Fight judge Eugenia Williams had to deliver in the Holyfield/Lewis bout or knew she would not `work in this town again’, writes Kevin Mitchell
According to the billboard over the freeway as you come out of New York through the Lincoln Tunnel, North New Jersey regards itself as “the embroidery capital of the world”. Weird, possibly true. Certainly at the offices of the International Boxing Federation (IBF) in East Orange, NJ, they know how to decorate the truth, if not the carpets and curtains.
The reality the IBF wants you to believe – grand, upright institution of influence – takes a slight knock the minute you enter the foyer of its ninth-floor “suite” at 134 Evergreen Place. This is not the Chrysler Building. A small silver bell is fixed to the counter by sticky tape and, once employed, it brings to the reception window of a dowdy office a T-shirted gentleman not immediately disposed to recognising you as an equal.
“You gotta ‘pointment? Mr Lee’s in conference, then he gotta meetin’. Late already. Come back tomorra.”
No can do, friend, says your reporter, effecting an unconvincing Mike Hammer mien. After much juvenile eyeballing, an audience with the main man is secured.
Bobby W Lee Snr, to give him his entire handle, shuffles over, resplendent in a brown, pin-striped suit made even more gorgeous by the usual accoutrements of tack – unused silk hanky, gold cuff links, tiepin and a watch heavy enough to break your foot. He looks every inch the president of a boxing organisation.
“Great to see you,” says Lee, with the customised enthusiasm of a busy man. To be fair, last week was a hectic one for Lee and his grandiloquent IBF. They have been accused of fixing the biggest heavyweight fight in years, the 12-rounder at Madison Square Garden the previous Saturday night between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield.
The essence of the allegation – and about which he has been quizzed in one of two separate investigations in New York this week – is that Lee, a friend of Evander Holyfield’s promoter Don King and no stranger to fraud inquiries himself, had appointed as one of the three fight judges a $39 000-a- year, recently bankrupted municipal accountant from Atlantic City called Eugenia Williams, confident that she would deliver an eccentric verdict if Lennox Lewis looked like winning. He did. And she did. Result: a draw.
Well, Bobby? “We had 156 judges to choose from,” he says, unwittingly reaching for a spade with which to dig a hole, “and I had no hesitancy about using her, because she came with no baggage. She never did either fighter, Holyfield or Lewis, so no one could point the finger and say, `She’s been Holyfield’s judge twice, or Lewis’s judge twice.’ She was as clean as a house and that’s a major reason that we put her in there.”
Disregarding the paranoia at play here (Larry O’Connell, pilloried for calling it a draw, had done Lewis four times as a judge and four times as a referee), you don’t get better jokes than this in the other Bob’s full house. So, Williams, who once trained as a boxer, before taking up karate and modelling, was the best judge from 150? As Jack Nicholson, briefly raising his sunglasses, said when asked for an interview: “I don’t think so.”
Jack Newfield, whose The Life and Crimes of Don King is a defining work on the boxing business, claims Lee has long been suspected of being King’s bagman. The authorities have already trawled Lee’s books for evidence of small-time fraud, but Mr President says: “I have nothing to hide.”
Yes he has, says Newfield, who characterised the Lewis/Holyfield farrago as “like burglarising the Vatican”.
Burgled from the $30-million purse, also, was the IBF’s 2% “vigorish” off the top, which came to $600 000 and masquarades as a sanction fee. They don’t spend much on the fittings at headquarters, I can reveal. But Lee’s suit was lovely.
You have to admire Lee, though, for his quiet insistence that he is innocent. Maybe he’s used to saying, “Not guilty.” He bridles at the suggestion by Lewis’s American promoter, Dino Duva, that Williams was foisted on them too late for them to lodge a protest. “When I made my call to the New York State Athletic Commission [on March 4], I told them who I wanted to appoint and they said, okay.” There’s a thing. The commission is as bad at judging a judge as the IBF.
Lee has no trouble with Williams’s lame argument about the contentious fifth round, in which Lewis belted Holyfield, and she gave it to the American because, from her ringside perch, she was unsighted. Lee says: “She said Lewis’s back was to her and she could not see everything he was doing. Now that can happen, if you’ve been around this industry.”
And he has. Lee, who was president of the World Boxing Association (WBC)before losing a power struggle to Gilbert Mendoza, has been king of the IBF for 17 years. Unchallenged. Just like Mendoza now, and Jose Sulaiman at the WBC.
Sulaiman has long been pilloried as King’s closest confidant, but it is Lee whom authorities now suspect as being the more at ease in the promoter’s company. However, reformers who entertain thoughts that the latest inquiries will “get King” and clean up boxing might be in for another disappointment.
Take the alleged sting in this fight: King does not have to tell Lee which referee to select. Lee knows. Neither does King, nor Lee, have to bribe Williams. She might well be doing her incompetent best (which is a result for King), but her independence is compromised by the fact that, if she does not deliver, she will not “work in this town again”.
Williams has judged 28 world title fights and been on trips to Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and South Africa (twice). It is a lifestyle that other 36-year-old single mothers in Atlantic City are unfamiliar with. She earned $5 150 and had the pleasure of being put up in a $125-a-night room at the Pennsylvania Hotel, one of New York’s finest fleapits, along with cafeteria food coupons. Some bribe.
Lee concedes it was not a brilliant night for boxing. “Sure it hurts, because there are people who want to believe that boxing is bad and they want to believe that people are hiding behind fences [as opposed to sitting on them, supposedly], and that’s not the case. Irrespective of what people all over the world are shouting, you had three experienced officials who all saw the fight differently. So how can you explain that?”
Tell us, Lee. And tell us, as a distinguished official, how you would have judged the fight yourself. “I didn’t watch the whole fight,” he says, “because, unfortunately, when I sit at ringside, I’m distracted by people talking to me, people coming up, shaking hands, asking for autographs. So I missed some of the fight.” It’s tough being a celebrity, even when you’re supposed to be working.
As we say farewell in a conspiracy of mutual disregard, the snow outside melts to slush. They do great slush in north New Jersey.