COLUMN ONE : Olympic Comes Off the Ropes : It was ugly and dirty, but it was a great place to watch a fight. After years of neglect, the legendary boxing palace will reopen, with hopes of reviving a languishing sport.

The old fighter, who raged through the Olympic Auditorium when both he and the building were younger and stronger, faces forward, staring at the ring and the walls and the seats and the ceiling. Yes, Mando Ramos says, he remembers fighting at the Olympic when fighting at the Olympic was everything.

But then he turns from the ring and looks up into the balcony and deeper into his memory, pointing a finger straight at one single seat. “When I was a kid, I sat right up there ,” says Ramos, 45, a two-time lightweight world champion and one of the greatest fighters Los Angeles has produced. “I was 11, 12, 13 years old. That’s where I watched those great boxers. . . . I learned that boxing was beautiful. It’s a ballet.”

In that balcony seat, and in thousands of others, the lore of boxing was passed from father to son for nearly 70 years. In this building at 18th and Grand, boxing and Los Angeles were tied together during a long, boisterous era of wild fights--and occasional riot nights. Jack Dempsey dedicated the Olympic in 1924, and thousands of good and lowly fighters consecrated it through the years.

But when Aileen Eaton--the Olympic’s major promoter and, without question, its heart, soul and mastermind--retired in 1980, the building was gradually abandoned amid the squalor of its own disrepair and the brokenness of the neighborhood around it.

Now, after nearly a decade sitting unused and in limbo, the Olympic is springing back to life--but into a future that remains uncertain.

For the first time in nearly eight years, big-time boxing is scheduled at the renovated Olympic Auditorium, beginning with Saturday night’s card featuring Oscar De La Hoya.

Many had predicted that developer Jack Needleman would level the place after he bought it in 1980 from the Los Angeles Athletic Club, its longtime owner. “Tear it down? Never,” Needleman says. “I could’ve sold it a hundred times. But we have a destiny here.”

“The Olympic has been through fire, through earthquakes, through everything that has happened to Los Angeles in 70 years, and she still stands,” says Luis Magana, the Olympic’s Spanish-language publicist, whose ties to the building go back to 1927.

“She is still beautiful.”

Indeed, the building is freshly painted, clean and sparkling.

But left unanswered is this: Does the reopening of the Olympic mark the rebirth of boxing, or is it the last shadow of its passing?

*

Except for random concerts and movie shoots, the Olympic shut down in 1987 because of boxing’s dissipation as a major sport and the dilapidation of Downtown. The tickets weren’t selling, the sport was perceived as crooked and the auditorium and the area around it were deteriorating.

Without a major modernization, the Olympic simply could not host big-time boxing. Without a sure audience, no one with major boxing ties would move into the building.

But to fight fans, closing the Olympic was akin to shutting Boston’s Fenway Park to baseball.

In the vast and often preposterous history of boxing, the Olympic Auditorium has always been a gem, the largest showcase ever built specifically for the sport. The seats were tight and close, and the walls thundered with noise.

“I’ll tell you there was an atmosphere--it was unlike any other fight arena,” says Eaton’s matchmaker Don Chargin, whose reputation for pairing fighters earned him the nickname War-a-Week Chargin.

“The second that you would walk in, something would come over you. Your heart would start beating and you just knew that you were in strictly a fight arena. There’s never been anything like it.

“I’m just wondering if it’s still going to be the same. If you get that same feeling.”

Murals of past champions once covered the lobby walls, Jimmy Lennon served more like a master of ceremonies than a ring announcer, and the distinct smell of beer and urine swept through the hallways.

Dempsey’s picture, long since painted over, towered on an exterior wall from which now hangs a huge canvas painting of De La Hoya. The dressing rooms were buried deep in the belly of the building, dark and suffocating.

“They must’ve been maybe 6-(feet)-by-6,” says Lou Filippo, a referee now, who often fought at the Olympic. “They were dingy. You didn’t want to be there for very long. You wanted to go out and fight.”

The building has undergone a $5-million renovation in the last four months. New floors, doors, seats, dressing rooms and a capacity lowered several thousand to 7,600 were prompted by promoter Bob Arum’s two-year commitment to bring 25 fight cards a year to the Olympic.

