Boxing News : Steve Kim : A Dubious Hall of Fame

A Dubious Hall of Fame
By Steve Kim (October 12, 2003)

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To gain induction into the baseball Hall-of-Fame eligible candidates must receive at least 75-percent of the votes cast. Men like Ron Santo, Tony Oliva, Jim Kaat and Ted Simmons, who all make strong arguments for induction into the hallowed grounds of Cooperstown, New York, haven't gotten enough votes throughout the years to gain admittance into the exclusive club of baseball legends. And despite their strong credentials, no matter what is done, they are on the outside looking in for now. They simply don't have the required number of votes.

This Saturday night at the Commerce Casino near Los Angeles, the World Boxing Hall-of-Fame will induct Azumah Nelson, Chiquita Gonzalez, Del Flanagan and Joey Giambra as its newest members. But it is the induction of former lightweight champion Rodolfo 'Gato' Gonzalez that has caused a shake-up within the West Coast version of the Hall of Fame. His induction – and the manner in which he was 'voted' in – has caused several key members of the WBHOF to walk away from the organization in disgust.

"I, with eight other people, was on the selection committee and in the six years I've been on the World Boxing Hall of Fame, I thought we were making a lot of strides in the right direction with credibility," said Bob Case, who was also on the Hall-of-Fame's board of directors. "And so we thought there would be stringent rules made because we had made some errors in the past with people that had gotten in there. So we were really covering this, and the rules were that the top four people that get votes win. And that's not what happened."

Gonzalez would come up one vote short for induction, but the wheels would be put into motion for Gonzalez to be a Hall-of-Famer.

"I get a call from Norm Cote, president of the Hall-of-Fame, telling me that he has already begun to take a vote of the ten members of the executive committee,” said Robert Morales, one of three senior V.P.'s and Chairman of the Press Committee for the WBHOF, who is also a boxing scribe for the San Gabriel Valley Press. “Since 'Gato' Gonzalez only missed by one vote, they wanted to go ahead and try and vote him in anyway.

"So at that point I told Norm that this would be a very bad mistake, that publicity wise it makes us look minor league. I told him 'I don't care if the guy missed by one vote or not, bottom line is that he didn't get voted in. We have a world-wide panel of voters who decide who's going to get in. The guy didn't get in, period.'

"I almost begged him not to do this, but he pretty much showed disdain for my expertise as the media guy. And let's face it, before guys like myself and Rich Marotta came aboard, hardly anybody knew about the World Boxing Hall of Fame and with our efforts, we had it become a world-renown organization."

This is true. In the past, the Southern California-based organization was largely ignored, but it had garnered more and more attention in the past few years. The induction banquet had become a hot ticket and such luminaries as George Foreman and Don King thought enough of it to show up and get honored in the past few years. It had become a first-class event.

"It had changed so much in the past four years and as the media expert on this executive board, I told Norm that this was one of the worst things we can do," continued Morales, a respected figure on the boxing beat on the West Coast. "We're just starting to get some credibility, we have big publications like The Ring magazine doing stories on us now, the LA Times, all the big papers, and he just kept talking over me. He really wouldn't listen to anything that I said.

"And he said, 'Well, I've already taken six votes, you're the seventh."

At the time the executive committee was made up of Rich Marotta, Ken Thompson, Norm Cote, Dub Harris, Irene Mendoza, Lou Filippo, Trudie Latka, Sabatino Arbucci and Joe Noriega, along with Morales. The eventual vote would be 8-2 in favor of inducting Gonzalez. Marotta would be on vacation during this period.

Cote explained why another vote was taken for Gonzalez.

"'Gato' Gonzalez has been up there for the last five years, and he always missed by a few votes all the time. We looked at what we were inducting this year, we only had four people, and we decided we would add one more there," said Cote. "Sometimes we have five or more in the boxing category. We took a vote of our executive board. It was a vote of 8-2 that we put Rodolfo Gonzalez in this year. That's the reason why he got in there, because he go so close and that this was his year."

Both Case and Morales refute Cote's comments, stating that Gonzalez had never gotten anywhere near close to getting voted before this year. Also, they note that during their tenure, they could not remember when more than four boxers were voted in at a time, except when two fighters tied one year for the fourth spot.

Case would find out about Gonzalez's inclusion a few weeks after the ballots were counted.

"I have no quibble with Gonzalez – as a fighter or his credentials,” insisted Case, who had been involved with the WBHOF for more than a decade. "The only thing I'm saying is that even if it was Muhammad Ali, it wasn't by the rules. Do we make this like a crooked fight? I no longer have anything to do with boxing because I don't like what goes on. I thought at least the Hall of Fame would be totally legitimate and clean. So when I saw this crap, I resigned."

