Added risk in boxing alleged

The last time Staples Center was filled to capacity for a prominent fight that attracted a national television audience, the insistence of one observant trainer saved the California State Athletic Commission from potentially suffering more than embarrassment.

That was the night two hardened, plaster-caked inserts were to be wrapped into the hands of Antonio Margarito as he prepared to defend his world welterweight title against Shane Mosley.

“I know for a fact that if I wouldn’t have been there saying something, he would’ve walked right into that ring,” said Nazim Richardson, Mosley’s veteran trainer.

How could something so dangerous come so close to happening?

It’s a question that’s often been asked since that incident, which took place in January.

As another championship bout comes to Staples, Saturday’s world heavyweight title fight between champion Vitali Klitschko and Riverside’s Cris Arreola, there is increasing concern about the organization that sanctions the state’s boxing and mixed martial arts bouts.

State Athletic Commission inspector Che Guevara was looking on as Margarito’s hands were wrapped by his trainer, Javier Capetillo. Richardson, as the opponent’s trainer, was allowed to observe too. And when he squeezed one of Margarito’s wraps, he told Guevara it felt hard inside.

The inspector’s reaction? “He was trying to keep the job moving,” Richardson recalled. “It was like what I was saying was new to him, that no one had ever raised these questions to him, and he was obviously in an uncomfortable situation.”

Richardson said Guevara felt the same taped hand and said, “It feels all right to me.”

Only after the boxer’s hands were unwrapped at Richardson’s urging were the inserts discovered. They had been hidden under knuckle pads atop Margarito’s fists, and experts say they would have extracted plenty of extra damage.

Mosley ended up winning the bout by technical knockout in the ninth round, and weeks later the commission revoked the boxing licenses of Margarito and trainer Capetillo.

But boxing promoters, matchmakers and others closely associated with the fight game told The Times the commission is not providing proper oversight, adding risk to an already dangerous sport.

“I’ve complained that [commission representatives] were unprofessional and risking the health of my fighters and my business,” said Alex Camponovo, lead matchmaker for Thompson Boxing Promotions, which routinely stages shows at the Ontario Doubletree Hotel and other Southland venues.

Camponovo said two Thompson shows this year were disrupted when commission-assigned physicians failed to show up. State rules require pre-weigh-in physicals for boxers the day before a fight. Regulators say the exams are important because boxers can severely weaken themselves trying to make weight.

In one case, Camponovo said a Sept. 11 card proceeded even though the 14 boxers who fought had physicals less than three hours before the first bell.

“Things are falling through the cracks that should never fall through the cracks,” said promoter Roy Englebrecht, who stages monthly “Battle in the Ballroom” cards at the Irvine Marriott.

In June, an Englebrecht card was jeopardized when one of two ringside doctors and one of three judges failed to show.

“No one got hurt, thank goodness,” Englebrecht said. “If the doctor would’ve had to leave with an injured fighter, I would’ve had to stop my show.”

Englebrecht and others are pushing hard for new leadership with comprehensive knowledge of the sport.

“Unfortunately, the commission has been a ship for most of the last year without a captain,” he said. “There’s no one pulling together and establishing a working system.”

The commission was without an executive officer from last November until June, and is still without a permanent replacement following the resignation of Armando Garcia after a sexual harassment complaint. Dave Thornton, former director of the state medical board, has been the interim executive officer.

Thornton was embroiled in controversy this summer when the contents of a July 22 letter he wrote became public.

The letter warned that a fighter on a March 7 mixed martial arts card in Tulare had been allowed to fight without an HIV blood detection screening and after he tested positive for hepatitis C.

The letter urged anyone who had been in contact with a fighter on that card to be tested. However, the advisory was not distributed to the fighters or promoters, lead promoter Al Joslin said.

One fighter on the card, Preston Scharf, told The Times, “It’s scary. There’s blood, you know. . . . The sport is high risk all the way around.

“That’s why we pay the state. We’re supposed to be protected.”

Shelly Matlock, promoter Joslin’s wife, said the long-delayed hepatitis C revelation showed the commission is “overwhelmed [and] overtaxed . . . with all the [job] cuts, the furlough Fridays and the stress.

“We had a real safety issue at our fight,” she added. “I get in there and hug the fighters. I have a cage crew that cleans blood. There’s the whole corner teams for both fighters. My grandchildren watching from ringside. I told the commission, ‘I pay you a lot of money’ -- 10% of the gate -- ‘and I demand full and immediate disclosure of something like this.’ ”

Matlock said she received an apology letter from Thornton. “This is a lesson learned for me and the commission and we will do better in the future,” Thornton wrote. “But hopefully this type of incident will not occur again.”

Authorities later declared the hepatitis C result a “false positive.” Thornton on Thursday declined to identify who was responsible for the lapse but said discipline was “being looked at.”

Camponovo’s complaints about the late medical examinations, Thornton said, stemmed from “miscommunication.” He also said regulations did not require Englebrecht’s Irvine show to have two ringside physicians.

The commission continues to take hits, however. On Thursday, its board lost two of its seven members.

Board leader Timothy Noonan abruptly resigned as the state Senate leader Darrell Steinberg announced he would effectively remove Noonan and Peter Lopez from their posts by not holding confirmation hearings for either.

Noonan said he resigned because the state’s Department of Consumer Affairs declined the commission’s recommendation of former boxing official Pat Russell as Thornton’s permanent replacement. But Noonan was already the target of an ethics investigation by the Fair Political Practices Commission after a Times probe earlier this month found he had distributed free fight passes to friends. The Times’ report also found the State Athletic Commission failed to stop two suspended athletes from fighting this year.

Beyond the political tumult, critics say boxing has suffered because the athletic commission removed three top inspectors.

One of them, Dean Lohuis, said the commission is allowing unsafe matches.

After he was let go, Lohuis e-mailed authorities complaining that two fighters “known as nothing more than novice tough men,” were battered in second-round knockouts during bouts at Redondo Beach in July. Two months later, he was shocked to see one of them fighting in Ontario.

In an e-mail to The Times, Lohuis described the fighter as “badly overweight . . . with a blubbery belly, glasses and red shaggy beard” and said the referee told him after he stopped the fight early in the first round, “In my 12 years of doing this, this was the worst mismatch I’d ever seen. He stood there eating jabs and did not even have the basic skills.”

Said Lohuis, “To approve [this boxer] once is incompetence; to approve him a second time is incomprehensible.”

The former inspector, a fixture at California fights for more than two decades, cited several examples of poor matchmaking, noting that Daniel Gonzales, with a record of 9-24-2 including seven consecutive defeats, suffered two technical knockouts and another loss in a 60-day span.

Thornton said the commission’s “priority is the fighter’s safety. [And] there have been no serious injuries or deaths as a result of these incidents.” He also expressed “full confidence in matchmaking” decisions by the commission, but added that he is consulting the Assn. of Boxing Commissions to adopt recommendations and is close to hiring an expert “recognized nationally in bout approval.”

Promoter Camponovo and others are hopeful the situation will soon improve. He says he prides himself on maintaining a safe environment for the fighters, but he’s not so sure about the intentions of others.

“In the end it’s a business, and if people think they can get away with something they might try,” he said. “That’s why we have regulators.”

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lance.pugmire@latimes.com

Times staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this report.