Planting Gold in the Garden

By Tom Callahan

The great Olympic hopes break into the pros gently

Lately the best fights in boxing have been about whether to have boxing, but there will always be street corners. Muhammad Ali said that recently, so some of his wisdom is intact. Appreciating boxing is easy for those who do; explaining it to others will always be the problem. Fighting is as likely to fall to one of the medical associations that challenge it regularly as five Olympic heroes are to lose to five hand-picked opponents in a debutants' brawl at Madison Square Garden.

A sixth Olympian, just a silver medalist, was hired to warm up the deep chill of the Garden, though scarcely anyone had arrived last week before 171-lb. Virgil Hill dispatched Arthur Wright in the second round. Wright trained as hard as he could, from the moment the match was arranged the day before. Last summer two North Dakota towns, Williston and Grand Forks, threw parades for Hill, 20. Nobody is fighting over him now. "I'm training out of L.A., without a manager yet," he explained in a dim dressing room, though the comparative worth of gold and silver was plain to see. Just as Hill was saying, "My medal is priceless," that haunting Olympic bugling sounded out by the ring, announcing Junior Lightweight Meldrick Taylor.

Taylor's new gold trunks and shoes, smack with tassels, gave contrast to the faded green trunks of Luke Lecce, the opponent. A part-time pro for four years, he is more properly a sales rep for 7-Up in Pittsburgh, a graduate of Duquesne, age 23. Taylor is just 18 but approves of higher education and has been accepted at Philadelphia's Temple University. "I'm going to start with three courses, if I can handle it. Business administration," he said, a useful major. The four golden stars, plus one other celebrity practically as good as gold, will do seven-figure business the next two years, funded mostly by ABC-TV.

The third time that Lecce fell in the first round, to his knees, seemed a delayed response to a hard blow to the spirit. Lecce immediately announced his retirement. "This was going to be my last fight anyway," he said without regret, only a little embarrassed after the T.K.O. Commending Taylor, "a good technician," Lecce confessed he had been unable to rouse any prefight bile. "Like everyone else I was very proud of these guys," he said softly, and by then the pipes were calling Evander Holyfield.

He is that stony light-heavyweight Georgian whose Olympic misfortune or fortune it was to ignore the referee's signal and flatten a New Zealander on the break. For knocking himself out, he was awarded the bronze medal. Still the broadcasters and promoters took Holyfield over a number of gold medalists, like Heavyweight Henry Tillman, who must have had a Garden seat somewhere, since all tickets were free. From a passageway he watched Holyfield step out against a hardheaded brooder with no choice but to be a fighter. Lionel Byarm has Joe Louis' face.

Ten years ago, Louis refereed a Joe Frazier-Jerry Quarry bout at the Garden, his last workday there, and seeing Byarm brought back the dull striped shirt he wore and the sad lost look of him. Holyfield punched past the bell twice--incredible--to rumbling boos. "I was in the groove of punches," he said later. "I didn't hear the bell." Byarm's lip was frayed, but the Brown Bomber had signed to do six rounds and did the six, winning one of them, maybe two. "I'll be back in the gym Monday," he said.

The best boxer in this Olympic crop is Pernell Whitaker, who pressed over 200 amateur fights into his 20 years, but is still a lightweight and still a southpaw. Glory could be as hard to find as opponents. Kindly the referee cautioned Far-rain Comeaux's handlers to keep a towel handy for tossing into the ring. They asked if they might just wave it, and he said they could. They did. Then, before Headliner Mark Breland came out, poor Tyrell Biggs, 23, went six well-hooted rounds with a muscle-bound actor named Mike Evans, the Budweiser Light "champion" who tells the kid, "Hey, you'll get your chance."

Heavyweights must measure up to John L. Sullivan, and Biggs' flaws are that he has no charisma and cannot punch. But the state of the division must hearten him: it is the main reason boxing seems moribund again. When Dempsey went, he was taking boxing with him. Then Louis came along. Marciano. Ali. Sugar Ray Leonard made the welterweights the heavyweights, and this is slim Breland's slender hope too. The first opponent served up to him (from more than a half foot below) was better than the best Cuban he ever fought. "He looked at me like 'Hey, I'm from Brooklyn too,' " Breland said, sorry to be so wide-eyed about it but never seeing things quite so clearly before. "Breland looked good to me," Dwight Williams countered, "and I ain't nobody's chump. I'm still going some place, because I done fought the best in the world." Hey, they all get their chance.

--By Tom Callahan