BOXING / EARL GUSTKEY : Nova Faced Life’s Punches With a Smile

Lou Nova, the former heavyweight who died recently, was sitting on the sun porch of his Las Vegas mobile home when I called on him one day in 1988.

I was surprised when he said he had cancer. He looked trim, and his energy level seemed high. He laughed heartily at himself, and that’s how I want to remember him--laughing on his porch that day.

He told stories.

In 1941, he said, after Joe Louis had knocked him stiff with one punch, Nova returned to Southern California with $125,000.

“I talked to this banker who’d been recommended to me, about how I should invest the money,” he said.

“I’d found a six-acre place in Van Nuys with a four-bedroom house, a guest house, stables and a fruit orchard. The price was $25,000. I wanted to buy it. The banker told me:

“ ‘Nova, you go ahead and buy that place if you want, but don’t sink a lot of money into it, because that farmland out there (in the San Fernando Valley) will never be worth anything. If you’ll take my advice, you’ll put that money into long-term, 3% bonds.’

“I bought the place anyway. But when my wife divorced me in 1954, she wound up with the whole thing anyway.’ ”

And he laughed again.

Born in Hollywood, Nova was the son of a concert pianist. In the mid-1930s, he was a standout football player and a javelin thrower at Alameda High. He was a single-wing tailback at UC Davis when he was a national amateur champion heavyweight.

He was 76 when he died Sept. 29.

It was an incident that someday could make anyone’s list of great 1990s moments in boxing.

At the Reno-Sparks Convention Center last Saturday night, about 15 minutes before the Pernell Whitaker-Jorge Paez fight, ring announcer Michael Buffer was introducing celebrities.

For a split second he looked directly at Sports Illustrated boxing writer Pat Putnam, seated in the second row of the press section. Putnam, with precision timing, looked at Buffer and shouted: “What about Joe DiMaggio?”

Buffer nodded at Putnam, then turned his back on the press section and raised the mike to his mouth. Putnam, waving his arms, tried to tell him, “No! I was only kidding!”

Too late.

Buffer began: “It was 50 years ago that one of baseball’s great records . . . “ and wrapped it up saying, “ . . . Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a warm Nevada welcome for the Yankee Clipper, Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio!”

Spectators stood and cheered, looking in vain for DiMaggio, who was probably at home in San Francisco.

Putnam? He crawled under the table.

With the recent retirement of Mark Breland, the 1984 U.S. Olympic team superstar who never generated the pro career many expected of him, the headliners from the class of ’84 are down to four, and one of those, Mike Tyson, wasn’t even on the team.

On Nov. 8, Evander Holyfield, who won a bronze medal at the Los Angeles Olympics, will defend his undisputed heavyweight championship against Tyson, who was a teen-age alternate on that team.

And last weekend in Reno, undisputed lightweight champion Pernell Whitaker defended his title for the eighth, and maybe final, time. Whitaker was the lightweight gold medalist in ’84.

Virgil Hill, the middleweight silver medalist seven years ago, was exposed as a flawed fighter when he lost his light-heavyweight championship to Thomas Hearns in June, but must still be considered a top pro.

The other members of the ’84 U.S. team, Paul Gonzales, Steve McCrory, Robert Shannon, Jerry Page, Frank Tate, Henry Tillman and Tyrell Biggs, were ordinary as pros.

Meldrick Taylor, the ’84 featherweight gold medalist at 17, was briefly brilliant as a pro, a solid champion. But some fear he might have lost his edge since a brutal 1990 fight with Julio Cesar Chavez.

As for Breland, who has acted in movies and stage plays, much of the cash he signed for when he turned pro in late 1984 is gone. However, his adviser, Shelly Finkel, channeled some of Breland’s early income into annuities during his peak earning years.

“Mark’s dealing with the pain right now,” Finkel said recently. “He said to me: ‘I just don’t have it, and I have to accept that.’

“When he’s 31, he’ll begin earning $100,000 per year from the annuities.”

