Columnist Dean Juipe: So far, FBI has guppies in its net

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2004 | 9:56 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

It may have been nothing more than a fishing expedition, the FBI throwing a line into the water to see what it could uncover on Top Rank Inc. and professional boxing.

Lord knows there are unscrupulous characters in the sport. And everyone knows the feds have an interest in their doings, having spent considerable time, effort and expense intermittently over many years pursuing charges against promoters such as Don King and, now, Bob Arum.

So when the FBI raided Arum's Las Vegas office last Tuesday night, speculation raged, fed in large part by an erroneous story that all but simultaneously appeared in the New York Daily News.

Is the Bureau on to something?

Personally, I think what it has is minimal and insignificant.

But is it enough to keep Arum and his Top Rank staff uncomfortable?

Almost certainly, especially with a Top Rank employee, Sean Gibbons, having already been fired.

I think the FBI was hoping for a better haul, a bigger fish than the minnows it currently seems to have collected. It probably went into the investigation -- dubbed Operation Match Book and fed by an undercover investigator named "Big Frankie" Manzione who supposedly "rubbed elbows" with boxing people in Las Vegas for 20 months -- hoping to land a big one, such as the preposterous allegation fostered in the Daily News that Oscar De La Hoya's Sept. 13 fight with Shane Mosley at the MGM was fixed.

What it has, instead, may be nothing more than insinuations (or even proof) that a few low-level fights were fixed; that a Top Rank staffer may have had drugs in the office; and that a fight involving De La Hoya came to a suspicious end when his opponent's corner man stepped into the ring to get his fighter disqualified just seconds before the fight became an "over" on a proposition bet that was available in Las Vegas and beyond.

Very few people and likely no one outside the scope of the investigation and the investigators themselves know what the FBI was after when it confiscated computers, contracts, records and videotapes from Top Rank's offices last week. And the particulars are apt to remain guarded and confidential for quite some time, as the FBI search warrant was part of a sealed affidavit.

Unlike the Daily News (or the other paper in Las Vegas that reiterated the absurd notion that De La Hoya's loss to Mosley was part of a fix), my first thought when the FBI raid became known last Wednesday was that it had something to do with rap music mogul James Prince. With all due apologies to him, which I expressed in person Tuesday, it made some sense that he could be the target due to his intertwined relationship with the music industry and his association with Top Rank via his managerial duties with one of its most prominent fighters, Floyd Mayweather Jr.

"I don't think it has anything to do with me," said Prince, who was attending a news conference at Mandalay Bay that, coincidentally, also included Mosley.

"I think it has everything to do with Top Rank, although I wouldn't wish something like that on anybody," Prince added. "I haven't heard from the FBI and I know I don't want to hear from them."

Asked for his reaction when he first learned that Top Rank's offices had been raided, Prince said "I was kind of shocked. I know Bob Arum as being a straight-up businessman."

Mosley, at Mandalay Bay to promote his March 13 fight with another of Prince's fighters, Winky Wright, was placed in a defensive position when his name was linked to De La Hoya and a potentially fixed fight in the initial news article on the FBI investigation. Mosley defeated De La Hoya by unanimous decision, 115-113 on each of the three judges' cards, Sept. 13 at the MGM.

"I definitely feel cheated (from a publicity standpoint)," Mosley said. "I got a lot of bad press out of (the FBI raid and its ensuing stories)."

So did Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Marc Ratner, who has had to answer repeated questions about the probe with a shrug and a simple "I really don't know anything" response.

"I've changed my name to 'The Beleaguered' Marc Ratner," he quipped.

Likewise, Mosley's promoter, Gary Shaw, expressed a naivete toward the FBI inquiry, saying "I know nobody from our team bet on that fight."

The Daily News story was further flawed by its built-in insinuation that Arum would be involved in a fight that was not only fixed but had De La Hoya losing, especially if there was no rematch clause in the contract with Mosley (which there was not).

But there is a fight involving De La Hoya that is of some concern, and it's his seventh-round TKO victory against Luis "Yory Boy" Campas May 3, 2003, at Mandalay Bay.

