http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/births/2004/apr/19/516711683.html
Today: April 19, 2004 at 9:41:49 PDT
Columnist Dean Juipe: Suspicion leads to sports book dropping fight
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.
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Las Vegas sports book operators routinely and rightly claim that they are in an ideal position to identify a sporting event that may not be on the up and up, simply because they can see when an unnatural amount of money is wagered on a specific side of a game or event.
For instance, when a suspicious amount of money came pouring in during the Arizona State University men's basketball season in 1993-94 it not only drew the attention of sports book managers here, it led to a point-shaving scandal being uncovered.
The books are good at spotting fraud and potential trouble.
So it's interesting, if nothing else, to see that an upcoming fight between heavyweights Vitali Klitschko and Corrie Sanders that is scheduled for Saturday in Los Angeles has been taken off the betting board in at least one prominent Las Vegas sports book. And that the reason for that decision has everything to do with what happened in a fight between heavyweights Wladimir Klitschko and Lamon Brewster two weeks ago at Mandalay Bay.
The Klitschko vs. Brewster fight April 10 was stopped after the fifth round when Klitschko was unable to recover from a knockdown at the bell.
Of particular note was the fact that Brewster had been bet down at both the host site and at Pinnacle, a leading offshore book, from an 11-1 underdog to a 3 1/2-1 underdog by fight time, which could only happen if there was a huge influx of money wagered on him.
Professional gambler Lem Banker called me the next day to share his concerns and we both did a little checking without uncovering anything untoward.
But Brewster's unexpected victory was very much on my mind Saturday night at the sports book in the Palms when I noticed the upcoming Vitali Klitschko vs. Sanders fight had been taken off the board.
"It's because the other Klitschko looked like he was poisoned or something in the fight with Brewster," the ticket writer told me, when I asked for the reasoning behind the move to take down the Klitschko vs. Sanders line.
So I called Banker back on Sunday to see what he thought.
"You know me. I've seen every fight you can think of for the past 60 or 70 years," he said. "The thing I noticed about (Wladimir) Klitschko was at the end of the second round when he walked back to his corner all glassy eyed, even though he hadn't really been hit.
"It was like he was doped up."
Everyone agrees that the Klitschko brothers share a weak chin, but they also come across as hale and hearty and tough enough to withstand a typical round of boxing without looking exhausted. But Wladimir Klitschko did appear unduly affected during his fight with Brewster and the fact of the matter is he all but collapsed and never recovered after the first time he was seriously hit.
Now bear in mind that the Klitschkos are exceptionally well financed and have a ton of money behind them. They're also smart men and it's unfathomable that either one would be involved in anything corrupt.
But that doesn't mean someone from the outside couldn't have slipped Wladimir a mickey.
"I heard him breathing so hard during the second round," Brewster recalled of the fight in an interview during Saturday night's pay-per-view telecast of a card in New York that featured John Ruiz defeating Fres Oquendo and Chris Byrd settling for a draw with Andrew Golota in separate heavyweight title fights.
Without saying as much, Brewster let it be known that Klitschko was either out of shape or surprisingly less vigilant in the ring than Brewster expected. His confidence buoyed, Brewster eventually connected with a couple of punches that put an end to the fight and made anyone who bet on him -- as promoter Don King emphatically said he had -- a handsome sum.
Brewster came into the fight with a "puncher's chance" and I suspect that's how he won it. But with the betting line having moved so much -- and with King involved, for whatever that's worth -- suspicions are raised.
So much so that the Palms, for one, has backed off taking bets on the fight coming up in Los Angeles with the other Klitschko, although it may repost the line later this week; the Palms routinely posts lines on fights that many other Las Vegas books do not offer.
Banker likened the one-sided action that came in on Brewster to a 1999 fight in New York between Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield. That fight, which was scored a draw and included a conflict-of-interest controversy fueled by a female judge who was working the bout, was posted with Lewis as an 11-5 favorite but moved all the way to pick 'em on the day of the bout.
"It takes a lot of money to move a line like that, whether it's here in town or at a place like Pinnacle," Banker said.
And when the line moves that much and a key performer -- in this most recent case, Wladimir Klitschko -- underachieves, there can be repercussions, however vague the innuendo.
Maybe the result of that fight at Mandalay Bay was just a fluke, but rather than get burned too badly by the Klitschko brothers twice in one month the Palms has removed itself from the equation. At a time when it normally would welcome betting action on the fight, it prefers, instead, to play it safe and defer.
Der gute Franz hat ja lediglich EINE Standardausrede drauf sollte mal einer SEINER Favoriten verlieren: DANN heisst es nämlich immer nur "der war ja gar nicht richtig austrainiert! also...wenn der FIT gewesen wäre, dann...ja dann hätte der ja kurzen Prozess mit ihm gemacht!" 
