Columnist Dean Juipe: Why fix a fight that didn’t need fixing?

Dean Juipe

Thursday, May 6, 2004 | 9:16 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.

There's dumb and there's dumber, and, surprisingly enough, Robert Mittleman gets high marks for both.

He not only paid a meaningless fighter to take a dive in Las Vegas, he tried to bribe a public official to get out from under the pending charges. But he got caught on both ends and now faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine.

I've known Mittleman for a long time and have always enjoyed his company. He was Oscar De La Hoya's first manager and he continued on the periphery of the sport for many years as a manager and booking agent, including the pursuit of America's leading amateur fighter this year.

I always thought of him as a pleasant man, very intelligent and somewhat wealthy.

But his actions in the case involving heavyweight Thomas Williams and its ensuing repercussions have forced me to change my view. Mittleman, 61, wasn't as brilliant as I had presupposed.

Why he bothered with Williams' Aug. 12, 2000, fight against Rich Melito at the Paris Las Vegas is beyond comprehension. Why he paid an undercover police officer to bribe a federal judge only compounds the mystery.

Mittleman pleaded guilty to attempting to fix a fight and attempting to bribe a judge in a deal revealed this week, and he will be sentenced July 26 in Las Vegas. If sentenced to the max on both counts, he'll neither be out of prison for his 80th birthday nor have any money left to celebrate it.

He also has admitted to receiving money from a Danish promoter, Mogens Palle, to have Williams take a dive in a March 31, 2000, fight with Brian Nielsen in Copenhagen.

Here's the preposterous part of the whole deal: Williams, 35 at the time of the alleged fixes, was a journeyman in the truest sense of the word and a fighter with a pedestrian 25-9 record. He almost certainly couldn't have beaten Melito -- a prospect with a 23-1 record at the time -- nor Nielsen -- who was 64-2 in his career -- even on his best day.

Yet Mittleman funneled $15,000 to Williams to lose to Melito and another $40,000 to lose to Nielsen.

Adding injury to insult in the truest sense of the reworked cliche, Melito actually knocked out Williams in the first round of their scheduled 10-round bout and there wasn't anything phony about it.

"I'll say it again: I didn't see anything untoward in that fight," said Nevada State Athletic Commission executive director Marc Ratner, when asked Wednesday about the Paris Las Vegas fight in question. "Williams took a punch that landed square on the chin and he crumpled through the ropes and almost into (judge) Carol Castellano's lap."

There was no betting line on that fight and no reason to have it fixed, even if Melito has since proven to be a less than stellar contender.

Mittleman simply did something stupid, influencing a fight that didn't need to be influenced.

He came clean with the FBI when presented with evidence that included his voice on a wire-tapped phone. He's currently out on a personal recognizance bond.

Palle came out Wednesday and expressed his disbelief that Mittleman had cast aspersions his way. "Whatever Mittleman has been entertaining a judge with in the United States, I can only firmly say that I have never during my 47 years in the business bribed any boxer to come to Denmark and lose on purpose," Palle said in a statement.

As part of his deal with the feds, Mittleman will take the stand in a court case scheduled for August in Las Vegas in which Williams and his manager, Bobby Mitchell, will be tried on two counts of sports bribery apiece.

"I presume I'll be called to testify as well," Ratner said of a trial that will be more interesting for what it exposes about the participants' rationales than its judicial result. Maybe then this basic question will be answered: What in the world was Mittleman thinking?

Within days of Melito's victory against Williams there were rumblings that something wasn't right, and the FBI not only pounced on the innuendo but used it to launch a series of related inquests into all areas of the sport.

Aug. 12, 2000, was quite a lousy day in retrospect and not just because it marked the first of three tedious John Ruiz vs. Evander Holyfield fights.

It was the night Mittleman ruined his life and maybe a couple of others if Williams, Mitchell and maybe even Palle join him among the guilty.

It was also the night that the referee who worked both the Williams vs. Melito and Ruiz vs. Holyfield fights would use as his farewell, as budding superstar Mitch Halpern committed suicide shortly thereafter.

Four years later the sorrow -- and disbelief -- on all fronts is still being felt.