Gonzalez was a good fighter in his day, no doubt. He would finish with a career mark of 81-7 (70 KOs) and would win the WBC lightweight title in 1972 when he stopped Chango Carmona in 13 rounds. He would then make a few successful title defenses before losing his belt to Ishimatsu Suzuki two years later and then retire after losing a rematch to Suzuki seven months later.

"He was an aggressive, hard, puncher," said John Beyrooty, now a boxing publicist, who covered several of Gonzalez's fights when he was a boxing writer for the now-defunct L.A. Herald Examiner. "he was a lot like many of the young Mexican guys that have come up to Los Angeles across the years."

Gonzalez was an immensely popular fighter, who used to perform to overflow crowds at the Olympic Auditorium. It wasn't usual to see a large throng of fans outside the arena who simply couldn't get in to see their man fight. But is he 'Hall' material?

"For what he did in the ring, if you put aside his popularity, I don't think he was," answered Beyrooty. "And I liked him, he was one of my favorite fighters."

It looks like a classic case of lobbying and political influence being used here to get in a fighter through friendship and favoritism and not actual merit, which the WBHOF had been accused of doing many times in the past. The past reputation – and it is a well earned one – is that if you stuck around long enough and had made enough friends with the higher ups, served long enough on the California Athletic Commission or even bought a table to their banquets enough times, you'd get inducted, someway, somehow.

"It had been known as the 'West Coast' Hall-of-Fame before we came on board because there were so many guys getting in that didn't deserve to be in, (they got it) just because they were friends of members of the board," said a frustrated Morales. "That's what Rich and I were trying to get away from."

Under Morales's guidance, where the banquet once had a solitary media table, they had eight last year, filled with respected boxing journalists. The WBHOF would conduct press conferences and conference calls to promote their inductees and its ceremony. Papers from across the country that had never written before on the night were now doing so on a regular basis.

Morales and Marotta made it a priority to get qualified boxing writers and observers from all around the world involved in the voting process. They had stepped up to the big leagues.

But they just couldn't keep it from reverting back to its past form. Gonzalez isn't the only inductee that Morales questioned from this years class.

"I find it almost impossible that guys like Joey Giambra and Del Flanagan get in this year when they hadn't gotten that close, especially Giambra, he was getting less votes than Gonzalez prior to this year," Morales points out. "And suddenly these two guys get in and we have guys like Jeff Chandler and Mathew Saad Muhammad, those two guys in particular, who have been on the ballot for years, who still can't get in. Even though they were top of the line in their divisions."

Lobbying on behalf of other athletes in other sports occurs on a regular basis. When it comes time to vote on baseball's Hall of Fame, you'll find columnists all across the land, who are voters, stating their case for certain ballplayers that they had covered. It is not just exclusive to boxing.

"If it's any other sport, I agree with you on the lobbying because chances are only the best are going to get in," Morales explains, who resigned briefly in 1999 over the selection of Joey Barnum, which raised more than a few eyebrows from observers. Eventually he was begged to stay on, with promises that the process would be cleaned up.

"When it comes to boxing, you have all these 'old boys' still on the board and they're doing lobbying, where you still have guys getting in over others who are much more deserving. So by the time 'Gato' Gonzalez came along, I was already pissed off."

Another point of frustration for Morales was that the WBHOF had made no progress on actually getting a museum site for their organization. Morales had once written a column detailing plans for a museum site at the Los Angeles Athletic Club and was told by chairman Dub Harris, that it was 'a lock' to happen. It never got off the ground.

"It turns out it was never a lock, it was never a done deal," laments Morales.

If anything, the WBHOF had gone backwards in its pursuit of a home base. Morales vividly recalls making a connection with the management of the Caesars Palace in Las Vegas prior to Shane Mosley's bout with Shannon Taylor in 2001, with talk centering on the hotel having some interest in placing the museum on their grounds. Calls to Ken Thompson, who was the president at the time, and his assistant Alex Campanova were never returned.

"Which Alex became famous for," Morales says, "not returning phone calls."

Then there was the case of Marotta, who enjoys a solid relationship with the Mandalay Bay, which sponsors his 'Neutral Corner' radio show in Los Angeles. On the weekend of the Lennox Lewis-Hasim Rahman rematch, Marotta had helped arrange a deal where the WBHOF would be allowed to set up an exhibit on the hotel grounds. It would be a big foot in the door. But one that was never put forward as no one from the organization either showed up or called to give an explanation for their absence.

For Marotta, who resigned before 'Gato-gate', this was his biggest frustration that led to his departure. The banquet had become a gala event, moving from the Airport Marriot to the Bonaventure Hotel and then to the Commerce Casino throughout the years. But the WBHOF still had no actual home. Without it, it would always pale in comparison to the hall of fame located in New York.