That fight, which De La Hoya was winning with some ease, was stopped 2:54 into the seventh round when a corner man for Campas, Romolo Quirate, jumped on the apron of the ring. That action, which is the equivalent of a trainer "throwing in the towel" on behalf of his fighter, resulted in referee Vic Drakulich's being forced to stop the fight at that point.

The suspicious nature of the stoppage is that in six more seconds, or at the conclusion of the seventh round and the beginning of the eighth round, the fight would have become an "over" on proposition bets allegedly available at "offshore" sports books that had the over/under at seven complete rounds; those books are beyond the regulatory jurisdiction of the State of Nevada; with the over/under round prop at 6 1/2 rounds in the sports book at Mandalay Bay, a bettor could "middle" two bets and win both if the fight ended as it did between the 1:30 and 3:00 marks of Round 7. At the time of the stoppage Campas was certainly hurting and had no chance to win, but he didn't seem to be in any greater danger than he had been minutes or seconds earlier.

The Nevada State Athletic Commission did not investigate the fight's stoppage; a Nevada Gaming Control Board official indicated Tuesday that there was not an inordinate amount of money wagered on the prop bet within the state; Top Rank, in theory, would be powerless in and of itself to prevent a Campas corner man -- even one who had made a wager on the fight and/or against his own fighter -- from jumping on the ring apron and stopping the fight.

Campas, 31, was paid $500,000 for that fight, his 91st as a professional.

Campas, like De La Hoya, fights for Top Rank, as did at least three other men who may have been involved in fights with dubious outcomes.

Consistent with the sealed affidavit, the FBI has not released any information or particulars, yet these fights, involving Top Rank-promoted fighters, are the most prominent of those that have come under question: Eric "Butterbean" Esch vs. Mitchell Rose, Dec. 15, 1995, in New York; Jorge Paez vs. Verdell Smith, Sept. 7, 2001, in Mexico; and Joey Torres vs. Perry Williams, April 27, 2002, in Anaheim, Calif.

Esch vs. Rose has surfaced because Rose, who had a record of 1-6-1 at the time of the fight, has come forward to say he was offered a bribe of $5,000 by two unnamed men who supposedly represented Top Rank. Rose said he turned down the offer and, later, he actually won the fight with Esch, stopping him in the second round.

Paez vs. Smith surfaced because of Smith's close ties with Gibbons, as well as his shoddy 44-84-4 professional record, and the fact that Top Rank used both Paez and Smith (as an "opponent") on a regular basis. Paez won that particular fight by third-round TKO, with Smith allegedly appearing lethargic even for a man with a pitiful record.

Torres vs. Williams came into question when Torres, who was 41 at the time and making his pro debut after serving a lengthy term in prison, won by second-round knockout and the California Athletic Commission investigated. That governing body found no wrongdoing.

(To show that Top Rank doesn't have a stranglehold on suspicious fights, consider an Aug. 12, 2000, fight at Paris Las Vegas that resulted in a federal grand jury indicting a participant, Thomas Williams, and his promoter, Bobby Mitchell, on charges that Williams threw a fight with fellow heavyweight Rich Melito that was the opening bout in a massive King-promoted card. A two-count indictment emerged from that investigation, although a trial has yet to begin.)

A Miami Herald story in 1999 also called into question fights involving Top Rank fighters that dated back to 1988 and George Foreman, albeit against an obscure opponent, Tony Fulilangi, in the early portion of a "comeback" that would lead to the heavyweight championship. That same story cited Gibbons' connections to fighters Andre Smiley and Mike Smith, both of whom were named as suspects in suspicious fights.

Gibbons, whose title as "matchmaker" at Top Rank was misleading and whose chief duties were providing undercard fighters for the firm's many national shows, has been fired as a result of the FBI probe.

The Sun also learned Tuesday that the FBI, during its raid of Top Rank's offices, allegedly checked the facility's drains, as if it was seeking evidence of drugs being flushed prior to or as the warrant was being served.

I wouldn't begin to suggest that the above information and its many tangents is all the FBI possesses or gained by raiding Top Rank's offices. But I would recommend seeing the investigation for what it appears to be at this early, information-deprived stage: A chance outing in which a few guppies were snagged, a nice show but nothing to really mount on the wall.

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