BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : Chavez Needs This Victory for History

Julio Cesar Chavez left this city three months ago, defeated and deflated, his face marked and swollen, his explanations bitter and betraying his frayed emotions.

At home in Culiacan, Mexico, after suffering a stunning defeat at the hands of Frankie Randall, he went into seclusion.

“He would cry,” says his wife, Amalia. “He was depressed. His mind was everywhere else but at home.”

Was Julio Cesar Chavez, hero to a nation and one of the great boxers of this era, going to let it end like this? Eighty-nine victories, one draw, and then . . . tears?

“I have to admit, yes, I was sad,” Chavez says. “Until I started training. That’s when my attitude changed.”

And he doesn’t worry that his aura of invincibility has been damaged forever by the knockdown he suffered against Randall?

“If the Berlin wall fell down and they’ve accepted it, why not Julio?” Chavez says.

Tonight at the same MGM Grand arena where he lost, Chavez gets his chance to avenge the majority decision that went to Randall on Jan. 29, his opportunity to back up his statements that he lost not because he was beaten by a better man, but because he had lost his love for boxing.

And, perhaps more than anything, tonight’s rematch is Chavez’s opportunity to set the stage for one last, triumphant year of boxing.

If he cannot get past Randall, even those in Chavez’s camp agree, he will never be considered among the greatest of boxing’s stars.

“He has to win this fight, and he has to win it impressively,” says trainer Emanuel Steward, brought in recently to improve Chavez’s regimen and style. “Otherwise he will go down in history as fighter who was well promoted, well maneuvered, had a great record, but never did hold up against the top-notch American fighters.”

“Great statistics, but that’s about it.”

However, if he beats Randall, Chavez can propel himself back into a rematch against Pernell Whitaker, who is generally considered to have dominated Chavez in their infamous draw last Sept. 10.

Though he might go on fighting after a Whitaker rematch--Chavez has repeatedly said he wants to fight Whitaker in September and retire in 1995--what would be a better valedictory for a fighter who has already had 27 title bouts?

The defeat by Randall seems to have focused Chavez on his path toward retirement, perhaps because he had never previously felt his own boxing mortality.

He says he trained only 17 days for the first fight, treated it as if it was merely another sparring session, and that he was suffering from sore legs and ankles.

“Maybe it’s that we’re getting old,” he has said.

“He kept drinking (during training),” is how Steward puts it.

The ankle problem, Chavez says, might require surgery after tonight’s fight, and Chavez has to realize that his body, now 31, will not withstand the pressure forever.

Is the prospect of being able to leave the sport on his own terms--instead of in tears and fumbling for excuses--what revived him?

“He’s very determined, very, very concentrated,” Amalia Chavez says. “It’s like what I remember he was like when he first started in boxing.”

Steward says his only problem has been keeping Chavez from over-training. Chavez, for his part, says he hasn’t trained with such fervor since he knocked out Edwin Rosario in 1987.

“I felt that there really weren’t any real strong challengers out there,” Chavez says. “I was always winning, winning, I took winning for granted.”

If Chavez wins tonight, promoter Don King has dates set for Chavez to fight Meldrick Taylor in a rematch of Chavez’s controversial 1990 victory, and possibly a few others.

But Chavez rarely mentions any possible future opponents other than Whitaker.

Asked last month if he felt he had something to prove after he had the controversial draw with Whitaker and then was knocked down and beaten by Randall, Chavez snapped: “Do you think I have something to prove? After 90 fights?”

After a pause, he continued: “I’ll prove it to them on May 7. And then I expect to fight Whitaker and prove that one wrong too. Don’t worry about the time frame. I, more than anyone, want to fit Whitaker into that schedule before I retire.”

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Chavez has another, more poignant, motivation tonight: the memory of Luis Donaldo Colosio, the man expected to be the next president of Mexico before he was assassinated last month in Tijuana.

Colosio was from the northern part of Sonora, Mexico, not very far from Culiacan, and had been friendly with Chavez for years.

“I knew him before he was a candidate, of course,” Chavez says. “I had spoken with him that morning that he was assassinated.”

During the interview in his hotel room, Chavez took a call from the outgoing president, Carlos Salinas, who, Chavez later said, was lending him a plane after the fight.

Chavez says after he defeats Randall, he will fly directly to Sonora and lay his gloves on Colosio’s grave.

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For the record: A story in Friday’s editions on Randall included several inaccuracies. Randall has a 49-2-1 record. He was 22-0 before losing to Edwin Rosario in 1985, and he did not lose to Fred Pendleton on July 4, 1986. That fight was a 12-round draw.

Boxing Notes

As a sure sign of how strange the heavyweight division has suddenly become after Michael Moorer’s upset of Evander Holyfield last month, the short list to find the appropriate opponent for Moorer’s first title defense is headed by none other than almost-50, almost-retired, former television star George Foreman. Another possibility is almost-as-old Larry Holmes.

With World Boxing Council champion Lennox Lewis committed to other fights through this year, Moorer’s camp is mulling an offer from Foreman’s promoter, Bob Arum, who says Moorer could be guaranteed as much as $8 million, with Foreman taking a large cut of the pay-per-view money. Foreman, believing Moorer is vulnerable to any big heavyweight, wants the fight badly, Arum said.

“Lennox is not available, and I want a fight that will make the most money,” said Moorer’s manager, John Davimos. Moorer’s trainer, Teddy Atlas, has given the go-ahead on fighting Foreman, Moorer apparently isn’t against it, and the financial possibilities might surpass what could be earned against anybody except Lewis or Riddick Bowe, whom the Moorer camp doesn’t want to fight.

Davimos and Dan Duva, Moorer’s promoter, had a meeting scheduled for Friday night in Atlantic City, N.J., to hash out the offers from “three or four different people,” according to Duva, for an anticipated fall defense. The potential Foreman negotiations are further complicated by his recent statements during the end of TVKO’s live telecast of the Moorer-Holyfield fight, Foreman implying that Moorer got the decision only because Duva, who was both Moorer and Holyfield’s promoter, wanted it that way. That infuriated Duva, and Foreman’s comments were edited from the HBO rebroadcast last week.

Duva, also Pernell Whitaker’s promoter, said he wouldn’t be watching tonight’s Julio Cesar Chavez-Frankie Randall fight with any particular interest. “Pernell would like to fight the winner of Chavez-Randall,” Duva said. “But I don’t think Don King will allow the winner to be beaten up that bad.”

Calendar

Monday: Mark Johnson vs. Javier Juarez, flyweights; Cecilio Espino vs. Jesse Miranda, super-flyweights; Jorge Monzon vs. Arnulfo Castillo, featherweights. Forum, 7:30 p.m.