THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280559
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JIM DUCIBELLA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 276 lines
In blue-collar cities and towns, boxing remains a Way Out. The guy with steel fists and granite jaw can rise above his otherwise uninteresting destiny. A place like The Boathouse is a good place to watch it unfold.
The joint isn't full, but a raucous, eager gathering has waded in from the Thursday night rain - at $20 a head. Beer flows freely inside this soggy relic of a nightclub. Seductively clad ring girls solicit cat-calls one minute, then cleverly rebuff propositions from sexed-up guys whose courage grows by the foamy gulp.
Good fighters. Bad fighters. The crowd hardly cares.
Cold brew. Hot babes. That's the snare.
No matter how seedy or superficial the environment, half-naked men beating each other into early senility still stirs our pot. The game conjures as riveting a collection of stories outside the ring as any found inside the square.
Kevin Hall, Jimmy Loesack and Gary Tompkins tell stories they say they never forget as they drive to the Karate International boxing studio in Virginia Beach. Each is a relative newcomer to the trade. Each is trying to write a life's chapter they'd love to one day call ``The Boathouse Today, The Garden Tomorrow.''
THE RED-HAIRED, FRECKLE-FACED WHITE BOY
He led with his fists as a kid. He led with his nose as a teen. Neither style served him kindly.
The Italian kids in Pittsburgh's Penn Hills section picked on him the moment they saw his red hair and freckles. Kevin Hall swears he never backed away from a fight even though, ``I must have lost my first 10.''
After he moved to Sandbridge in Virginia Beach, he never backed away from a party. First, beer, pot and girls. Next, bars, cocaine and women. Finally, street corners, drug dealers and their dirty work.
``For a year, I was so low I couldn't get up,'' he says. ``I was helpless.''
Eventually, Hall found his estranged father and begged for help. His dad put him on an unusual restriction: They spent 24 hours a day together, seven days a week. For one year, the old man never let the kid out of his sight.
That was five years ago. Clean all that time, Hall now does volunteer work for Narcotics Anonymous. He's married and has a son. Kevin Jr. might be the cutest kid in America, what with his bouquet of red hair and angelic face. Hall, 25, and cousin Jimmy Loesack run the family home-remodeling business. It's OK, but not where he most wants to be.
That would be the ring, then counseling addicts. Counseling gives him the most satisfaction, but he's waiting on a full-time career.
Within the last few seconds, that has seemed like a terrific idea.
Hall's right hand has just ripped the tender flesh over Tyrone Haywood's left eye, slicing open a cut so clean he could have used a boning knife.
One turn around the ring and Hall is splattered with blood. It trickles down his freckled shoulders and back. It clings to his neck, his cheek, some sweat-matted hair on his head, his arms.
It is the fourth round of a scheduled 10-round junior middleweight bout. Hall hasn't administered the knockout he craves. In fact, until a moment ago, he had been outboxed.
Energized by the sight of Haywood's blood, the crowd exhales as one, encircling ringside with cigarette smoke and a faint chorus: ``Kevin . . . Kevin . . . Kevin . . .''
One and all, Hall hears them. He crouches, measuring his man, then flicks another dart at the crimson bull's-eye inches away.
It has little effect.
More rounds pass. Haywood is still bloody. But he's no closer to going down. It's a frustrating exercise for Hall, who had a recent fight stopped when he cut. But not tonight. Between rounds, Haywood's trainers patch him up and Hall unzips his lid again.
The day before, Hall talked about The Knockout, how a cheering crowd pulled that demon urge from deep inside him and fed the monster until he could resist it no more. But what would be better for his career would be to go 10 rounds and win. Time to show some staying power.
Now it's happening and Hall has reason to worry about a winning streak that has upped his record to 9-1-1, close to a U.S. Boxing Association ranking. After that could come a USBA title bout and a possible world ranking. Big stakes.
``Some days, I'm like, `Hey, I'm here,' and sometimes I wonder why I didn't pick an easier sport, like baseball,'' he had said at weigh-in the night before. ``Some guy wants to knock your head off, you want to knock his head off, and you don't know if you've got the conditioning to do it. I was more comfortable fighting four-rounders than fighting somebody for 10 rounds. I'm a ball of nerves right now and I don't know why.''
Maybe because he's a red-haired, freckle-faced white boy who can box. The TV networks love them.
But Haywood is trouble. The first three fighters promoter Bob Fregin lined up, all unbeaten, backed out. Haywood, from Rockville, Md., accepted late, very late.
``This guy must think he's King Kong, that he really has something,'' Hall says the day before.
What Haywood had, other than an 8-0 record, were legs like tree stumps, a bullet-proof chest and a nasty, baiting demeanor. Round after round he chained his much-larger frame to Hall's, muscling him by taking advantage of the leverage his superior lower body provided.
