Arizona Republic from Phoenix, Arizona • Page 92

REPUBLIC MAII 1 The Arizona Republic Saturday, December 4, 1982 For boxing's best, the first loss hurts the most until his retirement last month. Leonard exposed them as mortals, and neither Hearns nor Benitez has been the same since. Benitez has gone the distance with the likes of Roberto Duran and Carlos Santos since his defeat, and Hearns has been lackluster in his post-Leonard fights. And when Hearns challenged Benitez for his World Boxing Council superwelterweight title in Friday's main event, it was as much to reclaim his aura as another championship. The same goes for superbantamweight champion Gomez.

He was 33-0 with 31 Foreman's next fight, Ron Lyle knocked him down four times. Jimmy Young, who at one time might not have dared climb into a ring with Foreman, beat him in 12 rounds in Foreman's next fight. Something happened to Foreman after that first loss. Or rather, something happened to his opponents. Jacobs: "When a seemingly impregnable fighter loses, I don't think he necessarily becomes less effective.

It's the opponent who becomes more effective. When a guy like Foreman loses, he's suddenly no longer exempt from the human race. He's not an immortal anymore." There are other examples. Three were here Friday night for fights in the Louisiana Superdome, all high-priced victims of the psychology of defeat. Ring announcers used to introduce fighters Thomas Hearns, Wilfred Benitez and Wilfredo Gomez by saying, "In this corner, gearing black trunks and an aura of invincibility All three, while undefeated, were as much surrounded by mystique as by their entourages.

Each had built up a reputation for danger. Their astounding knockout records and grave demeanors coweu many an opponent. But with Hearns and Benitez, both former welterweight champions, their mantle of impregnability was lifted by Sugar Ray Leonard, the world welterweight champion By Richard Hoffer Los Angeles Times NEW ORLEANS An unbeaten fighter would just as soon go into the ring without his trunks as without his so-called aura of invincibility. The thinking in boxing is that the trunks will save him only the embarrassment of indecent exposure. The aura of invincibility will save him from the far greater humiliation of defeat.

You know how it is with auras of invincibility. Most opponents recognize one as very real, something like a medieval coat of armor. A fighter who clanks about the ring in such a psychological getup, protected by reputation and self-confidence, is rarely challenged as boldly as a fighter less strongly attired. Says fight fan and manager Jimmy Jacobs: "We're speaking of talents that are appraised as so formidable that you don't consider yourself even having a chance going in. That's what an aura of invincibility is." But on those occasions when this armor is finally taken from a fighter, a truly naked figurejjs revealed.

Even trunks cannot cloak his vulnerability. Consider a glowering and hulking George Foreman after Muhammad Ali did the unthinkable and stopped him in Zaire. Without his aura, the previously formidable Foreman was psychologically nude. In knockouts going into last year 8 challenge against featherweight champion Salvador Sanchez. Gomez was considered invincible, yet Sanchez pounded him terribly, stopping Gomez in the eighth round.

Since then, says Jacobs, a collector of fight films as well as Benitez's manager, Gomez has been a shadow of his former self. "In the case of all these fighters," Jacobs says, "it was revealed beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had areas of vulnerability." That happens in boxing all the time; all fighters operate in varying degrees of undress; Gypsy Rose Lee wouldn't have taken the stage in the togs that boxers wear. Yet a fighter in defeat is especially naked. There is no more vulnerable figure than the conquered fighter, stripped in front of a full house and maybe even a TV audience. Boxers have no real excuses to offer.

There is nobody else to blame for defeat. For them, there is none of the traditional alibi apparatus that is available to team-sport players. All the ordinary defenses "We'll need to look at the game films," or "He makes that block and I see more daylight than the Tampa Chamber of Commerce" are peeled away. His inadequacy is exposed. Fighters deal with this humiliation in different ways.

Some do, indeed, offer excuses. Heavyweight challenger Gerry Cooney, who certainly carried an aura of menace until WBC champion Larry Holmes erased it, offered a dazzling array. His best concerned a girlfriend who had gotten in a car accident and who belabored him with her grief during training. Benitez, meanwhile, says Leonard was plain lucky to win their match. Others offer apologies.