"When I was first approached about coming to the World Boxing Hall of Fame, and being a part of the board of directors, the thing I was most interested in was that they were planning at the time to move the World Boxing Hall of Fame forward," said Marotta, who also is announces fights for Fox Sports Net. "To make it really a viable organization, to take it out of the West Coast reputation and to get a museum built. To me, that was the key to everything, to really have a place, a physical hall of fame. Because at Canastota you have a physical hall of fame where people can go to. So that was a very big interest of mine.

"Some moves were made in that direction and during the course of my four years that I was with them. But now they seem to have even lost touch with that. From what I understand there's not any money in the building fund anymore and they don't really seem to be looking seriously for a physical home."

As of now, they have an induction ceremony, and that's about it.

"I have a very busy schedule, I've got three or four entities that I'm working for," said Marotta, whose work demands that he travel often. "And if I'm going to spend a lot of energy I want it to be for something that's really moving forward and I felt I didn't want to expend a lot of energy for one great dinner a year. That's not really worth it."

The Gonzalez induction reaffirmed to Marotta that he had made the right decision to walk away.

"I don't get the 'Gato' Gonzalez vote,” said an incredulous Marotta. "I don't know what caused it. I don't know why it happened because I was never notified of it even though I'm on the board of directors and even though I was a member of the executive committee. No one called me and told me 'Hey, we're going to take a vote on this guy.'

"He came close, he came within one vote of being selected, BUT, he didn't make it – it's that simple. He didn't make it. He didn't get the votes necessary. And last year Chiquita Gonzalez came within one vote of making it and he didn't get in last year and nobody took any special vote for him."

Perhaps he didn't know the right people or have the right ones pulling for him. But the reality is without a certain protocol with rules and regulations being enforced, the voting process is now a sham. The panel of over 300 voters has been rendered useless by those who ursurped their authority and inducted Gonzalez. Why even send out ballots anymore? Just let the executive committee decide who they want at their annual dinner. The rules were clearly stated on the ballots. If the decision of those voting are not going to be respected, why even have a world-wide panel of voters? Why not just have the executive board pick and choose who they want inducted?

"Well," responded Cote, "the executive board does make the decision. We have got a regular board but we have an executive board that makes the final decision."

Oh, OK.

"I've got nothing but phone calls, from fighters themselves to fight promoters, that are very happy that he got in there," said Cote, who has been with the WBHOF for 22 of its 24 years. "Rodolfo, should have gotten in there a long time ago as far as I'm concerned."

Yes, but the voters didn't think so. Not that it matters to Cote.

"We've had people before, it's not the first time that we've gotten to the point where someone's been there for a long time that deserved to get in there. It's a decision of the board, not the decision of anybody else."

The WBHOF may have done irreparable damage to his reputation. And to reverse it they may need new – and much younger and forward thinking – leadership up top and across the board.

"Oh, yeah," agreed Morales, emphatically. "I'll tell you right now, Norm Cote can't continue to be president of the World Boxing Hall of Fame if they want to have any chance of getting back to where it was before this year. Because any guy who isn't smart enough to listen to the guy who was responsible for getting people's attention, for him to be so foolish as to not even ask my opinion or listen to it when I give it to him on something that's as important as this 'Gato' Gonzalez thing, shouldn't be president of anything."

Morales says that he will not be attending Saturday night's banquet nor will he be writing one word about it in his column. Neither will Marotta.

"I was still asked to emcee the dinner; I wouldn't do it," he said. "I'm not going to attend because I just feel it would be hypocritical because there's too much stuff going on right now that I don't agree with and that I think is taking the Hall of Fame in a backward direction. And if I went there I feel like I would be validating what was going on."

With the departure of Case, the WBHOF is losing a loyal and dedicated soldier. In Morales they are now without a man who was a tireless worker who used his connections in the media to spread the message of the organization. In Marotta, they are devoid of its greatest ambassador. It wasn't unusual for Marotta to give the WBHOF and its members large segments of airtime on his radio show or mention it whenever he was on the radio or television airways. The World Boxing Hall of Fame had benefited greatly from their various efforts.

"We've operated long before we had members, we operated long before we had any press coverage. We've always sold out," said Cote, using an ironic term, ‘sold out'. "This is our 24th year. If someone feels that they're insulted by something like this, that's their problem. As far as key members, our whole board is key members and if someone leaves, we'll have someone to replace them."

But it’s lost much more than three disgruntled members. It lost its credibility. Let's see them replace that.

OH YEAH

Congrats to our own Michael Katz, who along with Ricardo Maldonado and Benny Georgino are being inducted in the expanded category. Katz should be writing a real interesting column on
his induction.

THE PROFESSOR’S ABSENSE

Word is that Azumah Nelson will not be attending the festivities because he had wanted to bring a whole throng with him and the cost was simply too much to bring his whole crew.