Arum, who looked to Eaton as a mentor during his early days as a promoter, says the Las Vegas casino-high roller blase that currently sustains boxing is also killing it.

It’s in local hotbeds such as Los Angeles and New York where boxing really lives and breathes and where fans are born, the Las Vegas-based Arum says.

Without enticing future fans--especially from the Latino community--with the scent, glimmer and romance of old palaces like the Olympic, Arum says, the market for boxing will evaporate.

Although the auditorium’s physical face lift is complete, creating a new fan base will be harder, Arum admits.

Over the years, boxing has faded in popularity and has been pushed to the corners of mainstream America: pay-per-view and cable TV.

Arum is concentrating on reaching the core audience that supported the Olympic in its salad days: the Latino community.

Since the Depression, the Olympic has been a sporting haven for many Mexican immigrants and their children.

“The Olympic Auditorium was the only entertainment we had,” says Magana, who also hosted TV broadcasts from the building.

“No soccer, no nothing. What we had was boxing, wrestling and roller derby at the Olympic, every week. To the Mexican people, the Olympic Auditorium was L.A.”

The demand is still there, Arum says, noting the high pay-per-view numbers in Latino neighborhoods for many bouts.

“It was no secret the tried and true formula of the Olympic for years was to end up getting local Mexican fighters against fighters from Mexico,” Chargin says.

But once Eaton left, there was no one to keep that formula alive. Still, the Olympic did not close only because she was gone.

The Forum, the area’s only other major boxing venue, for years has put on about two cards a month--also with a heavy Latino influence. The neighborhood around the Olympic is not the best. The list of big-name ticket-selling fighters is not long.

“I’m friendly with Bob Arum, and if anybody can bring it back, he can,” Chargin says. “But boxing’s changed. The way society is now, do people want to go down there at night? I guess we’re just going to have to find out.”

Arum’s second show this month will feature several lesser-known Latinos. In April, South African heavyweight Francois Botha is scheduled to headline.

“(The dream of revitalizing the Olympic) is impossible,” says Bennie Georgino, who managed fighters at the Olympic and was one of its last promoters before it closed.

“They’re not drawing the people they used to draw in boxing unless you have a special interest fight, like a De La Hoya, who won a gold medal. And how many of gold medalists do you have?

“Today, it’s a tourist crowd,” he says. “A nephew of mine called, he wants four tickets, he’s paying $1,000. He says it’s history, he wants to bring his kids, show them. But will he go again? No. It’s a landmark, it’s really established itself as one of the great places of the world.

“But it’s past now. I don’t think they could ever bring back the atmosphere.”

Arum, though, is an imposing figure and a harsh negotiator who badly wants to move much of his operation to Los Angeles.

He cut a deal for the promotional rights, even though Van Nuys-based Dan Goossen had first crack at the Olympic.

Arum has negotiated American and Mexican TV deals. He’s got De La Hoya to open the place with glitz and has a broad stable of fighters to fill future cards.

He also has had a weekly fight series on ESPN for 14 years, but those bouts are spread throughout the country.

“I think there are plenty of good fighters,” Arum says. “Can we sustain them? No question. Do I have to bring some fighters from the East Coast? Yeah. Do I have to bring other ethnic fighters other than Hispanics? Yes, but that was always my goal.

“Out there, I think, is a new Mando Ramos. They just need the opportunity and the nurturing.”

“I feel (reopening the Olympic) can save boxing on the West Coast,” says Goossen, who says he could not provide a large-scale schedule. “There’s enough talent out there for both the Forum and the Olympic.”

When talks with Jack Needleman stalled last summer, Arum found it easier to deal with sons Steve and Dennis Needleman. Eventually Jack Needleman turned the building over to them. Arum agreed to a deal that apparently does not put him at risk for any of the $5 million in improvements. Other terms are not known.

“I frankly don’t know if we can recapture the old-time atmosphere,” Arum says. “I don’t think you can, so many years later. But I think that what we’ll be presenting will be as close as you can get.

“I really believe if it can be done anywhere, it can be done here. This may very well be my last great accomplishment.”

*

Built in 1924, the auditorium acquired its name not from the street about a mile away, but from the 1932 Los Angeles Olympic committee, which was seeking a venue for wrestling and boxing and lent its financial help to founder Jack Doyle during construction.