Cooney, who has not fought since losing to Holmes and may never fight again, has spent the last six months apologizing to his followers. Los Angeles fight manager Bennie Georgino recalls pitiful confessions from his fighters after their defeats. Danny Lopez, after his bloody destruction at the hands of Sanchez, kept appearing at Georgino's room later that night to apologize. "Sometimes," Georgino says, "they feel worse for me than I do." This sense of embarrassment and shame is sometimes carried to extremes. Who can forget Floyd Patterson, who was defrocked by Ingemar Johansson.

For two weeks, Patterson stayed locked within his house. For a time afterward, he only appeared in disguise, having employed a makeup man. Patterson, to judge from many accounts, appeared on the streets in everything but drag. There are other responses to defeat. Some, of course, deal with it in a quasi-cloud of unconsciousness.

Eddie Sims, demolished by Joe Louis in less than one round, is reported to have answered an anxious referee with this curious assurance: "Come on, let's take a walk on the roof. I want some fresh air." And there was this from Jess Willard after Jack Dempsey dismantled him: "I have $100,000 and a farm in Kansas. I have $100,000 and a farm in Kansas." Some fighters exhibit relief, or even gratitude, after defeat. George Chuvalo, beaten to a pulp, told a post-fight audience, "Gentlemen. I eninved the fight." Ali.

after Wilfred Benitez has fought Roberto Duran and Carlos Santos since his loss to Leonard. was over pingpong," Caplan recalls. "He was a nut for that. But he wouldn talk to me. What I'd do is write him a note and pass it to tliimM-ik i Mil- k3 him when we switched ends at pingpong.

He'd take them like a handoff and then slam into the garbage. I was furious and I was taking it out on him in pingpong. I Let's go home." Last week, after taking a terrible beating from Holmes, Randall "Tex" Cobb left the ring with a wide smile. He was overheard to say, "A party! All right!" Fighters deal with defeat in all kinds of ways, sometimes with denial or false bravado. Joe Grim, who fought 80 years ago, tops all in this last category.

Grim was known for announcing after each fight, "I am Joe Grim and I fear no man on Earth." It was his trademark. The story is that, after Bob Fitzsimmons took him apart, Grim hauled himself to up by the ropes and gasped to ringsiders, "I am Joe Grim and I fear no man on earth." Sure. But by far the most bizarre reaction to defeat came from Foreman following his loss to Ali in 1974. Bill Caplan, now the public relations man at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, was Foreman's press agent. He had also been his closest friend.

Yet, Caplan remembers, during the preparation for that fight, they might just as well have been mortal enemies: "He couldn't possibly have been more uncooperative." According to Caplan, Foreman refused to speak to him, not to mention the press. All efforts to secure one-on-one interviews with reporters were in vain. Foreman would only hold press conferences, twice a week. And he would hardly deal with his press agent at all. "The only way we'd even see each other wouldn't let him win a game.

I wouldn't let him keep score." A tough time, not made much easier, one would guess, by Ali's surprising victory. Here was Foreman, who had never lost as a professional fighter, his aura of invincibility dissolved. Imagine the scene: Foreman lying on the training table, his mourning multitude arrayed about him. And he says he wants to make a statement. "Imagine it," Caplan says.

"After the biggest fight ever, in that African humidity, at 5 in the morning, the place packed so you couldn't breathe and he's going to make some profound statement. This is a guy who had never lost. What would he The text: "I have a statement to make. I found true friendship tonight. I found a true friend in Bill Caplan." Foreman rambled on a little, and one of the last things Caplan heard before his knees buckled was, "The pingpong games, all those games." losing to Joe Frazier, said: "I got things to do.

I got a family to raise. I got money to collect Thomas Hearns, who challenged Benitez for his World Boxing Council superwelter-weight title Friday night, has been lackluster in his post-Leonard fights. 4 Bulletin eismaenim now wise mraam) off RledlskiirDS game between South Carolina and Utah. ASU held a 36-34 halftime lead over the Huskies. The Sun Devils then outscored Connecticut 13-3 in the first 6:11 of the season half.

But UConn, helped by ASU's foul trouble, ran off an 8-0 spurt and cut the ASU lead to 49-45. TEMPE Arizona State got 20 points from Byron Scott and 17 from Paul Williams and defeated Connecticut, 79-64, Friday night in the opening game of the Fiesta Classic. The Devils advance tonight to play the winner of Friday's second Today Boxing, Ch. 33, 7 p.m. Radio Pro basketball try and do my one-eleventh part of it" Last year, Theismann tried to do too much.

