Columnist Ron Kantowski: Check is in the mail, and so is the IBF belt

Tuesday, Nov. 16, 1999 | 11:18 a.m.

Ron Kantowski's notes column appears Tuesday and Thursday. Reach him at ron@vegas.com or 259-4088.

Let me see if I have this straight:

On the day after Lennox Lewis is proclaimed the undisputed heavyweight champion of boxing, embattled (and indicted) International Boxing Federation president Bob Lee proclaims in an even louder voice that the IBF does not recognize Lewis as its champion.

And then on the day after that (Monday), during his arraignment, Lee tells a federal judge he is innocent of accepting bribes in return for giving fighters and their promoters preferential ratings, and that the IBF is totally on the up and up.

Lee may or may not be guilty of accepting the kickbacks. That will probably be up to a jury to decide. But he was definitely guilty of insanity for not acknowledging Lewis as champion, given there were 17,000-plus witnesses on hand at the Thomas & Mack Center -- not to mention tens of thousands watching on pay per view -- who saw the big Briton win the title fair and square (at least on the judges' scorecards).

Besides, if you were handling Lewis' money, would you send $300,000 of it (the tardy IBF sanctioning fee in question) to a man who has been accused of more wrongdoing than J.R. Rider?

Later on Monday, the unofficial charge against Lee was reduced to temporary insanity. The IBF recanted, saying it had received Lewis' money and would send him the title belt as receipt.

If the IBF had insisted on stripping Lewis of the title, a jury wouldn't have been the one to put it out of business. Boxing fans would have beaten the jury to the punch.

* HOKIE-DOKIE: Las Vegas will have at least a small representation in the NCAA's national championship football game, provided Virginia Tech takes care of business in its final two games against Temple and Boston College.

Daniel Nihipali, a graduate of Las Vegas' Chaparral High School, is a backup offensive guard for the second-ranked and undefeated Hokies. He's a 6-foot-4, 322-pound senior.

And while we're on the topic, what do Bruce Smith, Jim Druckenmiller, Bimbo Coles and Las Vegas Motor Speedway publicity chief Jeff Motley have in common?

Like Nihipali (and former UNLV athletic director Jim Weaver, who now commands the same post at Virginia Tech), they're all Hokies.

* NOBODY'S PERFECT: Most readers think John, Paul, Matthew and Mark have moved on to Sports Illustrated, because what usually is written in the nation's No. 1 sports weekly is accepted as gospel. But S.I. made at least two mistakes in its college basketball issue, which hit newsstands this week.

In referencing the 1983 NCAA national championship game in Albuquerque, the magazine stated that N.C. State trailed Houston by one point when Dereck Whittenberg launched the famous 35-foot airball that Lorenzo Charles turned into the winning basket. In reality, the game was tied 52-all when the Wolfpack held for the last shot en route to its 54-52 upset win.

But a more grievous error to anybody who grew up in Indiana is Sports Illustrated referring to natives of that state as "Indianans" in its report on the Valparaiso basketball team. Indiana is the Hoosier State and all of us born there are Hoosiers -- even the ones who attend Purdue.

On a related note, the morning newspaper, in its Lewis-Holyfield Page One fight atmosphere story that ran on Sunday, said the throng of Brits invoked the name of "Allen Schirra" in one of its rousing chants.

At first I thought they were talking about the NASA astronaut, but his name was/still is Wally Schirra.

I've never heard of Allen Schirra. But thanks to the last World Cup, I am familiar with Alan Shearer, the star striker for England's national soccer team. That was the bloke to whom the rowdy Brit fans were referring.

* THE RAP WITH HOLYFIELD: At 4 a.m., Sunday morning, you would have thought a God-fearing man such as Evander Holyfield would be getting some sleep, either in preparation for church activities or out of exhaustion after having gone 12 rounds with Lennox Lewis just a few hours earlier. But Holyfield, according to sources, was just getting started at that hour, accompanied by rap artist LL Cool J. The pair told others they were "going dancing."

* THOSE ARE FIGHTIN' LETTERS: Although I'm not sure of their significance, the rear waistband of the boxing trunks Lennox Lewis wore for Saturday night's fight bore the letters f-c-u-k, in that order. I'm guessing they stood for Football Club, United Kingdom (or something along those lines), and weren't a typographical error summarizing his reaction after the judges' scorecards were tallied following Lewis-Holyfield I.

In reality, the letters stand for a clothing line Lewis endorses.