George Kimball/America At Large:Somebody at the FBI has been watching entirely too many gangster movies. A few days after the dawning of the New Year, and culminating a long investigation utilising a New York City policeman posing as a low-life wise-guy operating under the imaginative sobriquet "Big Frankie Manzione", the Feds raided the Las Vegas offices of Top Rank promoter Bob Arum.
This was an interesting development, to be sure, but the New York Daily News, not recognising a good story when it had one, trumpeted its account of the raid by preposterously charging that the raid had been occasioned by an investigation into Shane Mosley's controversial win over Oscar De La Hoya in last September's light-middleweight championship fight.
The Feds subsequently confirmed Mosley-De La Hoya II was not a target of their probe into boxing, which should have been apparent to anyone who was paying attention. It seemed inconceivable such a close fight could have been rigged, and, more to the point, Arum could not possibly have benefited if it had been.
Although Mosley-De La Hoya II was on the level, another of the Golden Boy's recent bouts has come under scrutiny. When De La Hoya, a prohibitive favourite, fought Mexican veteran Jorge "Yory Boy" Campas in Vegas last May, Oscar was firmly in command when Campas cornerman Romolo Quirate jumped into the ring at 2:54 of the seventh, forcing the referee to stop the fight and saving, by six seconds, the investments of those who had bet the "under". While there wasn't much money wagered on the 6½-round "over/under" proposition in Nevada, most offshore Internet wagering sites had the over/under at 7 rounds, thus offering a lucrative "middle" to a punter with the foresight to bet the under offshore and the over in Vegas.
"That would make sense except for one thing," said a former Top Rank employee. "I don't think Yory Boy's cornermen are that smart."
While details of the probe remain sealed, the Feds' fishing expedition into boxing appears to have yielded mostly minnows, but another Top Rank bout reportedly under investigation was Mitchell Rose's stoppage of Eric "Butterbean" Esch at Madison Square Garden on the undercard of a De La Hoya fight in 1995.
Rose, who was 1-6-1 (Butterbean was 13-0), recently claimed he was offered $5,000 to lay down for the roly-poly Butterbean, but declined.
We're inclined to view this allegation with some scepticism for a number of reasons. Obviously, there was no betting on the fight, which was little more than a circus sideshow. And who, exactly, would have offered Rose such an improbable sum? If anyone from Top Rank had believed Rose had a chance in the world of winning, he wouldn't have been fighting Butterbean in the first place.
Moreover, Rose was paid a career-high $3,000 for Butterbean and didn't make $5,000 in his other 10 fights combined. If somebody actually had offered him that much money to dump a fight, trust me, he'd have taken it.
The furore over l'affaire Top Rank has, in the meantime, deflected attention from an upcoming trial involving an authentically fixed fight, Richard "The Bull" Melito's alleged first-round knockout of Thomas "Top Dawg" Williams in August of 2000.
I was in Vegas on the night, but I didn't see Melito knock out Williams, and hardly anyone else did either.
The opening act for that night's John Ruiz-Evander Holyfield heavyweight title fight was scheduled to go off at 5 p.m. Pacific time, but for reasons which have never been adequately explained it took place an hour earlier, before the doors to the arena at the Paris Las Vegas had even been opened to the public.
There were whispers even that night that Williams had taken a dive off the low board, and in two months Williams and South Carolina promoter Bobby Mitchell will stand trial on charges of sports bribery and conspiracy to commit sports bribery.
The prosecution is armed not only with an incriminating tape on which Williams admits having been paid to lose to Melito, but also with affidavits from seven other heavyweights who claim to have been paid to throw fights in order to fatten up The Bull's record.
Melito has fought just once since his first-round KO of Williams attracted scrutiny, and claims a record of 27-1. The lone loss came when journeyman heavyweight Bert Cooper, amid widespread rumours that the fight was in the bag, was visited in his dressing-room by New York commission officials just before he entered the ring at Madison Square Garden on July 29th, 1997, and threatened with prosecution if he failed to fight in earnest. The warning apparently put the fear of God into Cooper, who reluctantly knocked out Melito with a first-round body shot.
Cooper's actions that night have apparently staved off a subpoena for the impending trial.
"We went through all that dumb stuff with the Feds," Cooper's manager, Budini Nance, told Philadelphia fight scribe Bernard Fernandez a few days ago. "We don't want to mess with those people. They got enough rats."
As it happens, I got a good look at Richie Melito's early career. In 1994 and 1995 Melito fought seven times in Massachusetts, and registered seven first-round knockouts.
It's highly unlikely anybody paid off Melito's Massachusetts opponents. It would have been unnecessary: not one of the seven "boxers" won a professional fight, before or since. Four had never fought before, and three of those never fought again. No, it would seem these match-ups followed the more time-honoured tradition: nobody needs to fix a fight when the opponent is so utterly inept he has no chance of winning in the first place.