Part of the problem was watching San Diego quarterback Dan Fouts, a Gibbs protege, in game films. "I was trying to do things in the system that I have seen other quarterbacks do. I've watched a lot of films of Dan Fouts and I said, 'Dan threw the ball here so I should throw the ball in that Theismann remembers. "It happened quite a few times and I had quite a few interceptions. Then it dawned on me that I couldn't be anybody but Joe Theismann and I have to play the game the way I play it no matter how successful the other guys are." Preparing for this year, Theismann also decided to give his arm a rest "I threw less during the off-season and started throwing later so my arm would be fresh through the season," he said.

"We throw more than a lot of teams in practice and I noticed my arm getting tired toward the end of last season." This season, Theismann said, seeing the Redskins atop the NFC "makes you feel good. I know that if we are doing well as a football team then, because of my position on the team, I must be having a good year." Theismann refuses to be drawn into discussions of a possible Super Bowl appearance. "I learned a long time ago in this business," he said, "not 4o make any plans past Sunday." By Ira Rosenfeld Associated l'rcss WASHINGTON Joe Theismann, finally knowing where he fits in and what is expected of him, has emerged as the leader of the only undefeated team in the NFL. In his ninth year as quarterback with Washington, Theismann has dimmed the fans' memories of Sonny Jurgensen and Billy Kilmer while leading the Redskins to the top of the National Football Conference with a 4-0 record. The statistics are impressive the conference's second-leading passer with 70 completions in 111 attempts for 938 yards, seven touchdowns and just two interceptions but they do not tell the entire story.

"Joe is the man who makes us click. Sure, every player must do his part but it is Joe who makes it happen," says Redskins coach Joe Gibbs. That's high praise from the man who just last year questioned the ability of his starting quarterback. "I had seen the system work every place I had been and I just couldn't believe it wouldn't work here," said Gibbs, who installed the same high-powered, pass-oriented attack as he did as offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers. Something was wrong, however, as the Redskins got off to a 0-5 start last year, Gibbs' first as a head coach.

Theismann, his right thumb badly injured in the season opener against Dallas, took the blame for the team's poor start. "I couldn't grip the ball for over a month. Here Gibbs comes to town with a passing offense and his quarterback can't throw," Theismann recalled. But he conceded that the problem was more than physical. "I didn't really understand the total concept of the offense," he said.

After the Redskins lost to San Francisco in the fifth game of the season, Theismann had his first long talk with his coach. "We sat and talked for hours in his house. I felt like a new man the next morning," Theismann said. "When I left I had a better personal understanding of what Joe Gibbs requires of me." With his injured thumb better and his new acceptance of Gibbs' offense, Theismann led the Redskins to victories in eight of their final 11 games last year. He ranked in the top five in quarterback rankings in six NFC categories, threw for over 300 yards three times and had three more games in which he went over 250 yards.

"Last year there were two different Joe Theismanns, the one at the beginning of the season and the one at the end," Theismann now says. "I don't think this year's Joe Theismann is very different than the one at the end of last year." Theismann knows that the Redskins are not a one-man team. "Before, I felt that I had to run around and make the big play. Now we have so many guys who can do so mucjj I just go out and San Diego at Phoenix, KTAR (620), 7 p.m. College football Nebraska at Hawaii, KCKY (1150), 10:25 p.m.

College basketball Sports broadcasts Television College football Army at Navy, Ch. 10, 10:30 a.m. Arkansas at Texas, Ch. 3, 1:30 p.m. College basketball Louisiana State at North Carolina, Ch.

12, noon. Villanova at Kentucky, Ch. 10, 2 p.m. Other Soccer: Poland vs. Belgium, Ch.

33, 1 p.m. SportsWorld, Ch. 12, 2 p.m. Women's volleyball, bodybuilding. Heisman Trophy Awards, Ch.

3, 5 p.m. Arizona State in Fiesta Classic at Tempe, KTAR (620), KIKO (1340) and KIKO-FM (100.3), TBA. Arizona at New Mexico, KARZ (960) and KCKY (1150), 7:10 p.m. High school basketball HtMiami at Globe, KIKO and KIKO-FM (100.3), 7:15 p.m..