Columnist Dean Juipe: Local man has busy slate with Olympic team

Dean Juipe

Thursday, Aug. 31, 2000 | 9:26 a.m.

Dean Juipe's boxing notebook appears Thursday. His sports column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or 259-4084.

The U.S. Olympic team leaves today for Sydney and its team administrator, Wendell Allen of Las Vegas, said everyone involved is sharing high expectations.

"We always want to think positive, of course," Allen said by phone from Chula Vista, Calif. "But we're overly optimistic. The luck of the draw is important and everyone we're going to face is an Olympic-caliber fighter, but we're looking to medal in all 12 divisions."

Allen has the necessary experience to be optimistic. Once an amateur fighter in his native Kansas City, he has been involved in the sport since 1946 and attended the Olympic Games in 1984 (as a medical volunteer), in 1992 (as a training camp adviser), in 1996 (as the boxing officials' coordinator) and now in 2000 as team administrator.

His duties include not only getting the team safely overseas and with the proper passports, but making sure each of its members is where he is expected to be any given day while in Australia.

"I'm pretty busy," the 69-year-old Allen said.

He is also the chairman of USA Boxing's under-19 committee and is organizing a trip for U.S. Junior Olympians to travel to a competition in Budapest, Hungary, in November.

But right now the Olympics take precedence.

"The way I look at it is very simple," Allen said. "Somebody is going to have to be awfully tough to beat our guys. We're the world champions, so everyone is looking at us.

"We started coming together as a team following the Goodwill Games. If we stay focused in Sydney, we should do just fine."

A month ago he was arrested, arraigned and charged with beating his pregnant wife.

"Yeah, he's very concerned about it," his agent, Cameron Duncan, said Wednesday. "But I told him he had a job to do and to go do it. He's got a real fight with Manfredy, but he's a real fighter."

Corrales is 32-0.

Manfredy is 31-4-1.

They're scheduled for 12 rounds beneath the Erik Morrales vs. Kevin Kelley fight that will headline the HBO-televised show.

"I spent three hours with Diego on Sunday and I watched him spar 10 rounds with James Crayton," Duncan said. "We talked for a while on Monday, too. He's bothered, of course, by that other stuff but there's nothing he can do about it for a while.

"I'm not concerned about it affecting his fighting."

Duncan added that the charges "are not as bad as was written" and that "things will look different when all the facts come out."

Corrales, who is out on $200,000 bail, was arrested after an altercation of some sort with his wife on July 23. "Anyone else would be sitting in jail," his wife's mother, Anita Ramirez, complained when Corrales' bail was posted.

In Las Vegas sports books this week, Corrales varied from a minus 650 (Mandalay Bay) to a minus 550 (MGM) betting favorite, with Manfredy ranging from a plus 450 to a plus 550.

Duncan added that a Corrales vs. Floyd Mayweather Jr. bout is being discussed for Jan. 13, 2001, at either 130 or 135 pounds.

A day earlier De La Hoya had filed suit in California to break his contract with Arum and Top Rank. Arum may counter sue but said he was "leaving that up to the lawyers" and wasn't sure if the counter suit would be filed in Nevada or California.

"Yeah, I was a little surprised," he said of De La Hoya's actions. "But a couple of days earlier he said he wanted out of his contract and he offered me some money to do it.

"But this isn't a matter of money. I'm not going to take money to let him walk from his contract."

He called De La Hoya's suit "a stupid move" and added "it's not like he's at the peak of his career." He also said "Oscar's only solution, if he wants to continue fighting, is to fulfill his contract with Top Rank and Time Warner (HBO), or else he's going to be involved in litigation for years."

Arum said there was no way De La Hoya could fight at this time for another promoter.

"This all started with Internet people, dunk.com or something, telling Oscar he could make trillions of dollars by having a rematch with Shane Mosley on the Internet," Arum said. "The truth is, he can't get the $20 million he initially told me he wanted for the fight, or the $15 million he asked for later.

"The fight is worth about $10 million to Oscar. I guess that's chump change to him these days."

Johnson has been a very able "right hand" for commission executive directors Marc Ratner and Chuck Minker, and is a storehouse of knowledge when it comes to boxers and boxing regulations.

"We'll really miss her," Ratner said. "And the timing couldn't be worse."

The latter remark was in reference not only to Ratner being out of the office weekends to officiate Mountain West Conference college football games, but to the NSAC recently losing a referee (Mitch Halpern) and a past chairman (Duke Durden) to death.

By law, the NSAC initially must look within the current state system for a replacement for Johnson, who once was a candidate for the executive director's position that Ratner now fills.