Haywood unloaded numbing punches to Hall's ribs and stomach. Hall tried to get full swings at Haywood's eye, but too often his arms were pinned.
Even so, at the start of the ninth round Haywood's trainers tell him he must knock out Hall to win. He never comes close. Hall, it would seem, has scored a narrow victory.
But the results take longer than normal to compile. Then the announcement: a split decision. The first judge scores it 96-94 for Haywood. The next gives it to Hall 97-93 - a relative rout. The final, and deciding, judge tabs Haywood 96-94.
Hall is stunned. He thought he'd won six rounds.
``I got to think about this,'' he says. ``I don't want to keep doing this if I'm going to get robbed in my hometown. This is two losses on my record now. I'm going nowhere like that.''
With Hall back in the dressing room, a rematch is announced for April 25. Fregin says Hall will be there. Bobby Jordan, who began training Hall three months ago, isn't sure.
``I told him to go home and think about it, that it wasn't my decision to make,'' Jordan says. ``If he sticks with it, he'll make good money. But it's a hard road. I can help him, but I can't make him do it.
``Kevin showed heart, something I hadn't seen in the gym. He stood in there, shooting the short shots, putting the guy in trouble. He's got to pat himself on the back. That was a helluva fight. Once he learns, he could be a USBA champ. Once he learns, he could shoot for an IBF title, maybe by this time next year. I'd like to teach him.''
THE SANDMAN
An hour before, Virginia super-middleweight state champion Jimmy ``Sandman'' Loesack stared down at Russell Woods, an opponent almost as tall as he was wide.
Though they look like Mutt and Jeff in the ring, Loesack is taking this fight very seriously. At 7-0, a few more victories could land him a ranking in the USBA and better, much better, paydays.
That's been his aim for the year or so he has been splitting time between general contracting with Hall and building a game in the ring. Under Jordan's training, the foundation is there, though it's taken as much forgetting as it has remembering.
Loesack, 26, knew how to hurt people from his youth as a street fighter in Pittsburgh's down-and-dirty Penn Hills section and, later, on the football field at Kellam High School. He didn't know how to box. Still doesn't, not completely, says Jordan.
That's why Woods is intriguing. His 2-3 record aside, he can deliver a punch. If Loesack isn't careful, he'll learn that face-first.
Woods knows what he is, that his only chance at victory is a Custer-like charge and to ignite a bomb that explodes at Loesack's jaw. The bell sounds. Woods comes hard. Loesack absorbs his punches, waiting, waiting, waiting. Then, ever briefly, Woods drops his hands. An alarm goes off inside Loesack. He unleashes. Jab. Hard jab. Overhand right. Uppercut.
Finally, a left hook roars into Woods' skull. He topples, eyes glazed. After just 43 seconds, he stares blankly under the bottom rope, his face a terrified concession that he is imprisoned in a dark, unforgiving world.
``Best punch I ever threw,'' Loesack beams later.
After a few frightening minutes of doctors shining their pen-lights into the darkness behind his eyes, Woods recovers. The fog lifts. He walks alone to the dressing room, even slapping hands with spectators, assuring them he'll box again, soon.
Despite knocking out Woods, Loesack's game is defense. That's where the teaching process began for him under Jordan. That's where he and Hall begin with the kids they teach Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights at Karate International.
``When a person first gets into a ring, they want to throw every punch they have,'' Loesack said. ``After a minute they're sucking wind. They have nothing left. Defense makes you a calmer fighter.''
There's nothing placid about Loesack's life or the urgency with which he lives it. He's up every morning at 5 to meet Hall for a run, then off to work for eight hours with Hall, then straight to the gym for training.
``I have to do something in the next couple of years,'' he said. ``That alone makes me 10 times hungrier.
``I have a chance to do something for my family. Worst comes to worst, I'll still be a general contractor. However, the best scenario is that I win a world title. My family's financially set. We have a beach-front home. I drive past Princess Anne Marina, I see the boats. I want one some day, or maybe a piece of property. I want five or six acres. I'd feel like a success if I could give that to my children.''
The dressing-room door opens. In walks Egerton Marcus, ranked among the top 10 cruiserweights by several boxing associations. He and Loesack have sparred. They're friends.
``He's going to be champion one day,'' Loesack tells a visitor, his admiration obvious.
``Oh my God,'' Marcus exclaims, impressed. ``You sent (Woods) out.''
Loesack smiles, nods.
There's a lot to tell the girls, ages 5 and 1, when he gets home. Only the oldest has seen him fight, and only once. He doesn't want them worrying about him.
