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The night in Las Vegas when racketeers stole a world boxing title
Las Vegas, April 22, 1995: One judge called the bout even, two awarded it to George Foreman. Thousand of miles away in the glass-roofed Oderturm atrium in Germany’s Frankfurt an der Oder, shouts of disbelief rang out. Half-empty beer cans thudded against the big screen. The anger was more than just disappointment at a loss in a sporting arena. People saw it as another blow by the market-dominated economy — the same system that had given them unemployment, high prices, crime and a host of other real or imagined injustices. They saw the fight as a metaphor for the fortunes of East Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall: high hopes followed by disappointment and resentment.
Axel Schulz was born in 1968 the doleful town of Bad Saarow deep in the Soviet zone of East Germany. He showed some ability at boxing, and in 1982, at the tender age of 14, he was sent to the Armeesportclub in Frankfurt/Oder. This club, a kilometer up the hill from the Polish border, was where the pick of East German athletes were sent to train under iron discipline — one of his boxing colleagues was Henry Maske. Both were quickly on the way up.
In 1988 under trainer Manfred Wolke, the blonde, beetle-browed Schulz became East German amateur heavyweight champion. The same year, Maske won the middleweight boxing gold medal at the Seoul Olympics.
By this time, Stalinist East Germany was beginning to disintegrate. People were looking for once-unreachable opportunities in the West.
In December 1989, an East German boxing team was in Manila when a coup broke out. The streets were packed with police and the team was warned to remain in its hotel. Philippines television screened hours of boxing to distract sports-mad Filipinos from the coup. The German team remained glued to their screens for two days and watched pro boxing to and saw a world they wanted to be part of. One boxer, Andreas Otto, remarked: “For the first time we discussed openly what it would be like to be professionals.”
The East Germany they returned to was opening up. The once drab streets were now daubed in colour as western traders set up stalls and offered items Easterners could only dream about — figs, Kiwifruit, oranges. The Stalinist structure was crumbling fast. Professional sport was moving into the East — handballers, soccer players and ice hockey players were signing contracts. But boxing was different.
THE SHOCK
The national team was trained by Guenter Debert a former boxer who, upon his return told a paper that he would do all he could to prevent professional boxing from getting a foothold in East Germany.
The rumour mills churned. Light-heavyweight Maske, who looked and talked like school teacher rather than a boxer, was reported to be about to turn pro, then not to be — depending on who you read.
By this time, both Lieutenant Maske and Major Wolke were both army officers — full-time professional boxer and trainer in all but name. When both did turn professional, the shocked Stalinist establishment drummed both out of the Volksarmee. Then Schulz turned professional as well. All three were banned from the Armeesportklub.
That meant they had nowhere to train. Wolke searched everywhere for a replacement training site but doors were closed in his face. The establishment was closing ranks. “It’s that Stalinist Debert,“ he said.
This nuggety former East German welterweight champion who won 238 of 258 amateur bouts, persisted. His determination paid off when he was leased a disused railway shed stinking of diesel oil wedged between rail sidings. The three renovated the shed themselves while Wolke bought rope and built the ring. The heating seldom worked and they trained in near zero temperatures to the sound of screeching trains.
The makeshift gymnasium might have been primitive, but it was their’s. They came into contact with Wilfried Sauerland, a West German manager, who carefully steered them into the jungle of western-style pro boxing with its ballyhoo and venality. Both Maske and Schulz went from one success to another. In March 1992, Maske outpointed Charles Williams to win the IBF version of the world light-heavyweight title.
SCHULZ GETS HIS BIG CHANCE
Schulz kept on winning. Three years later it was his turn. He was matched with the legendary George Foreman for the world’s heavyweight title, notably the International Boxing Federation (IBF) version. [1]
The setting was the opulent Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas where 12,000 people including Hollywood stars Bruce Willis and Jack Nicholson paid up to 700 dollars a head to watch.
Back in Frankfurt an der Oder, 2,500 people paid the equivalent of three dollar and sixty cents each to watch on a big screen at the Oderturm atrium. They bought cans of beer for a dollar and a bit.
Schulz began carefully against the aging champion, but gained in confidence. He had the better of the exchanges, and when the bell rang for the end of the bout, he raised his hands in jubilation, while Foreman, one eye swollen as big as a golf ball, dropped his head in despair. He had taken a beating and knew it.
The unofficial judge of HBO pay television, Harold Lederman, gave the bout to Schulz by a runaway margin of 119–111, or nine rounds to three.
But that is not how the official judges saw it. One, Chuck Giampa, had it even at 114 to 114 but the other two, Jerry Roth and Keith McDonald, ruled for Foreman 115–113.
