Promoter Finds New Opponent for Morrison

Exit Anthony Cooks. Enter Marcus Rhode.

Tommy Morrison changed punching bags Wednesday, but he hasn’t changed his mind about going ahead with Sunday’s controversial heavyweight match in Japan even though Akio Yasuhara of the Japan Boxing Commission Foundation said his organization would almost certainly bar Morrison from boxing if it had the power to do so.

At issue is the fact that Morrison is HIV-positive.

Morrison had been scheduled to fight Cooks until it was learned Tuesday that Cooks had two arrest warrants out for him in Oklahoma, one for rape and the other for failure to appear in court on drug charges.

So promoter Ron Weathers quickly signed Rhode, a 24-year-old from Kansas City with a 15-1 record and 15 knockouts. Neither Cooks nor Rhode was expected to offer much opposition for Morrison.

Morrison, who could make more than half a million dollars from the fight, has vowed to donate most of his purse to his Knockout AIDS Foundation, formed to help children who have either HIV or AIDS. Cooks was to have received around $25,000 for the fight. Rhode is expected to get around twice that much.

Weathers said that when he learned about Cooks’ warrants Tuesday night, he confronted the fighter in Los Angeles, where both had come en route to Japan.

“It’s just not true,” Cooks told Weathers.

“What you need to do is to get on a plane and straighten this out with the authorities,” Weathers said. “I’ve got a fight in four days. You are going to have to go home and straighten out your own mess.”

Weathers said he bought Cooks a plane ticket for Oklahoma. A spokesman for the Okmulgee, Okla., Police Department said Wednesday night that Cooks had turned himself in.

Sunday’s six-fight card, headlined by a match between two-time heavyweight champion George Foreman and little-known Crawford Grimsley, will be staged by the World Boxing Union and the Independent Boxing Assn.

The Japanese government has no authority over the bout. A spokesman for the Japanese Health Ministry, Hiroshi Ikeda, said Thursday that the nation’s AIDS-prevention law does not mention boxing.

“Even if there is a problem, there is no regulation that covers this, so there is nothing we can do,” Ikeda said. “There is the problem of blood splattering, so we would like the promoters to study how far away the spectators should sit or consider a screen to protect the audience. However, we cannot order them to do so.”

Since the health ministry is trying to prevent discrimination against AIDS victims, Ikeda said that, if adequate safety measures are taken Sunday, “it may be good for such a person to box.”

Staff writer Sonni Efron contributed to this story from Tokyo.