Boxing

Slowly but surely, like the little engine that could -- with a bin full of Rupert Murdoch's cash to stoke the fire -- Fox Sports continues to make its presence felt.The first and biggest splash, of course, was grabbing the NFL away from CBS, but Fox, through hockey, and later this season, baseball, appears to be spreading its nets all about the athletic ocean, looking for good places to cast.The network selects two solid, if seemingly incompatible sports, figure skating and boxing, for a prime time-late night doubleheader tomorrow night.

LAS VEGAS -- Perhaps the most telling statistic after more than eight hours of boxing, including five championship bouts that featured two heavyweight title fights, was that only 8,167 spectators were willing to pay between $50 and $500 to witness promoter Don King's ring marathon in the Caesars Palace parking lot Saturday night.It was as if hard-core boxing fans were saving their money for Mike Tyson's comeback in late summer, an event that promises to put new life into boxing, particularly the near-dormant heavyweight division.

By all rights, given all the bizarre things that have happened in boxing over the years and in its recent past, the sport should be one of the last things television programmers look to get their hands on.But, against all possible odds, the sweet science is not only surviving on television, but thriving. Both ABC and CBS are offering fight series over the next few weeks as they attempt to determine what boxing's future on over-the-air television is."Boxing is the red-light district of sports, but it never goes out of people's consciousness," said ABC boxing analyst Alex Wallau.

WHEN IT came to getting Mauritanian immigrant Moctar Teyeb's name, I nailed it right on the button, spelling and all. Ditto for local activists Anditu Siwatu and Nnamdi Lumumba of the National Democratic Uhuru Movement.But when it comes to an easy and simple name like Walter Holtz, what do I do? I blow it completely. Well, I blew half of it anyway. In Sunday's column Walter Holtz, a 14-year veteran of the Baltimore City Police Department who retired in 1971, came out as Ken Holtz. How did this happen?

WASHINGTON - The Mike Tyson of 20 years ago, boxing author and historian Thomas Hauser noted in yesterday's Sun, would have creamed the Tyson of today. The old Tyson, it goes without saying, would have sent Kevin McBride's head up toward the MCI Center rafters, up near the Bullets' NBA championship banner, about two minutes into last night's fight. After five rounds, however, McBride's head was still attached. Unbelievably, so was Tyson's aura, even though as the bell rang, he might have been seconds away from sliding down the ropes and into a second straight loss to a total set-up guy. After six rounds, when McBride pushed him down by the shoulders just before the bell, he struggled badly to get up. Then he didn't get off his stool.

No sport pulls its fans to and fro quite like boxing. We learned that again Saturday, when putative heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko postponed his title fight with Baltimore's Hasim Rahman for the fourth - yes, fourth - time. Rahman seems convinced that Klitschko, the closest the division has to a king of the mountain, is ducking him. Maybe, maybe not. Reports out of Las Vegas suggest that Klitschko hurt his knee, but maybe not so badly that he couldn't fight. Perhaps the giant Ukrainian's good sense tells him that at less than his best, he shouldn't take on a big, athletic challenger with power in both fists.

Looking at Gilbert Baptist's record of a dozen losses makes one question not only his ability, but why he continues in the boxing game.Nowadays, if a fighter suffers a first loss or hasn't been offered a TV fight or a title shot by his 10th match, he thinks seriously of hanging them up. "Guys like that just don't know boxing," Baptist said. "They have no sense of the game's history and what it takes to be successful."Baptist, on the other hand, knows the game. He has been in with the best and it's certainly no easy-pickings journeyman with a pedestrian 24-12 record who will be meeting Vincent Pettway (34-4)

Al Albert remembers when it all started. "I was the resident play-by-play man at USA Network, doing hockey, NBA basketball and the Big East when they decided to get into boxing. I think it started out as a fun thing, maybe a 10-week series, but now it's a staple in our sports stable."And how. In case you haven't checked it out lately, be assured that USA's "Tuesday Night Fights" is probably as good a boxing series as has ever been on television. Sorry about that, Gillette Cavalcade of Sports.

In "The Main Event," Hollywood used the plot of a female entrepreneur guiding the career of a professional fighter for comedy, with Barbra Streisand winning a unanimous decision over Ryan O'Neal.In real life, a fight publicist named Jackie Kallen discovered an obscure boxer named James Toney in a Detroit gym, became his manager and directed him to the middleweight championship.Life imitates art, but with a happier ending for Toney, who defends his International Boxing Federation title against Mike McCallum of New York at the Atlantic City (N.J.

Everyone's heard about boxing's ugly side. Now, meet its "Raging Beauty." That's the calling card of female boxer Israh Girgrah, who will try again at the Wyndham Baltimore Inner Harbor hotel tonight to demonstrate that she has the knockout power to match her knockout looks. The holder of three world boxing titles will carry an 18-2-3 record with nine knockouts into the ring in putting her Universal Boxing Association lightweight (135 pounds) title on the line against Tracy "The Lady" Byrd (12-4, four KOs)