CHICKEN NOT-SO LITTLE

By BILL PLASCHKE

July 22, 2001 12 AM PT

The man who is purportedly the best boxer in the world is on the phone.

He is on the phone because, although he is fighting in Los Angeles Saturday, he is not arriving until four days before the fight.

The man who is purportedly the best boxer in the world is a big chicken.

“I’m scared of earthquakes,” Roy Jones Jr. said from a training camp in New Jersey. “I don’t spend any more time in Los Angeles than I have to.”

When the chicken faces somebody named Julio Gonzalez of Huntington Beach Saturday at Staples Center, it will be Jones’ first fight in Los Angeles.

This, after a 12-year career that has taken him from Pensacola, Fla., to Manhattan to Las Vegas. Not to mention Seoul, South Korea, where his fame was created in 1988 after he lost an Olympic title to a South Korean in an infamously bad decision.

Talk about turning silver into gold. As career kick-starts go, that sympathetic loss was far more powerful than a knockout.

Forty-five fights later, if only Jones could still work that same sort of perceptive magic, as boxing’s only undisputed champion finds his toughness constantly in dispute.

Boxing scribes voted him top fighter of the 1990s, yet can you remember even one of his fights during that decade?

While there are few good boxers in his light-heavyweight division--he’s the Oakland Raiders playing in the Pac-10--critics still claim he consistently fails to seek opportunities to create greatness.

In at least one case, ducking even a city.

“I was at a hotel in Beverly Hills on that morning in 1994,” he recalled, referring to a publicity visit. “I was on the 11th floor, and I woke up, and my bathroom door was moving, and my bed was sliding.”

He said he called his handlers, grabbed his bags, and ran to the lobby.

“I said, ‘Get me out of this town now, or there’s gonna be big trouble,’ ” he recalled.

He was rushed to the airport and grabbed the next available flight.

“And since then, every time I’ve been back, I’ve flown out the same damn night,” he bragged.

That explains why, earlier this summer, he showed up here shortly before the introductory news conference and flew out in his leased jet immediately afterward.

That also explains why he was planning to fly in for Wednesday’s final news conference, visit Jay Leno, then fly out afterward . . . until promoter Bob Arum finally pleaded with him to give L.A. a chance.

Arum arranged for Jones to stay in a ground-floor suite at a Beverly Hills hotel so he would at least hang around for a few days instead of flying in Saturday at the last minute.

“But I’m going back to Pensacola the next morning,” Jones said.

Yessir. Right back to hurricane country.

“At least God lets you know when a hurricane is coming,” Jones said. “How do you know when an earthquake is coming? I don’t need that.”

Then why even schedule a fight here?

“I decided it’s worth me risking my life to let the people of Los Angeles see me,” he said.

We are so grateful.

Actually, it will be interesting to see the man whose only loss, in 1997, came when he was disqualified after hitting Montell Griffin when Griffin had fallen to one knee. Less than five months after the disqualification, Jones knocked out Griffin in the first round, and he hasn’t lost in nine fights since.

Although, he hasn’t knocked anybody out during that time either.

The only thing I remember about his last fight, an 11th-round TKO over Derrick Harmon in Tampa, Fla., was that Gary Sheffield left Dodger spring training to drive across the state and watch it.

I know this because they showed Sheffield sitting ringside, which must have been a treat for Dodger officials wondering whether he was going to show up for work the next morning.

It says something, though, when you remember the spectators more than the fighters.

“I don’t know where guys get off saying I don’t fight people,” Jones said. “Look at my record. I’ll fight whoever, whenever.”

This part is largely true. Some of the criticism, though, is that he doesn’t fight period, that he won’t stand shoe to shoe, that he plays too much defense.

Fight fans in this town are used to seeing Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas stand and fight. They’re used to seeing Oscar De La Hoya stand and, um, sing.

They’re not used to this defense stuff, which really isn’t very interesting unless it’s being played by Rick Fox.

Promoters are hoping that Gonzalez, 27-0 against mostly vegetable-beverage containers, will come out flailing Saturday and force Jones to do the same.

Who knows, Jones might even comply. If nothing else, he considers this important training for what could be the richest fight of his career, a proposed match against Felix Trinidad, if Trinidad defeats Bernard Hopkins in September.

“I’m not taking this one lightly,” he said. “I’m not talking trash about Gonzalez. I know any time you get in the ring, you could be killed.”

He also knows that sometimes, that is the object.

When he’s not putting up his dukes, you see, Jones trains roosters to do the same. He is in the cockfighting business, which he practices in Louisiana, one of three states where it’s legal. It is outlawed in California, but that hasn’t stopped one of his local fans from offering to give him a fighting fowl when he arrives.

Whatever happened to a fruit basket?

“People think roosters aren’t intelligent, but they’re wrong,” Jones said. “My chickens aren’t dumb. They fight for a reason. They got pride. They fight for territory.”

They have a choice?

Anyway, Jones has more than 1,200 roosters and hens on his Pensacola farm. It is a shared interest in cockfighting that recently mended the celebrated rift between Jones and his father.

His father offered him a rooster for one fight, Jones acted as its cornerman, and they have been best buddies every since.

Pass the Kleenex.

“Fighting chickens does no harm to people,” Jones said. “And it keeps kids off the streets. It kept me off the street. Better to be involved in cockfighting than in gangs.”

Like it or not, now it’s time for Roy Jones Jr. to engage in a human fight, his first one in our humble backyard, the best fight here this year, so let us put our hands together to welcome him properly.

Everyone sitting ringside, grab the canvas and shake.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected].

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Fight Facts

* Who: Roy Jones Jr. (44-1, 36 KOs) vs. Julio Gonzalez (27-0, 17 KOs)

* What: WBC/IBF/WBA light-heavyweight championship, 12 rounds

* When: Card begins at 6 p.m. Saturday

* Where: Staples Center

TALE OF THE TAPE

*--*

Jones CATEGORY Gonzalez 32 AGE 24 5-11 HEIGHT 6-2 74 REACH 79 38 CHEST NORMAL 39 40 CHEST EXPANDED 41 15 BICEPS 14 22 THIGH 21 15 CALF 14 15 NECK 17 7 WRIST 7 11 FIST 12

*--*

Undercard: Miguel Cotto (4-0, 2 KOs) vs. TBA, junior welterweights, six rounds; Cristian Bejarano (3-0, 3 KOs) vs. Lee Willis (1-1), lightweights, four rounds; Andrew Lewis (21-0-1, 19 KOs) vs. Ricardo Mayorga (22-3-1, 20 KOs), WBA welterweight championship, 12 rounds; Erik Morales (40-0, 31 KOs) vs. Injin Chi (24-1, 14 KOs), WBC featherweight championship, 12 rounds

FIGHT FACTS

* Who: Roy Jones Jr. (44-1, 36 KOs) vs. Julio Gonzalez (27-0, 17 KOs)

* What: WBC/IBF/WBA light-heavyweight championship, 12 rounds

* When: Card begins at 6 p.m. Saturday at Staples Center

Mosley in three: WBC welterweight champion Shane Mosley knocks out Adrian Stone. D5