Tunney Breaks Into a New Punch Line : Boxing: Distant relative of former champion leads class in which he trades shots with neophytes looking to release tension.

Jim Tunney is in a crouch, his arms tight against his sides.

His hands and forearms, covered by heavy leather gloves, are trying to protect his head and face from a storm of punches. Some blows break through the defense with a loud thud and his head is jarred backward.

But there is no quit in this distant relative of the late heavyweight champion Gene Tunney.

“You hit like a girl!” he barks through his mouthpiece at his swarming opponent.

“I am a girl,” replies Angela Brenton.

Tunney, 26, of Newbury Park, is on the front lines of a burgeoning fad sweeping the nation. There is no real name for it yet, but fake boxing might do.

Boxing , because two people wearing boxing equipment face each other and trade punches. Fake, because the instructor, usually a boxer like Tunney with some professional experience, does not return the punches with anything resembling real power.

“I am their punching bag,” Tunney said.

At Bodies in Motion gym in West Los Angeles, people pay a $100 initiation fee and as much as $60 per month for the right to participate in the boxing classes. For that money, they get a glimpse--and only a glimpse--of what boxing is really like. The boxers are housewives and college students and accountants and bank managers.

They are people looking for a way to release a bit of tension.

And they release it against Tunney’s head.

“It’s a terrific way to take out my frustrations,” said Brenton, 31, of Venice, who has been a regular student in Tunney’s classes since the program began six months ago. She is a housewife and part-time hairdresser, she said, and used to take aerobics classes.

“Then I found boxing,” Brenton said. “And now I’m hooked. The high energy, the feeling of security it gives me. And I definitely feel I’ve improved. I know how to punch and when to punch.”

Minutes earlier, Brenton had attacked Tunney with some serious punches. Fairly weak and ineffective punches. But serious ones nonetheless.

The wide, arcing blows were easily absorbed by Tunney, who does not attempt to duck from them but rather blocks them with his arms and gloves.

And occasionally, he does nothing, allowing a sweeping punch to cruise unmolested toward his face, which is protected by heavy leather headgear with side flaps that cover his cheekbones. But even a punch from the 100-pound Brenton makes a heavy thud, and Tunney’s head takes a noticeable retreat from the force of the blow.

“In one night, in a couple hours of this, I might take a thousand punches,” Tunney said. “And even though most of these people are still learning how to throw a punch, how to really throw a punch, I feel every single one of them when they land. I don’t imagine taking this many punches to the head, even easy ones, is very good for you.”

So why does he do it?

Well, for one thing, Tunney’s pro career stalled after just two fights. In his debut at the Country Club in Reseda in October of 1989, he was knocked out by journeyman Fred Thomas in the fourth round. Five months later, he won a four-round decision at the Country Club over Mel Pinion.

Tunney claims to have fought six other pro fights in California, but the State Athletic Commission does not know about them. That organization, the controlling body for all pro boxing in California, lists Tunney’s record at 1-1.

The bottom line is that Tunney’s pro boxing career--which he still insists is active and ongoing--has not exactly turned out the way he had hoped.

And, Tunney became a father six weeks ago. Months earlier, with the pending arrival of little Tyler James Tunney, he was approached by Bodies in Motion owner Bruce Gordon about teaching a boxing class to people who had no intention of ever actually boxing.

Tunney sees it as a possible career.

“Boxing is still my No. 1 love,” Tunney said. “My career didn’t go the way I wanted it to, but I’m still pursuing that. I still want to fight. I still think I can be a champion. But in the meantime, this allows me to make some money and keep myself in shape. And it’s such a hot thing, such a craze right now, it’s hard to pass it up. I can imagine doing this for a long time. The interest just keeps growing.”

Gordon said 150 people are signed up for Tunney’s classes.

What they get is a 15-minute warmup session during which the have their knuckles wrapped with white gauze for padding, just as the pro boxers do. Then a pair of heavy leather boxing gloves are laced on and they get to pound the heavy bags swaying from the gym ceiling. Mostly awkward punches skid off the leather bags, and the students talk and laugh.

Then Tunney enters the room, stands in front of a heavy black bag and begins hammering away with crushing, beautiful punches. Professional punches. And the students immediately stop talking and laughing. And they just stare.

Tunney invites someone to join him on the mats in the small room and Rick Jaenike, 21, a UCLA graduate with a business degree and a decent left hook, quickly obliges. Jaenike, 6 feet and 185 pounds, pummels Tunney, who is 5-9 and weighs 160. Punching in wild spurts, Jaenike rocks Tunney with heavy shots.

For 45 seconds.

And then, Jaenike grows very, very tired.

“I let these guys punch themselves out,” Tunney said. “Usually it takes a minute or less.”

And then Tunney throws a few of his own punches. Not real punches by any measure of pro boxing, but punches that quickly extinguish the fire in Jaenike, starting with a right uppercut that buries itself into Jaenike’s stomach and brings a look to his face of a man who has just stubbed his toe badly in the middle of the night but does not want to shriek for fear of waking his wife and kids.

“I think we all know that if Jim wanted to, he could kill us,” said the muscular Jaenike. “He’s got such fast hands and good technique on his punches. Once in a while, he throws a fairly hard punch, and it reminds you of what he could do.

“In reality, he could just dissect any of us out there.”

Dissection is not, however, why Tunney was hired.

“If he throws just one punch in anger, just unloads one real punch on one of these people, I’m out of business,” said gym owner Gordon. “My search for a boxer to teach this class was exhaustive. Jim Tunney was my man because in addition to being a skilled boxer, he doesn’t bring the ego to it that all the others seemed to have.

“Jim is also articulate, and let me tell you, among pro boxers, that’s very rare.”

Tunney said he must constantly remind himself to use great self-control.

“Some of these guys hit like tanks,” he said. “As a fighter, my first instinct is to fight back. But I can’t. So I just take it. But they know, I think, what the truth is. If these were real fights and someone was trying to take food money away from my family, they’d be out for the count in a hurry.”

And just how might Gene Tunney, who was one of the most feared punchers in heavyweight history, the man who twice thrashed the great Jack Dempsey in the 1920s, react to the news that a young man with his bloodlines was teaching girls how to box?

“I think Gene Tunney would wonder just how many punches to the head this kid has taken,” Jim Tunney said.