Three boxers suffered major head injuries in the last several weeks, two on the same day. One died, one remains in critical condition and the third, Fernie Morales of El Paso, spent 18 days in an Indio hospital.

Nigerian flyweight Nojim Gbadegesin died last Sunday in Lagos, Nigeria, two days after his second pro fight. In London, British middleweight Michael Watson remains in a coma following his collapse after a fight Sept. 21.

The same day, in Indio, Morales underwent emergency brain surgery for removal of a blood clot after a fight. He has partially recovered, was discharged Tuesday and is undergoing rehabilitation in Palm Springs.

He is undergoing three hours of daily speech and physical therapy at Desert Hospital in Palm Springs. In addition to a speech problem, he has partial paralysis in both arms and legs. But his doctor said this week that the boxer shows “good rehabilitation potential.”

All this might suggest that boxing is a deadly activity, but statistics indicate otherwise.

Last year, the National Safety Council released results of a five-year study that counted deaths per 100,000 participants in various sports. Boxing not only wasn’t No. 1, it didn’t make the top 10.

The most deadly sports, rated in order of frequency of fatalities: Mountain climbing, hang gliding, sky diving, snowmobiling, mountain hiking, scuba diving, boating, various forms of Alpine skiing and water-skiing.

Boxing Notes

Former champion Greg Haugen (28-4-1) headlines the Reseda Country Club show Oct. 29 in a 10-rounder with Alfonso Perez (18-6). To be announced soon: Mike McCallum vs. James Toney, on pay-per-view, in December. . . . The California Athletic Commission will announce its new executive officer--finally--at its meeting in Sacramento Oct. 18. The favorite is said to be Bay Area referee Rudy Ortega.

The pay-per-view heavyweight fight between Ray Mercer and Tommy Morrison on Oct. 18 is a good one, certainly. But please , HBO, Bob Arum and Bill Cayton, stop calling it a heavyweight title fight, which it most decidedly is not. To even suggest that Mercer, and not Evander Holyfield, is the heavyweight champion is to insult everyone’s intelligence.

Tony Ligouri, 1930s lightweight contender, died at 83 recently in Des Moines, Iowa. . . . Three items from the USA Amateur Boxing Federation’s recent annual meeting at Concord, Calif.: Oscar de la Hoya of East Los Angeles was given the boxer-of-the-year award; Joe Byrd of Flint, Mich., was chosen to coach the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, and the organization changed its name to USA Boxing.

The day after Sacramento favorite Tony Lopez lost to Brian Mitchell, Lopez’s parents visited promoter Don Chargin. They were unhappy about Lopez’s trainers and worried that their son’s loss had cost him future big-money fights. Needlessly, it turns out. “As they were walking in the door, the phone rang,” Chargin said. “It was Gerrie Coetzee, who is now a promoter, calling from South Africa. He offered Tony $150,000 to fight a fighter of his, Paul Ditau Molefyane, in Sacramento. We closed the deal over the phone, and the fight will be Nov. 15 at Arco Arena.”

The Forum had a crowd control problem at its last boxing show-- in the ring. Three ring-card girls were still in the ring, waving to the crowd, when the bell rang to resume the fight. The Athletic Commission fined the Forum $100.

The Forum’s new hotshot, super-bantamweight Rudy Zavala, will appear next on Oct. 21 against Mark Brooks in a 10-rounder. Looks as if the Forum’s old hotshot is super-flyweight Cecilio Espino, who has lost two in a row. The once-hot Espino lost to an opponent he should have beaten Monday, Abner Barajas, and looked like a fighter who had never been taught anything about defensive boxing.

Longtime Southland promoter Don Fraser will retire after his show at the Irvine Marriott on Nov. 21. Fraser has promoted monthly boxing shows there since 1985. His event coordinator, Roy Englebrecht, will take over as promoter of Irvine Marriott shows in January. . . . Former light-heavyweight champion Archie Moore will autograph copies of his book, “The Ole Mongoose,” 2-4 p.m. Oct. 19 at Sports Books, 8761 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles.