Notes on a Scorecard - Feb. 1, 1996

There was another altercation this week at the Forum Club. . . .

Kennedy McKinney was trash-talking to Marco Antonio Barrera at a news conference Tuesday when the normally unflappable Barrera, a part-time law student from Mexico City who understands English, lost his cool and threw an open-handed right that grazed McKinney’s jaw. . . .

It was at the same podium that Riddick Bowe once delivered a much harder right that landed square on the chin of Larry Donald. . . .

Still, there are a lot more fights at the Forum than the Forum Club. . . .

Since 1982, Jerry Buss has done his best to keep boxing alive in Southern California by staging an average of two shows a month. . . .

The sport has never been a big moneymaker for Buss, but he is expanding his operations this year. . . .

He plans to promote at least 30 shows in Southern California and Nevada. . . .

Within an upcoming 10-day period, Forum Boxing Inc. will stage three cards, two at the Forum and one at the Pond of Anaheim. . . .

The centerpiece is Saturday’s program that will feature Barrera-McKinney and unbeaten super-flyweight Johnny Tapia against Giovanni Andrade and be televised locally on tape by HBO at 11 p.m. . . .

Buss is nearly as excited about Barrera vs. McKinney as he is about the Lakers vs. the Chicago Bulls. . . .

“I saw McKinney win the gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, and I told John Jackson that he had the fastest hands I’d ever seen,” Buss said. “I really think this is going to be a great fight.” . . .

Despite drug problems that slowed his career, McKinney is 28-1-1 with 17 knockouts. . . .

Barrera, 39-0 with 27 knockouts, will be defending his World Boxing Organization junior-featherweight title. . . .

Buss, who grew up listening to Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson bouts on radio and used to go with his uncle to the fights at the Olympic Auditorium and Hollywood Legion Stadium, would love to stage a major heavyweight match at the Forum. . . .

“I hope to get Mike Tyson to come to the big city,” he said. “The TV money is so huge that it might not make much difference that we can’t offer as big a site fee as Las Vegas.”

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Neil Ferris, one of nine members of the 1950 Loyola University team who went on to the NFL, died Tuesday at 68 at Lake Havasu City, Ariz. . . .

Obea Moore, bidding to become the first high school student to make the U.S. Olympic track and field team since sprinter Dwayne Evans in 1976, will run the 500 in the L.A. Invitational on Feb. 24 at the Sports Arena. Moore, 16, ran the 400 meters in 45.12 as a sophomore at Pasadena Muir High. . . .

Rod Dedeaux, former USC baseball coach, and Robert Dockson, former dean of the USC School of Business Administration, will receive the Orthopaedic Hospital’s “Here’s to the Winners” award Friday night at the Beverly Hills Hotel. . . .

Another fund-raiser for the hospital’s pediatric charity care services and Team HEAL program will be Tom Candiotti’s celebrity baseball game, “Knucklemania ‘96,” Saturday at noon at Dedeaux Field. . . .

Boxing lost one of its brightest and best-liked figures when promoter Dan Duva died of cancer Tuesday at 44. He and and his father, manager-trainer Lou Duva, formed one father-son team in boxing that worked. Dan was such a devoted family man that he once arranged the date of a major fight in Las Vegas so that it wouldn’t coincide with his daughter’s dance recital in New Jersey.