Trainer tries wake-up call to shake lethargic Moorer

Dean Juipe

Monday, March 31, 1997 | 11:59 a.m.

It wasn't just by chance that Teddy Atlas had a cellular phone at ringside.

As trainer for IBF heavyweight champion Michael Moorer, Atlas is accustomed to having to be creative when it comes to motivating his sluggish fighter.

And having exhausted more traditional methods of inspiration -- such as verbally appealing to Moorer to fully utilize his athletic ability -- Atlas must have felt the need for something extra. Hence, the phone at ringside Saturday night at the Las Vegas Hilton as Moorer casually toyed with the overmatched Vaughn Bean.

Between rounds eight and nine, Atlas went to his bag of tricks. Out came the cell phone and, as would be revealed later, on the line from Florida came Moorer's crying son.

"It's your son on the phone crying," Atlas told the perplexed Moorer. "He said his father doesn't want to be the heavyweight champion anymore."

Indifferent despite the ploy, Moorer trudged back out and did little more than he had before the contrived phone call. He won by majority decision, with Dave Moretti scoring it 114-114, Jerry Roth 115-113 and Bill Graham 116-113.

Completely flustered, Atlas may have worked his final fight with Moorer.

"I'm sticking with what I said," he told a confidant after the fight, a confidant who had been told earlier that Atlas would split with Moorer unless the fighter changed his lethargic ways.

"I did what I had to do," Moorer said. "I did enough to win."

That remark has virtually become Moorer's credo. Now 39-1, he frequently does no more than need be to win.

This time he cut it close, although the SUN had him comfortably in charge throughout the bout and a 117-111 winner in the end. Neither man was hurt, knocked down, cut or barely bruised in a fight in which the participants seemed to be taking a safety-first approach.

"He was just totally flat," Moorer's manager, John Davimos, said.

Because of Moorer's lack of effort, Bean was not only able to go the full 12 rounds but was allowed to feel he may have done enough to have won.

His handlers certainly thought so.

"We got robbed," Butch Lewis said. "We're going to demand a rematch. The IBF was already on notice about this anyway."

Lewis objected to the fact the judges were all Las Vegans, and that as Las Vegans they had been subjected to prefight opinions that Bean was nothing more than a glorified sparring partner for Moorer.

Lewis hopes to interrupt Moorer's plans by forcing a rematch with Bean.

A greater immediate concern for Moorer may be replacing Atlas.