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It would be too harsh to label Kirk Johnson the Ryan Leaf of boxing (after all, nobody is THAT big of a bust) but certainly Johnson has to rank up there with the game's biggest disappointments.

It was laid out perfectly for Johnson, who came into his bout with John Ruiz last Saturday night with an undefeated mark of 32-0-1. Fresh off of inking a million-dollar signing bonus from Duva Boxing, he was not only matched against a lightly-regarded titlist in Ruiz, a win could catapult him into a showdown with Lennox Lewis. All with HBO's blessing.

Instead, Johnson would fight hesitantly and aimlessly en route to losing via 10th-round disqualification for a series of low blows to 'the Quiet Man.' Now where does Duva Boxing and Johnson go from here? Well, it looks like they're stuck with each other — Johnson's stock isn't exactly soaring and Duva Boxing mortgaged their future on him.

"Oh, yeah (we're sticking with Johnson)," affirmed Dino Duva, the president of Duva Boxing on Monday afternoon. "Forget about what happened in the fight as far as the result. In my opinion, Kirk Johnson proved to the world he's world championship caliber as a talent. He certainly made some mistakes, he certainly made some mental mistakes. I don't think physically there were any problems with Kirk the other night. I think mentally he had some deficiencies but I still think Kirk is still one of the most talented heavyweights in the world and I'm certainly not going to desert him. I'm behind him 100-percent and we're going to try and get him right back in the picture."

Give Duva credit, he isn't abandoning ship. In fact his company could be looking for a life boat in the form of a protest.

"We're examining all of the tapes of the fight," explained Duva. "All of the different angles, all of the different issues that occurred during the fight and quite honestly as of right now, we're not ruling out a formal protest over some of the things that happened in the fight and the way it went."

One of the issues is referee Joe Cortez, who, in the words of Duva, "had a very, very bad night." Cortez, if you recall was the referee when Ruiz suffered a questionable low blow against Evander Holyfield last year in their rematch at the Mandalay Bay. Once again, Cortez was embroiled in a similar controversy.

"I think Joe Cortez had a terrible night," said Johnson's co-manager Ken Lilien, "and not just against us. I mean he made some bad calls with Johnny, too. He really hurt us in the seventh round because that was a knockout, I mean that was clearly a body punch. I believe even Emanuel Steward and Larry Merchant (who called the fight for HBO) replayed it and kept saying that, as I understand it, on the telecast."

Indeed, both Steward and Merchant said that they felt that the left hook that was ruled a low blow by Cortez — which had Ruiz writhing in pain for around five minutes — was a clean body punch. But in looking at replays, the punch did land on the beltline of Ruiz's trunks around the upper right thigh. Now, maybe if those were Michael Grant's trunks it was a legal punch, but Ruiz's trunks were nowhere near that high. However, while it may have been a low blow, it didn't seem like the type of debilitating shot on the money that Andrew Golota was infamous for.

"I think he's a tough, tough bastard, but Johnny Ruiz is one of the biggest actors in the world," stated a frustrated Duva. "He does it every fight, every single fight. You can hit him with a borderline shot right on the belt, where you don't even feel it and he'll fall down and act like he's half dead. And that's an important factor in what we're looking into. He stayed down on the floor for five minutes and if that wasn't a legitimate low blow, technically that should have been a knockout."

Some might think that Cortez had some Puerto Rican-bias for Ruiz, but the bottom line is that Cortez has slipped badly as a world-class referee for years. He is no longer 'firm or fair'. In the ninth round, Cortez seemed to miss two knockdowns that Ruiz scored after clipping Johnson on the chin with a counter-right hand that had Johnson buzzed badly and had him resorting to tackling Ruiz once and then taking a knee near the end of that round.

Johnson, before being DQ'd, might have been on his way to getting KO'd anyway and he was behind on all three scorecards to boot. Either way, a bad ending to a listless performance by Johnson, who came into the bout as a 3-1 favorite over the defending WBA titlist.

So what happened? Did the year layoff (from his last bout, against Larry Donald) effect his performance?

"Well, we can always say that and use that as an excuse," said his trainer, Curtis Cokes, "but other guys take eight, nine months off. As long as they work in the gym, it doesn't make any difference. The same things that happens in the gym, happens in the fight. You got to get hit and you got to block and slip, whatever. So we had mini-camps all the way up until this fight and then we went into serious training.

"I can't see where the layoff hurt him if he's doing something in the gym. If he's not in the gym at all, yeah. But he was in the gym continuously with different kind of sparring partners, just like a fight."

Maybe it was his conditioning. In seeing Johnson at various fights this past year (Bernard Hopkins-Felix Trinidad and Paulie Ayala-Bones Adams II) Johnson seemed to be looking for a spot on the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade as a float. Against Ruiz, he came in at 238 pounds. Did the weight make him sluggish and slow?

"No, I wouldn't agree with that," answered Lilien. "We did a lot of mini-camps. When Kirk's not in camp he might put on 20 pounds, but remember also, guys like Oscar De La Hoya puts on 15, 20 pounds when he's not training for a fight. But with Kirk, we did a lot of mini-camps and then we gave him some down time too."