``My oldest daughter watches a lot of boxing with me on TV,'' he said. ``It's funny, she'll look at the TV and say, `Is that you, daddy? Is that you?' I tell her, `No, but someday it will be.' ''
THE VISIONARY
Gary Tompkins would love to be able to say the same thing - that he, too, will be on TV someday. But the odds are long.
When you're 33 and have just made your pro debut - as Tompkins did at the Boathouse with a unanimous decision over Billy ``Pit Bull'' Lewis - time is the speed bag you can't punch enough. But Tompkins speaks serenely. He knows he'll be a success because God has said so in the visions Tompkins has received.
There have been three in the 20 months since Tompkins returned to the ring and the boxing career he never allowed to get off the ground as a younger man.
``They are a sign,'' says Tompkins, a born-again Christian since 1990. ``No more doubt. They came from God, not the enemy. It gives me more confidence. I've now got the strength that I can do it. Everytime I go into the ring in that gym, that's all I think about, that dream.''
Work the body, the vision instructs. Attack the body. The arms come down, the opponent falls. Asleep, Tompkins does as he's shown. Three visions, three victories. All first-round knockouts.
``They had to stop the fights because I was hurting my opponent's body so bad,'' he said. ``I would reveal these dreams to my fiancee and she'd say, `Hey, it's good, it's a blessing.' That's motivated me, too.''
Tompkins is proud of the new man he's become. More focused. More dedicated. More confident.
That's how he remembers Sweetpea Whitaker from their brief days as amateur teammates. Tompkins saw Sweetpea recently. The champion talked about Tompkins' 81-inch reach, his skills, his quickness. He wanted to know why Tompkins had quit.
It was a potent elixir - the chance meeting with Whitaker, his own re-emerging desire to box, the opening of a gym so near his Virginia Beach home. So when he finishes cleaning offices for Mr. A's Professional Service, Tompkins heads to the Karate International Boxing Gym and trainer Bobby Jordan.
``My skills have escalated in a short period of time and it won't take me long to reach a higher plateau,'' Tompkins says. ``I feel like (promoters) Bob (Fregin) and Jack (Crider) are the right people, have the right connections and the right trainer. God put it all in place.''
The one thing God hasn't given Tompkins is time. Fregin says he should have turned pro four years ago.
``I've got to get this kid in the gym,'' Jordan admits. ``He's got a gift. Get in the gym, get in real shape. It's a whole new ballgame then. But I can't make that decision for him. He has to make it.''
Tompkins has.
``I want to get to the point where I do my work in the gym all day,'' he said.
But only if it's the Lord's will. Tompkins believes it is.
``I just thank Him,'' Tompkins says after his debut. He's an engaging, friendly man, easy to like. ``He helped me through it. I mean, I did all right, for my first fight. Next time, I'll be better, a lot better.''
There's lots of room to improve. Tompkins, and the crowd, are amused by some of Pit Bull's punches, because they aren't really punches. More like playful, baby-bear slaps Pit's Bullpen can't stomach.
``Three-four, three-four, three-four!'' Like Broadway choreographers, Pit Bull's cornermen beseech him to throw his punches in combination, 10 times a minute. ``Let go of your hands, Bull! Let go of your hands!''
Pit Bull hangs on to his hands. Tompkins is tentative, too.
He had rushed from his corner at first bell just oozing adrenaline. But that ebbed fast. It takes time before his punches again have any zip.
In the second, Tompkins hits Bull with an uppercut, staves off a counter-punch, then administers a combination to Pit Bull's head. In Round 3, he takes control, landing a solid right to the head that stops Pit Bull in his tracks, forcing retreat.
The three judges all score the fight 40-36 for Tompkins, igniting a frenzied family celebration.
[A career, they pray, has begun.] ILLUSTRATION: LAWRENCE JACKSON color photos/The Virginian-Pilot
Visions from God drive Gary Tompkins to box. A former amateur
teammate of Pernell ``Sweetpea'' Whitaker, the 33-year-old fighter
from Virginia Beach, left, scored a unanimous decision over Billy
``Pit Bull'' Lewis in his pro debut at The Boathouse.
Jerry Smith, left, watches the action in the ring as his son Lee
cheers the winner of a technical knockout. The Chesapeake men said
they enjoy the Thursday night boxing programs.
Photos
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Billy ``Pit Bull'' Lewis, left, reels from battering administered by
Gary Tompkins, who pounded out a unanimous decision.
Jimmy ``Sandman'' Loesack, the state super-middleweight champ from
Virginia Beach, laces up his shoes. It took less time - 43 seconds -
for him to knock out his opponent, Russell Woods.
GARY C. KNAPP/The Virginian-Pilot
Kevin Hall, 25, of Virginia Beach suffered his second pro loss
against undefeated Tyrone Haywood of Rockville, Md.
by CNB