Brooklyn boxer says God more important than gloves.

Friday, Nov. 15, 2002 | 2:15 a.m.

By ADAM GOLDMAN

Associated Press Writer

LAS VEGAS AP) - This was one match that Top Rank's Bob Arum couldn't make no matter how much he finagled, bargained or promised.

Getting 20-year-old Dmitriy Salita, an observant Jew, to fill an undercard fight at Saturday night's Paulie Ayala-Erik Morales WBC featherweight title bout was beyond his promoting prowess.

The welterweight wouldn't fight at the Mandalay Bay casino-hotel on the Jewish sabbath, from twilight Friday and until sundown Saturday.

There was only one person calling the shots.

"This was the first time ever I couldn't make the match myself and I've been in the business for 37 years," Arum said Thursday. "I had to call the rabbi."

A Las Vegas rabbi said no problem. Sunset was at 5:15 p.m. and the fight was at 7 p.m. There was plenty of time for the fight to go on against Ron Gladden (11-6 (1)- of Murray, Ky.

Salita (8-0, 6 knockouts) is the only religious Jew in the professional ranks of boxing, said Arum, who is also Jewish.

It makes Salita an inspiration to other Jews and something of a curiosity.

He keeps kosher and throws a powerful left hook. He studies Torah and has a stiff jab. There are 70 days a year he can't fight, including holidays.

"Unless you come to the synagogue on shabbat (the sabbath), you can't find me," Salita said. "And I won't talk about business."

Salita, who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., immigrated to the United States in 1991 from Odessa in the Ukraine. He said his family didn't practice Judaism in the former Soviet Union because communism effectively stamped it out.

He did experience anti-Semitism that led to fisticuffs.

It wasn't until his mother was being treated for breast cancer in 1998 at a New York City hospital that he found Judaism. His mother was sharing a hospital room with a Jewish woman who persuaded him to look into a form of Judaism.

That was it. At about the same time he started to box, the 14-year-old had a bar mitzvah and completed his passage into Jewish manhood.

Salita said he slowly began to observe the sabbath and other Jewish laws.

When boxing matches started to conflict with those laws, his rabbi in Brooklyn, Zalman Liberow, gave him some advice.

"Don't fight on the sabbath and everything will be all right," Salita recalled.

Salita has since followed that dictum and the rewards have been ample. He was 2001 New York Golden Gloves champion at 139 pounds and won the Sugar Ray Robinson Award for outstanding boxer of the tournament. He turned pro shortly after.

Liberow, though, has kept their relationship strictly spiritual.

"The rabbi doesn't tell me to throw a left hook or right hand," Salita said.