But Cokes has another idea: "Kirk is a growing boy and he put on some muscle and that may have effected him because he's doing the weight deal with a weight coach. He put on some muscle in his shoulders and chest, he put on a lot of bulk there and that's maybe something that he shouldn't have done. But as far as weight, he's got muscle now, he's not fat, it's muscle. I like for him to weight 230, 233 when he fights. But now he weighs 238 and those few pounds could have effected him. I just don't know."

But maybe what was more important than his physical condition was his mental psyche coming into the fight. For months after wrapping up his mandatory challenger status with his win over Donald, Johnson would be wined-and-dined by all the usual suspects in the game for his services as his promotional contract with Cedric Kushner had expired. Big money and lofty promises would come his way, and why not? He was boxing's biggest free-agent at the time, who with an expected victory over Ruiz, would go on to make the really big bucks against the Lewises and Klitschkos of the world.

With that it seemed Johnson lost his hunger and focus — he certainly didn't seem to fight with any sense of urgency on Saturday night in what was supposed to be his biggest fight of his life. Instead, he fought like a guy who believed that the title was going to be handed to him on a silver platter, something that was ordained, not earned. But then it's hard to stay hungry and focused when you just cashed a million-dollar signing bonus.

HBO can script 'the Sopranos' and 'Sex in the City' but they can't script heavyweight fights. Lewis is now left with one less name he'd consider fighting and Johnson is at ground zero. But his people think it won't be that hard getting back on the network, even after his last outing.

"Really, I don't think it would be hard," said Lilien. "I mean the only reason I think it would be hard is because of the availability of dates. There are top five guys, if Kirk goes out and proves that it was a bad job by a referee and John Ruiz's ugly style that made him not look as good as Kirk Johnson usually is, we right in it. Kirk's willing to fight anybody, whether it be Hasim Rahman or even a Mike Tyson. Kirk's ready to fight any of them and prove that what people saw was not 100-percent Kirk Johnson."

Amazingly enough, HBO would consider bringing Johnson back immediately.

"In the right fight (we bring him back)," said Xavier James of HBO Sports. "You got to remember there's such a dearth of talent in the heavyweight division. We would certainly consider bringing Kirk back in the right fights. What that fight is, I'm not sure. But in the right matchup, Kirk Johnson is still a player but we have to take a wait-and-see approach on that and see what goes on from here."

Another thing that hasn't helped Johnson's cause is his lack of activity the past several years. Whether it's been due to a bum elbow or waiting for his mandatory shot, the bottom line is that Johnson hasn't fought more than two times in a calender year since 1998 — when he had four bouts.

Cokes wants him back quickly and not against 'Heavyweight Explosion-like' opposition.

"They're talking about fighting him in two months, to three months. I think with a two week layoff and getting back in the gym," Cokes said. "But, he's going to have to fight upscale now, he can't just fight anybody — he's got to fight like a Rahman, a Tyson, the Klitschko brothers, some of those guy's that got that name up there and can have the same status."

The free ride for Johnson is now over but Duva still has confidence in his man.

"Look, I think Kirk proved his ability as a boxer, he was out-boxing Johnny Ruiz," stated Duva. "I don't necessarily agree with the scorecards, I think Kirk had won all but two or three rounds up until the fight got stopped. But with that being said, the loss and the way it occurred, Kirk's got to dig down real deep and prove himself in the future and he's got to do it very quickly because he's got to get right back into the picture. If he starts fading away or disappearing for awhile, that's not going to help him either.

"My personal opinion is that he still has the talent to fight and beat any heavyweight in the world. But he's got to prove himself now more than ever."

WHAT ABOUT RUIZ?

Does HBO make it a hat-trick in televising their favorite heavyweight whipping-boy?

"There are three fights we would televise with John Ruiz," said James. "Potentially, a Fres Oquendo fight, but I'm not sure about that one because in the ring that might be an ugly fight to watch. It might be an interesting angle because it's an all-Puerto Rican fight. In the ring? I don't know if it's an exciting fight. The other two we'd televise is a fight against Lewis, if that should happen, and certainly a rematch with David Tua."

By the looks of things, with Oquendo now signed up with Don King, that matchup seems to be the most likely of the three.

JIM MCILLVAINE

You can't really compare Johnson to Ryan Leaf, or even a Blair Thomas, Tony Mandarich or Rick Mirer. What Johnson is really like is Jim McIllvaine, Greg Ostertag and Todd McCulloch. Guys who received big contracts in the NBA for the simple fact that they are centers in a league devoid of quality big men (outside of the Shaq Diesel). Just watch the bidding war that will break out if the Clippers' Michael Olawakandi gets into the free agent market.

In any other division, Johnson would have a long climb back up the mountain. In the heavyweight division, one or two wins, and he's right back in the picture with big money awaiting him.

Do you think things like this frustrate guys like Tim Austin?

CURSE OF THE WALRUS

With Johnson's meltdown against Ruiz this past weekend, now more than ever, I believe in the 'Kushner Kurse'. Shane Mosley, Hasim Rahman and now Johnson have gone down in flames after leaving his company.

The Boston Red Sox and Babe Ruth have nothing on this guy.

Word is that Chris Byrd, who is the top-rated heavyweight by the IBF, was being wooed heavily by King this past weekend. Be careful Chris, don't say I didn't warn you.

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