s something I wanted to do to show him the support that I feel.

“I’m very strong and I put things behind. I’m very focused on this fight and I look forward to it.”

Danny Carbajal says there is nothing they can do to try to prevent a repeat of the tragedy.

“What are you going to do? Everybody walk around with a metal detector or something? Somebody in here has a gun I guarantee you,” Carbajal says, gesturing around a filled hotel ballroom during an interview. “I’ll bet you. It’s everywhere.”

PRIDE, POISE AND A PROMISE

Ask Gonzalez, the former two-time WBC light-flyweight champion, about his conditioning, and he immediately peels off his shirt and flexes his arms. “I have never been like this before,” he says, pointing to his right arm.

No flab, only a flat-voiced prediction: “I think I will win this fight.”

Gonzalez, who says he had to lose five pounds the day before the first fight and therefore wearied in the late-going of Carbajal’s seventh-round knockout, was reported to weigh 109 before his workout Thursday, one pound over the light-flyweight limit.

The official weigh-in is tonight at 8. It was originally scheduled for earlier in the day, but the Carbajals apparently insisted that it be moved closer to the fight to make recovery from any weight loss more difficult for Gonzalez.

Gonzalez is not thinking so much about weight loss as he is about redemption.

“I recognize I have a lot of pride,” Gonzalez says through a translator. “I have been thinking and working to beat him. I must do this. And I recognize I have to control it--because too much can be bad.”

His new trainer, Ignacio Beristain, warns Gonzalez about being too consumed by revenge to fight smartly.

“His motivation always goes with the importance of the event and the quality of the opponent,” Beristain says. “Now he is very high. Too motivated. There’s a lot of motivation for this fight. And there is a dangerous situation. That’s what worries me.”

In his last two fights since the Carbajal knockout, Gonzalez scored easy decision victories, scoring huge point-advantages against journeymen fighters with a clever outside game.

“We are planning to work this fight with a plan,” says Beristain, who concedes that they cannot face Carbajal as if he were simply another journeyman. “I want (Gonzalez) to be motivated, but I want him to be cool. He desires too much.

“He wants to have revenge. And that cannot be the case. I need to tell him you need to win. Decision, knockout, whatever. Don’t try to take revenge. Just win the title again.

“That worries me. He might lose his head and go aiiiiyyy!. He is too high.”

Gonzalez, though, has found motivation in many places, including the recent defeat of his good friend, Julio Cesar Chavez.

“I believe that when Julio sees that I’ve won, he will be motivated,” Gonzalez says. “And I am also motivated because he lost. Because both of us have to prove we can come back.

“I have the same kind of determination that I felt when I went for the title for the first time. That was a long time ago in Korea (against Yul-Woo Lee in 1989).”

Boxing Notes

The State Athletic Commission has appointed two California referees to handle Saturday night’s title fights. Veteran Lou Filippo will referee the Michael Carbajal-Humberto (Chiquita) Gonzalez bout, and Robert Byrd will work the Freddie Pendleton-Rafael Ruelas International Boxing Federation lightweight title match. . . . Carbajal is scheduled to receive a purse of $500,000 for the fight, plus a percentage of the pay-per-view gross guaranteed to be at least $500,000. The $1-million package is believed to be the first time anybody in a weight class lower than 130 pounds has broken into seven figures for one fight. “I’m very honored that we’re making the kind of money that we are,” Carbajal said. “I’m honored that I’m the one that opened the division up.” Carbajal received a total of $500,000 for the first Gonzalez fight. Gonzalez is set to receive a purse of $250,000 plus a share of the Mexican television money that should add another $200,000 to his take. Gonzalez received $300,000 for the first fight.

After two screaming-match, conference-call showdowns, Pendleton and Ruelas kept their arguing to a minimum at Thursday’s news conference, and Pendleton called Ruelas a “bum” only once. Ruelas reiterated his claim that Pendleton only took the fight because Ruelas’ mandatory challenge rights as the IBF No. 1 contender had come due. “I’m tired of talking,” Pendleton said. “He’s a serious challenge, of course. But in my estimation, he shouldn’t be the No. 1 contender. I’ve seen him fight. But since he has achieved that status, he will get knocked out Saturday night.” . . . Jorge Paez, scheduled to face Andres Sandoval in a 10-round lightweight bout on the undercard, said he is looking forward to a possible big-money fight against Oscar De La Hoya. . . . Canadian flyweight Scotty Olson used his time on the podium to campaign for the next fight against Carbajal. “I’ve been Carbajal’s greatest fan, crossing my fingers every time he steps in the ring, hoping that nobody beats him until I have the opportunity of fighting him.” Olson will fight Jorge Roman on the first fight of the pay-per-view portion of the card. . . . Promoter Bob Arum said the PPV purchase rate is running about three times the volume of the first Carbajal-Gonzalez fight, which had 125,000 subscribers. . . . The Forum expects a crowd of about 12,000 to 14,000, which would be the largest since Jerry Buss took over the Forum fights in 1982.

All signs are pointing toward a Michael Bentt-Riddick Bowe fight sometime in the early summer, assuming that the Bowe camp can extricate itself from the agreement to fight Francois Botha. Bowe’s Feb. 5 bout against Botha was scrapped when Bowe suffered a cut in training. Bentt, the World Boxing Organization heavyweight champion, will fight Henry Hide in London in March. . . . Buddy Ryan, a noted dabbler in the sweet science, is set to present the “fighter-of-the-year” ESPY award at the ESPN presentation on Feb. 28 in New York.