Donald ambushed by Sullivan, but hangs on

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Nov. 29, 2000 | 9:50 a.m.

Larry Donald, expecting a pleasant walk in the park, was, instead, the victim of a near mugging.

The highly ranked heavyweight, fighting in Las Vegas this week to take advantage of the heightened interest in the sport what with the Felix Trinidad vs. Fernando Vargas bout yet ahead, came within two debatable officiating calls of losing to journeyman Obed Sullivan Tuesday night at the Orleans.

As it was, he was held to a majority draw that may or may not endanger his position in the polls.

"I wasn't anticipating him coming to fight that hard," Donald said after escaping Sullivan's upset bid. "He was throwing a lot of body shots and he was coming at me with his head."

Scored 113-113 by two judges and 115-111 in Donald's favor by the third, the draw puts Donald at 38-1-2 but in jeopardy of being dropped a few notches by the sport's three major organizations. He went into the fight ranked No. 3 by the IBF, No. 4 by the WBC and No. 7 by the WBA.

The Sun scorecard had him winning by a 114-112 count.

"Sullivan had nothing to lose and he fought accordingly," Donald's trainer, Aaron Snowell, remarked. "He just sucked it up and told himself he was going for it. That's what journeymen sometimes do.

"But he might never fight that well again."

Sullivan, 36-7-2, was coming off a quick one-round loss to David Tua in his most recent outing and hadn't shown anything in recent years to suggest he could handle a fighter of Donald's skills. But he took the fight to the favorite and was denied a victory only because referee Richard Steele deducted a point from him for a marginal low blow in the fifth round, and took another when he called Sullivan's 12th-round sprawl into the ropes a knockdown.

Take those two points out of the equation and Sullivan gets the victory.

"He played me for a chump and I made him pay," Sullivan said. "I was beating him. That fight was mine and if we fought again I'd really spank him."

He was conscious of putting forth a solid effort after being blasted out and embarrassed by Tua.

"I sort of redeemed myself, didn't I?" he said. "At least I did a little bit."

Television replays showed the deducted point in the fifth round was questionable at best, although it may have been more for two or three others that Steele let pass. And the pivotal 12th-round "knockdown" failed to get Sullivan off his feet, although he was obviously hurt as he caromed into the ropes.

"I got a little lackadaisical," Sullivan said of the final-round mishap. "I shouldn't have let that happen. But I still think I won the fight."

In other fights on the card: Nelson Dieppa, 19-2-1, took a 10-round unanimous decision over fellow flyweight Julio Coronel, 19-16-1; Carlos Quintana, 10-0, was a TKO-2 winner over Rosember Palacios, 17-10-3, in a welterweight bout that had been scheduled for 10; Friday Ahunanya, 14-0, won by unanimous decision over Otis Tisdale, 11-6, in a dull heavyweight bout that went its eight-round distance; and Nate Jones, 16-0-1, stopped Sam Hampton, 21-9-2, in the second round of a heavyweight bout scheduled for 10.