Exciting Gannon back in the ring

Dean Juipe

Tuesday, May 12, 1998 | 9:37 a.m.

The face is a dead giveaway.

There are cuts, bruises, stitch marks and -- most prominently -- a warped and battered nose.

There's no disguising what Rocky Gannon does for a living. He's a fighter.

"I'm a hardcore fighter," he corrects. "This is boxing and I come to fight. I don't dillydally around."

And therein lies the public's attraction with Gannon, a cruiserweight with considerable TV time under his belt who recently moved to Las Vegas. He's back on the tube Saturday as ESPN2 televises his main event from Boise with fellow brawler Kenny Keene.

"This will be one of the best fights we've ever had on cable," predicted Top Rank matchmaker Bruce Trampler of a match that will be refereed by Reno's Mills Lane and has already sold out a 5,100-seat arena.

Gannon sees to it that every fight he's in is a war.

"I'm not boring, no matter what," he said after working out at the Golden Gloves Gym. "I'll go in there and you might hit me, but I'm definitely going to hit you."

He has made a decent living with that approach yet the time has come, at the age of 28, to capitalize. With that in mind, this fight with Keene is very opportune.

"I love these types of fights," Gannon said. "I guess I'll go up there as the underdog but everyone knows I gamble in the ring so I've got a good shot to win."

Gannon is 29-7 with 22 knockouts in a pro career that dates from 1991.

Keene, 29, is 41-3 with 24 KOs and aside from his balding head he has a look and a style that mirrors Gannon. They're scheduled for 12 rounds but there's no way this goes 12.

"Keene's trying to use me," Gannon said. "He knows that I've got something of a name and he sees that I cut easy, so he figures he can hit me a few times and they'll stop the fight.

"He's a tough guy, I'll give him that. But I'm going to surprise him."

This much can be taken as fact: Gannon is prepared. His Las Vegas sparring sessions have been brutal, almost day in and day out. If anything, he has run the risk of going too hard, too strong, as he heads into this critical bout.

"I'll be extremely sharp," he predicted. "I've been getting world-class sparring. This is exactly why I moved to Las Vegas, to spar with guys like Mike McCallum.

"Before I'd spar with chumps. Now I'm working with guys like myself who are professional and into boxing."

He's definitely into boxing.

"This is the time of my life," he said. "I have a championship fight with Keene and I know I'm marketable, especially if I don't lose anymore. I want to win as many titles as I can, make some money and then retire here in Vegas and open a gym."

Yet he realizes he can't fight forever or take too many more years of abuse.

"I don't want to be stupid," he said. "I want to be able to walk and talk and have people understand me. I'm not going to stay in the game too long and come out so dumb I can't even run a gym."

Toward that end, he's taking his wife's advice.

"Nicki said she'd marry me if I quit leading with my head," Gannon said. "All the cuts I was getting were from sticking my head in there and getting butted.

"So I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm not coming out of sparring sessions all cut up and have nobody care.

"Now I've got good people around me."

Slim Perkins is training Gannon, while Nicki manages him and his brother, James, serves in a variety of roles. The Gannon threesome moved here last August.

"I used to come to Las Vegas to fight now and then and I stayed on the Strip and I hated it," Gannon said. "Then I came out one time (to fight Richard Hall two years ago) and got away from the Strip and I fell in love with the city. I can't see leaving."

While he already enjoys a decent reputation, Gannon could become a star. He has seven losses but also a number of quality wins, including victories over Iran Barkley (in 1995) and Hall and Thomas Tate (in '96).

"I was supposed to lose all those fights," he said. "Barkley was an ex-champ; Hall was 17-0; I was the only person who thought I could beat Tate."

But there were always losses in between, including two in 1996 (to Earl Butler and Dominick Carter) and one last year (to Jose Rivera).

"What's different now is that I've learned a few things," Gannon said. "I was green and outside forces used to distract me. Now I enter the ring knowing that the only thing that's important is that I win. Before, winning wasn't as big a thing to me as it is now.

"I don't want to lose anymore."

Yet here's Keene, a very real threat, in front of him.

"I'm going to his hometown, so they'll boo me," Gannon said of the reaction he expects in Boise. "At the same time, I've got a pretty good following so I might get some cheers.

"Everyone else I'll try to win over as the fight goes along."