The New York Times’ Tom Friend, wrote: “Schulz … roamed the ring aimlessly after hearing a slur of a score. He did not leave for 20 minutes; he did not talk for 60.“[2]
At the post-bout interview, Foreman, hiding his damaged face behind a pair of sunglasses, burbled on about how tough Schulz was, how hard he had hit him. But in the next day’s Los Angeles Times, reporter Tim Kawakami said Foreman dismissed the possibility of a Schulz rematch. “I will not fight that kid again,” he said. “Forget it.“ [3]
The bout was fixed from the start — not in the old-fashioned way where a fighter would be paid “to take a dive“ as it was called, or a cornerman would between rounds surreptitously slash an eyebrow with a razor blade — but in a less direct and more controlled and insidious way. Schulz was destined to lose before he had even stepped into the ring.
THE FBI MOVES IN
A year later, the FBI began an investigation into allegations that the IBF had been taking bribes to include boxers in the top-ten ratings — which made those boxers eligible to challenge for world titles. The probe exposed a can of worms.
On of those questioned was a Las Vegas promoter who promoted Foreman’s fights, Bob Arum. He had been looking for an opponent to challenge for Foreman’s IBF version of the title. Foreman was a money spinner who drew crowds and television fees like nobody else. But, well aware that Foreman at 46, was way past his best, Arum’s task was not only to keep him fighting but also to keep him winning and sucking in the cash — by any means available.
The opponent needed to be someone who Foreman could beat but could not be a total walkover because he would need to generate big television fees.
Arum saw the 26-year-old Schulz as an ideal outsider. He was good enough to put up a fight, was not known to have a knockout punch, and would not be good enough to win. So went the reasoning. Above all, German television had the cash to pay lucrative sums for live coverage.
But Schulz was not rated in the top ten. So Arum approached IBF president Robert W. Lee. Lee agreed to rate Schulz but demanded a consideration of $500,000. Arum balked at that but, after discussion, they settled for a modest $100,000. Schulz was duly included in the top ten and given the bout — ahead of other ostensibly more deserving opponents. But in this netherworld of grab, grasp and devil-take-the-hindmost, the word “deserving“ had no place.
Arum’s testimony was part of a criminal trial that opened on April 11, 2000.
When the charges were announced in 1999, Jack Newfield wrote in The New York Post, “One hopes the indictment is just the start in cleaning up the whorehouse of pugilism.“ [4]
The Schulz bout was just part of the probe. The FBI found that over 13 years a total of $338,000 was paid by individuals representing 23 boxers.[5]
FITTED OUT WITH HIDDEN CAMERA
The chairman of the IBF ratings committee, C. Douglas Beavers, admitted to the FBI that he solicited and received bribe cash from boxing promoters to give boxers a rating and divided the spoils between himself, Don “Bill“ Brennan — chairman of the IBF championship committee — and Lee as well as Lee’s son.
But the FBI was gunning not for Beavers but for Lee. Beavers agreed, in return for immunity from prosecution, to act as an undercover agent and to meet Lee and cronies. He was fitted out with a hidden camera and microphone.
One graphic video shows Beavers arriving at a meeting with $5000 inside a plastic bag strapped to his leg. The cash is handed to Lee, who places it in a suit pocket.[6]
At subsequent meeting at hotels — with the FBI eavesdropping in the next room — Beavers handed Lee and Brennan their share of bribe cash paid by Colombian boxing figures; at another meeting Lee handed Beavers and Brennan their shares of bribe cash paid by promoter Don King, him of the electric hair-do. [7]
Lee senior was jailed for 22 months, fined $26,500 on charges that included racketeering, money laundering and tax evasion. He was prohibited from having any further dealings with boxing.
This was little consolation for Schulz. Foreman was ordered to box Schulz in a rematch but refused. He was stripped of the title. Schulz was given two further attempts to win the heavyweight title against different opponents, narrowly losing both in close but uncontroversial decisions. It seems that the Foreman fight was the summit of his career.
FOOTNOTE: I visited the Armeesportklub some years later, carefully identifying myself as a foreign tourist interested in seeing where Maske and Schulz had trained. Attitudes had apparently changed as I was given a friendly reception.
Source notes
1. At this time the IBF was one of four ratings organisations. The others were the World Boxing Council (WBC), World Boxing Association (WBA) and World Boxing Organization (WBO). According to sportswriter Jack Newfield, all were as bad as the next.
See Jack Newfield, This is only round 1 in fight against ‘cancer‘, New York Post, November 5, 1999
2. Tom Friend, New York Times News Service, Foreman wins but fans in Schulz’s corner, Sun Sentinel, South Florida, April 24, 1995
3. Tim Kawakami, Foreman lucks out in Las Vegas, Los Angeles Times, April 23, 1995
4. See 1.
5. Jim Brady gives extensive coverage to the case in his Boxing Confidential: Power, corruption and the Richest Prize in Sport (Lytham, Lancashire, UK, Milo Books, 2002) p 311
6. Jack Newfield, The Shame of Boxing — The fighters are powerless workers in need of rights and justice, The Nation, November 2, 2001
7. See Docket number 03–1691, Robert W. Lee Snr, V. United States — Opposition Office of the Solicitor General US Dept of Justice
