L A Boxing Club

There was no party or major announcement. About a year after its sister building, the Grand Olympic Auditorium, staged a lavish reopening, the L.A. Boxing Club--2,500 square feet devoted to fistic excellence--simply swung open its doors in February 1994 and waited to see who showed up. In a sport that had thrived among sacrifice, grime and tight, uncomfortable spaces, here was a huge, clean, well-lighted place, stocked with all the equipment a boxer could need, and waiting for discovery.

There was no party or major announcement. About a year after its sister building, the Grand Olympic Auditorium, staged a lavish reopening, the L.A. Boxing Club--2,500 square feet devoted to fistic excellence--simply swung open its doors in February 1994 and waited to see who showed up. In a sport that had thrived among sacrifice, grime and tight, uncomfortable spaces, here was a huge, clean, well-lighted place, stocked with all the equipment a boxer could need, and waiting for discovery.

Using the winter rains as her medium, Mother Nature paints pictures that invite passersby to pause for reflection. Christine Perez McGhee strolls along the Venice pier, studying the shades of gray swirled together on the cloudy horizon. A puddle reflects lithe palm trees along Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica. Another pool of rainwater, along Broadway, turns downtown L.A. upside-down. Visionary For many Angelenos, it's all about seeing and being seen.

In an effort to upgrade the undercard of Saturday's Lennox Lewis-Vitali Klitschko heavyweight title fight at Staples Center, promoter Gary Shaw has added Ricardo Williams, a silver medalist in the 2000 Olympics. Still to be determined for Williams, a super-middleweight, are an opponent, a length for the bout and his spot on the card. Williams (8-1) is coming off his first professional loss, a unanimous decision to Juan Valenzuela on Feb. 15 in Las Vegas.

Does Mike Tyson have a future in boxing? Is Oscar De La Hoya, East L.A.'s "Golden Boy," overrated? When will Pomona's "Sugar" Shane Mosley and Oxnard's Fernando Vargas gain national prominence? For Southern Californians who want to know, tune in to Steve Kim's weekly radio show devoted to "the sweet science" of boxing. Since June 1997, with just a brief hiatus, Kim, 27, has hosted "The Main Event," airing Sunday nights at 9 p.m. on XTRA (1150 AM).

It's not unusual to see a fight break out between boxers at a news conference. It is unusual to see one that wasn't staged as a publicity stunt. How do I know that the brawl between Lucia Rijker and Christy Martin on Monday at the L.A. Boxing Club wasn't choreographed? No TV cameras were in position to film it for the evening news. You have to figure Don King has seen everything in the sport.

Jerry Boyd, a veteran Los Angeles boxing trainer and ringside "cut man" who battled rejection slips for 40 years before becoming a literary sensation at age 70 with a collection of boxing short stories written under the pen name F.X. Toole, has died. He was 72. Boyd, a Redondo Beach resident, died Sept 2 of complications after heart surgery in a Torrance hospital. Boyd surprised the regulars at the L.A.

Up until a few days ago, if you ducked into the L.A. Boxing Club, at the ragtag corner of Washington and Hope, asking after a certain "F.X. Toole," you might be rebuffed with a blank stare. A lifted eyebrow. A beat of silence. In the warren of sky-lit rooms overtaken by blue-canvas boxing rings, men and women who hit the bags and dance the canvas here don't know jack about an F.X. Toole.

Oscar De La Hoya, scheduled to fight Derrell Coley tonight in a welterweight match at Madison Square Garden, was a pound over the 147-pound limit at the Friday weigh-in, according to Coley and his handlers. "He weighed 148 and he knows it," Coley said. That was disputed by Melville Southard, chairman of the New York State Athletic Commission. "As far as I know, there was air between the 147 [mark] and the top [of the scale]," Southard said. "There is no controversy in my mind, no favoritism.

Fernando Vargas long has fancied himself a favorite of Mexican fight fans, the very same crowd that has been hesitant to fully embrace Oscar De La Hoya. But Vargas recently pressed the issue, asserting that Mexicans are united in his corner for Saturday's super-welterweight title fight at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas.

Gold wire-rimmed glasses fogged, the Los Angeles-based fashion editor for Latin America's leading women's magazine was fanning himself with his glossy four-color product. "They called me this afternoon and told me to come out to this . . . place," he said, swiping a hand through the smoke at the dingy interior of the Country Club in Reseda, where, on this night, a cutting-edge hipness was happening: an all-women's boxing card.