BOXING : Flameouts in London: Two Promising Careers

Two boxing superstars, each of whom should be at the prime of hiscareer, flamed out in London last weekend.

And when Razor Ruddock and Meldrick Taylor were both dispatched with relative ease, you had to wonder if both had been softened up by earlier, more punishing fights.

Ruddock, 28, went out as meekly as a mouse against Lennox Lewis last Saturday night. He was down three times and it was all over in 3 minutes 46 seconds.

Only 18 months ago, Ruddock was being called “the second-best heavyweight in the world” after his two brave but losing efforts against Mike Tyson.

Taylor, 26, didn’t have a thing against unheralded Crisanto Espana, in a match for Taylor’s WBA welterweight title. Espana dominated from the outset and when the fight was stopped in the eighth round, Taylor’s career might have ended as well.

At least Lou Duva, Taylor’s longtime trainer, said it was over. If Taylor ever tries to box again, Duva said, he will file a complaint against any boxing commission that issues him a license.

Taylor was a teen-age shooting star in his Olympic gold-medal year, 1984. In January of that year, at the USA-Cuba dual meet in Reno, Jim Fox, the executive director of USA Boxing, pointed to the 17-year-old Taylor in a hotel lobby and said to a reporter: “There goes your 1984 Olympic gold medalist.”

Even when no one knew if Cuba would box in the Los Angeles Olympics--the Cubans ultimately honored the Eastern-Bloc boycott--people who had seen Taylor freely predicted a gold medal for him.

In the pros? He couldn’t miss. Maybe a world champion before he was 20.

But in the pros, Taylor had two negatives: He was relatively easy to hit, and his training discipline fell short of his talent.

Once, in the amateurs, a coach caught him in his hotel room the night before a critical morning weigh-in eating a pizza.

In a sense, the Philadelphia fighter might have eaten his way out of boxing. He struggled throughout the ’84 Olympics to make the amateur featherweight limit of 125 pounds, then had difficulty making weight at every weight class he fought in as a pro.

Between fights, he zoomed to the 180s.

Referee Mills Lane once observed: “A boxer who won’t control his weight between fights is like a carpenter who leaves his tools out in the rain.”

Espana’s victory over Taylor was probably aided by previous Taylor losses to Julio Cesar Chavez and Terry Norris. He took considerable punishment in both. In fact, Chavez put him in the hospital with a broken eye socket.

Although Taylor was ahead of Chavez on two of three scorecards, referee Richard Steele stopped it with two seconds left.

Taylor had just regained his feet after a knockdown.

And after watching him last Saturday, you’d have to say he still hasn’t regained his feet.

The news that Billy Conn is suffering from pugilistica dementia-- the medical term applied to boxers who’ve taken too many blows to the head--is as surprising as it is sad.

Conn, the Pittsburgh light-heavyweight champion of the 1930s, nearly upset heavyweight champion Joe Louis in a 1941 classic. Conn, now 75, had 76 fights over his 1934-1948 career, interrupted for three years by World War II Army service.

But only five years ago, according to his wife, Mary Louise Conn, did Conn begin suffering from severe memory loss. He is now hospitalized and recognizes only his wife and three sons.

Paula Trzepacz, associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh school of medicine, said an exam showed severe damage to Conn’s brain.

Asked if Conn’s condition could improve, she said: “Oh, heavens no. It’s just a downhill course.”

Only five years ago, days before the Sugar Ray Leonard-Marvin Hagler fight in Las Vegas, Conn entertained boxing writers with his clear, vivid recollections of his two Joe Louis fights--he lost again in a postwar rematch--and many other battles.

Boxing Notes

Hector Camacho is back in hot water, where’s he has spent most of his boxing career. The flamboyant, one-time world champion was arrested Thursday morning at a hotel near the Miami International Airport for fighting two policemen. Witnesses said Camacho screamed “I’m the Macho Man!” as he struggled with police. He was charged with three counts of battery on a policeman, one count of disorderly intoxication and possession of what appeared to be marijuana. In September, Camacho lost a lopsided decision to Julio Cesar Chavez in Las Vegas.

New Jersey referee Joe Cortez will work the Evander Holyfield-Riddick Bowe heavyweight title fight Nov. 13 at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. An all-Nevada crew will work as judges: Jerry Roth, Chuck Giampa and Dalby Shirley. . . . Little known fact: The Mexican fighter who knocked Rafael Ruelas out of a chance to make Mexico’s 1988 Olympic team is none other than Miguel Angel Gonzalez, the World Boxing Council lightweight champion. Grudge match, anyone? . . . HBO is trying to match Pernell Whitaker and Buddy McGirt for early March. . . . Henry Tillman is picking his old Olympic team roommate, Evander Holyfield, over Riddick Bowe. “Riddick has all the tools, but I just think Evander is too experienced,” Tillman said.