Boxing : It’s Dog’s Life for Salters, 6-4 and 250, at Home

CONCORD, Calif. — The question hanging over Robert Salters’ bid to become the U.S. Olympic boxing team’s super-heavyweight is basically this:

How can a guy who is afraid of his own dog possibly be expected to make the Olympic boxing team, much less win a medal at Seoul?

It has been learned in the Olympic trials this week that Salters isn’t even king of his own castle at Ft. Bragg, N.C. At the Salters residence, Tachi is in charge. Before Salters, who stands 6 feet 4 inches and weighs 250 pounds, can apply the hand of corporal punishment to his daughter, he first has to make sure Tachi isn’t around to see it.

Tachi is only a light-welterweight, a 140-pound Rottweiler. And he bites. Nice Tachi . . .

“The last time I had to spank my daughter, Lenniah, Tachi ran in and bit me,” Salters said. “He kind of figures his function around the house is to protect Lenniah. He likes her to ride him around the front yard, on his back. He’s very protective of her--he’s always where she is.”

Salters isn’t the only Olympic candidate Tachi has bitten. Salters’ Ft. Bragg teammate, Nathaniel Fitch, another Army super-heavyweight, was visiting not long ago. He was playing fetch-the-Frisbee with Tachi. Fitch got tired of it, and said, “OK, that’s enough . . . “

But it wasn’t enough for Tachi. As Fitch walked away, Tachi bit him on the hamstring.

Fitch was eliminated at the Olympic trials this week in the quarterfinals, but so far as is known, he hasn’t blamed Salters’ dog.

This week, Tachi is in the Ft. Bragg kennels. Salters says his wife, Shirley, can’t handle Tachi when he’s gone. And Tachi won’t get sprung until at least Monday. Salters, one of amateur boxing’s most most intriguing 1988 stories, is one bout away from winning the Olympic trials tournament.

He will fight New York’s Riddick Bowe Sunday afternoon in the super-heavyweight final, a remarkable achievement for a 25-year-old guy who was pulled out of a mess hall line by a boxing coach just 18 months ago.

“Some cook named Paul Rivers who’d coached some boxers saw me in the mess hall one day in 1986 and suggested I try some boxing, so I did,” recalled Salters the other day.

Since then, Salters has put together a modest dossier, 16 wins, 4 defeats, including his two victories here. Bowe, five years younger, has had more than 100 amateur bouts.

“He’s still learning how to box,” said one of Salters’ Army coaches, Hank Johnson. “He’s still got a lot to learn, but he’s come a long way in a very short time.”

Until last March, the 6-5, 235-pound Bowe, who once attended PS 396 in Brooklyn’s Brownsville section with Mike Tyson, looked like a lock for Seoul. But all that changed last March, at the national amateur championships in Colorado Springs. There, in a semifinals stunner, the powerful Salters knocked Bowe down twice in the second round and stopped him.

After that, the cocky Bowe--who says he’ll knock out Tyson after the Olympics and then offer him work as his sparring partner--started showing Salters some respect.

“I couldn’t believe the things he was saying, right to my face, before the bout in Colorado Springs,” Salters said. “Now, here, it’s like he’s a different guy. He comes up to me in the lobby, and asks me how my family is doing.”

Salters once lived in Bowe’s neighborhood, too. But in manner and style, he’s a world away from Bowe’s street-smart, wisecracking ways. He even speaks with a southern accent, and he didn’t pick that up on the streets of Brooklyn. He says sir a lot, too.

“I have a tough mom,” he said. “We left Brooklyn for Kingstree, S.C., where my Mom was originally from, when I was 16. In Brooklyn, I was never allowed to hang out on the streets. I was allowed to go straight to school, then straight home.

“I had to be in the house at 6 p.m. So I talk like my Mom.

“No, I never knew Tyson, but my brothers did. They tell me he was an arrogant little hoodlum.”

Salters completed high school, then earned a physical education degree at Claflin College in Orangeburg, S.C., where he was a 215-pound guard, center and forward on the basketball team. In the 96-boxer trials here, he’s one of three with a degree. In 1983, unable to find a coaching job, he joined the Army.

“I’d been out of college a year and hadn’t found a job,” he said. “I knew it was time to join the Army when my Mom said to me one day, ‘Robert, you’re drinking too much milk.’ ”

Win or lose against Bowe Sunday, and even though his Army hitch goes to November, 1989, when he’ll be 27, Salters has attracted some interest here among the pro boxing talent scouts. Daily, they prowl the Concord Hilton lobby.

“I like Salters (as a pro prospect),” said Manny Steward, who heads Detroit’s Kronk Gym stable. “His age isn’t much of a factor. A pro heavyweight can get away with a late start. All that matters is, does he have ability, and how bad does he want it? From what I’ve seen, and what I know about him, he’s a prospect.”

Hold it. Tachi will be the judge of that.