U.S. OLYMPIC FESTIVAL LOS ANGELES 1991 : BOXING : Bray, de la Hoya Win Opening Bouts

Two Southern California national amateur boxing champions, Oscar de la Hoya and John Bray, won their opening Olympic Festival bouts Saturday at Loyola Marymount University.

As usual, de la Hoya had a slow first round, but he steadily turned up the pressure on an eventually outclassed Dezi Ford to win a runaway decision.

Bray had a rocky second round against Shannon Briggs but, like de la Hoya, showed superior conditioning to win the decision and advanced along with de la Hoya and four others to Tuesday night’s finals at the Forum.

In today’s second 1 p.m. semifinals session at Loyola Marymount, Pomona light-welterweight Shane Mosley, a 1989 and 1990 national champion, boxes Steve Johnston of Colorado Springs.

Many of the 800 spectators who watched Saturday’s opening competition at Gersten Pavilion seemed to be de la Hoya’s former Garfield High classmates or neighbors and friends. They came to see whether the 18-year-old boxer from East Los Angeles could keep his four-year unbeaten streak alive.

He did, convincingly. The 5-foot-10, 132-pounder, an early 1992 Olympic prospect, spent most of the first round in almost passive fashion, sizing up his Alliance, Ohio, opponent.

But he knocked down Ford early in the second with a right. Ford was up promptly for his mandatory eight count, but de la Hoya’s combinations soon began to find their mark again. Midway through the third and final round, de la Hoya pounded Ford to the body with seven unanswered punches.

Afterward, de la Hoya and his trainer, Robert Alcazar, blamed his slow first round on a lack of suitable sparring partners in Southern California. Even the pros won’t spar with him, they said.

“Oscar sparred a couple of days with Genaro Hernandez two weeks ago, but Oscar handled him easily,” Alcazar said. “In fact, Hernandez told his people he didn’t want to work with Oscar any more.”

Hernandez, from Los Angeles, is 23-0 as a pro and is rated the second-best lightweight in the world by one governing body.

Bray, 21, the Van Nuys heavyweight who is a part-time detective, also wore down his opponent.

His bout with Briggs was one of the liveliest of the six on Saturday’s card. The first 20 seconds of the third round was the best action on the show. Bray landed wild right hands to his opponent’s head, but Briggs continued to counterpunch.

Saturday’s competition featured the first use of electronic scoring at a major U.S. amateur boxing event. Judges pushed buttons, not pencils. There seemed to be no hitches, although boxers and coaches still griped about a couple of decisions, as in the pencil-and-scorecard days.

With points electronically recorded by judges, Bray won by a 25-16 score. De la Hoya’s margin was 37-6.

De la Hoya faces Patrice Brooks of St. Louis at Tuesday’s finals. Bray meets Javier Alvarez of San Antonio.

Possibly the most action-packed bout Saturday was the all-armed forces bantamweight matchup between Sergio Reyes, a Camp Lejeune, N.C., Marine, and Sean Fletcher, who saw duty aboard a ship in the Persian Gulf.

Fletcher won on a third-round disqualification. Reyes had been cited for two fouls--ducking below the belt--and when he struck Fletcher with a low blow late in the third, it was his third foul, an automatic disqualification. The computer had Reyes ahead, 42-29, when he threw the lowblow.