The Olympic came into its own only when Eaton arrived. Promoter Cal Eaton sent his former secretary (then Aileen LeBell) to rescue the struggling operation as its business manager in 1942. She became its promoter in 1945, married Eaton in 1948 and dominated the building, then owned by the Los Angeles Athletic Club, until she retired in 1980.

“I’ll tell you, there’s nobody that had the patience, that would stay there through thick and thin like she did,” Chargin says. “Not Arum, not anybody.

“She was the Olympic. I stayed there after she left, but it was never the same.”

Eaton, who died in 1987, evoked warmth from her employees and fighters, anger from those who disagreed with her and fear from those she confronted.

She vainly tried to get boxers to save their earnings, she cut off anybody who wronged her and, in a sport full of determined souls, she was the most determined person anyone around her can remember.

When boxing went through bad times, Eaton booked professional wrestling and roller derby. In the 1950s and ‘60s, Gorgeous George Wagner, Enrique Torres and other wrestlers drew thousands to the Olympic.

The Los Angeles Thunderbirds roller derby team sold out whenever it played the rival San Francisco Bay Bombers.

And when things were going well in the ring, when Mando Ramos or Art Aragon or Don Jordan were blasting away in front of packed houses, Eaton made sure other fighters were in the system, blooming under them.

Sugar Ray Robinson, Joe Frazier and other greats also dropped in for occasional fights, but the heart of the enterprise was local.

“Our philosophy was to develop fighters and keep moving them up,” Chargin says.

The fans were not averse to fights--and, occasionally, riots. In 1964, when Alacron Torres of Mexico lost a split decision to Hiroyuki Ebihara of Japan, the enraged crowd rampaged through the building, causing more than $150,000 in damage. “I don’t want to say rowdy, but it was always a robust crowd,” referee Filippo says. “They tore up seats, broke the TV monitors, tried to burn down the seats. That was part of the scene then.”

On Aug. 7, 1970, Mando Ramos and Ultimo (Sugar) Ramos staged a monumental battle of attrition. Mando Ramos took a bloody decision victory. With the Ramos-Ramos fight, a bout Chargin says was “the greatest fight I ever saw, and I think any of the 10,000 people there would agree,” the Olympic almost certainly reached its zenith.

That fight had everything: boxers who appealed to the local crowd, an incredible pace, a pulsating audience. Afterward, as in many fights at the Olympic, everyone was exhausted.

“Hey, it wasn’t anything like the seats were so great, or the paint was so great, or anything like that,” says Jackie McCoy, who managed and trained five world champions who fought at the Olympic, including Mando Ramos.

“It was just a good place to fight.”

*

Ghosts? The Olympic Auditorium has no ghosts. It has Luis Magana, and a handful of others, who walk through it as if they are keepers of a flame they fear has burned out for good.

“I never thought it was going to open again,” Magana says. “I never thought there was going to be anybody with the capability and the resources to run it again.

“But I think Bob Arum can make it. Bob Arum is a man of boxing, he knows his business, he knows who can draw and who can’t draw. Arum, he’s not a Johnny-come-lately, you can see it.”

Chargin is promoting a fight card in Sacramento this week, so he won’t be attending the Olympic reopening. But, almost whispering, he says he probably couldn’t bring himself to show up either way.

“To this day I can’t ride by, I go way out of my way to avoid it,” Chargin says. “I’m glad they’re fixing it up, starting again. I wish it a lot of luck. I am curious about it. I just hope I can get over this.

“I’m sure I’ll go later on. But I doubt if I would’ve been able to go to this one. There’s just too much. . . .”

There’s too much of himself, Chargin concedes, left in the old building. Too many people to miss.

“Sure, there’s a lot of pressure to try to match the quality of the Chargin fights,” says Bruce Trampler, the man who will be the site’s new matchmaker. “But it’s funny, in talking to Jackie McCoy now, he says he thinks (young fighter) Carlos Hernandez can be better than Mando Ramos. And he’s not slamming Mando. It just shows Jackie’s rejuvenated now.

“The excitement, it spreads, it’s contagious.”

As always at the Olympic, the past, present and future blend into one.

Memories become predictions. Age becomes youth. Mando Ramos becomes Carlos Hernandez, who might have sat in the balcony to see the fights as a child not long ago, leaning forward, learning that boxing was beautiful. That it was a ballet.