Bray Adds Injury Claim to an Insult : Boxing: Elbow injury, feud with managers are cited as reasons heavyweight ditched tonight’s bout at Marriott.

The fighter has told his handlers that he is hurt.

The fighter’s manager says the fighter apparently just doesn’t want to fight.

The promoter, ditched by his headline attraction less than a week before the show, is threatening legal action against the fighter.

Welcome to the wonderful world of professional boxing.

And to think that skeptics scoffed when the club shows at the Warner Center Marriott in Woodland Hills were touted as legitimate ring events.

Tonight’s card could qualify as a three-ring show, and that’s counting only the incidents leading up to the bouts.

The main event inside the hotel’s Grand Ballroom tonight was supposed to mark the homecoming of John Bray, formerly a San Fernando Valley-based U.S. amateur heavyweight champion.

The fights will go on--but without the main attraction.

Bray, 24, matched against King Ipitan, a talented young fighter backed by Don King, withdrew from the card late last week without much of an explanation.

Predictably, promoter Peter Broudy hit the roof, claiming that Bray was in breach of contract.

“For some reason he just doesn’t want to fight this guy,” Broudy complained.

Bray hasn’t been returning telephone calls to provide any reasons, but Tuesday one of his advisers said that a recurring injury to Bray’s right elbow will keep him out of the ring for at least two weeks.

Then again, Joe Bradley, that very same adviser, also said that Bray’s motives for backing out of the fight weren’t all connected to his physical ailment.

Bradley said Bray told him he had not been paid in more than a month by the management team that made the deal with Broudy.

“There’s been a problem going on the last couple of months with John and the management,” Bradley said. “Really the big problem has been with communication.”

Bray is halfway through a six-year deal with Chicago Shakers Management, George Randazzo, one of the partner’s in that group said by telephone from his office in Arlington Heights, Ill.

Randazzo said the management company, which has invested more than $300,000 the past three years for Bray’s salary and training expenses, was surprised when Bray withdrew from tonight’s card.

“We wanted this fight,” Randazzo said. “We’re totally disgusted. He walked out.”

Broudy early this week threatened to sue Bray to recover advertising and promotional expenses. He also said Bray might face disciplinary action by the State Athletic Commission, which sanctions all professional bouts in California.

Chicago Shakers is sending two representatives to meet with Bray today, Randazzo and Bradley said.

“I don’t want to knock the kid,” Randazzo said, “but it’s like I’ve told him, ‘You can’t keep burning bridges. You’re running out of routes.’ He’s going to be out there by himself on an island pretty soon.”

Bray is no stranger to controversy. In 1991, the year he won the U.S. amateur title, he accidentally shot himself in the mouth. Last October, just a month before his last fight, Bray was arrested in Woodland Hills on suspicion of possessing seven pounds of marijuana with intent to sell. He also allegedly confessed to firing a gun in the parking lot of a hotel a short time earlier.

John Hernandez, Bray’s trainer, said the charges later were reduced to a misdemeanor and Bray was placed on probation.

In November, Bray emerged from a six-round bout against journeyman Craig Brinson with a draw, dropping his record to 13-2-1.

Ipitan, who has a record of 13-1 with 11 knockouts, is more highly regarded than Brinson, and the fight scheduled for tonight was set for 10 rounds.

Bray originally was scheduled to box on Broudy’s card at the Marriott last month in a tune-up for Ipitan. Instead, he chose to accept an offer to be a sparring partner for heavyweight contender Lennox Lewis at Lewis’ training camp in Big Bear.

Randazzo said that when he last talked to Bray a few weeks ago, the fighter told him he was not in shape to meet Ipitan.

“All I heard was excuses,” Randazzo said. “I said, ‘You’re sparring with Lennox Lewis. How can you not be in shape?’

“We wanted this fight because we felt it could turn John’s career around. We thought it was a good time for him to come home and build a following there.”

Bray could not be reached for comment. His mother, Susan, referred callers to Bradley and Hernandez, his trainer.

Hernandez declined comment other than to say that Bray had “a valid medical problem.”