Then All The Joy Turned To Sorrow

Kim's left hooks and slashing rights had exacted a toll, but Kim had been punished too, though he showed it less. When the fighters began the 14th, the mirror's image was still there. Mancini broke the pattern by stepping to the right as Kim's left whistled by. Mancini hooked his own wounded left ineffectually, but now Kim was off-center, exhausted and facing Mancini's corner. Mancini drove off his right foot and delivered the first of the final pair of rights on the point of the Korean's chin.

A glancing left hook followed, then a crushing right which sent Kim to the canvas. Kim landed heavily on his back and head, rolled over in slow motion, grabbed a middle strand of the ropes and stared blankly at the timekeeper. Kim's eyes dilated while the outdoor stadium rocked in celebration. "He was desperate, and I was hoping. My left hand was killing me," Mancini said. "But I felt that first right all the way up my arm." Twice Kim failed to regain his footing, but somehow he beat the count. Referee Richard Green looked at Kim's unfocused eyes and buckling legs and stopped the fight. "He was not there, and I wasn't going to let him go any further," said Green, who has officiated half a dozen world title fights, including Larry Holmes-Muhammad Ali. Green was absolved of any blame for failing to stop the fight sooner by the attending ringside physician, Dr. Donald Romeo, who worked to revive Kim. Kim's cornermen had offered no protest when the fight ended. "He just wouldn't go down," one of them said. "He had great pride."

Perhaps Kim's pride had been too great. Wolf returned from the hospital eight hours after the fight, at 11 p.m., sobered. "Pol Tiglao [Kim's American representative and translator and agent for a number of Oriental fighters] told me that a couple of days before the fight, Kim had written 'Kill or be killed' in Korean on a lampshade in his room," Wolf said. "He was a warrior going to war. Apparently he viewed this as a death match." Wolf then discounted Arum's suggestions. "I don't know what a blue-ribbon panel could do," he said. "It was not a case of defective equipment, or a fighter being allowed to go too far, or any impropriety. It was one or two unfortunate punches. And those rights at the end were not nearly the best punches Ray had thrown during the fight."

The youngest of five children born to the H.Y. Kims, rice and ginseng farmers, Kim came from Kang Won-Do province in Korea, 100 kilometers east of Seoul. "He was the strongest of the family's three sons," said H.R. Lee, a Korean journalist with the Hankook Ilbo, who traveled to Las Vegas with Kim's small entourage and a larger group of Korean partisans. "He was not injured before the fight. He was in the best condition of his life."

Kim had been a shoeshine boy, tour guide and baker's assistant before starting an amateur boxing career in 1976. His only hobby, according to Lee, was "music listening," but Tiglao said he also enjoyed reading. After a 29-4 amateur record, he turned professional in 1978, working with 100 other fighters in Seoul's Tong-a Gymnasium. He was the best of the lot and won the Orient and Pacific Boxing Federation lightweight title last February. He received $20,000 to fight Mancini.

Mancini studied film of Kim and other southpaw fighters for weeks. "We figured he'd come out kamikaze" Mancini said. "After looking at the film, I didn't care what anyone said," Mancini's trainer. Murphy Griffith, declared. "I had Ray train as if it was the fight of his life."

So it was. Mancini started the first round with a booming left hook to the jaw, but Kim answered with two of his own, and the barrages from both sides continued for the first nine rounds, the only variation being target. When Mancini went to the liver or rib cage, Kim answered. Mancini hooked with the hooker and found the tactic somewhat lacking. Kim seemed to land the harder punches. At the end of the ninth, a left rocked Mancini back on his heels, and Kim extended his arms upward in exultation. "He was getting lower than me," Mancini said. "I was supposed to be off him, but a lot of times when a guy is sitting in front of you like that, you want to move in and shoot. But he was getting his punches off first." Said Griffith, "Ray had to adjust. We didn't know Kim would be that tough. He was skillful, smart. Ray couldn't get below him, where he likes to be. But Ray's physical conditioning determined the fight. By the 13th round, the guy was looking for the hook. I told Ray to go with the right."

In fact, that decision had been made some 10 rounds earlier, when Mancini hurt his hand. "Every time I hit him in the head, it killed me," Mancini said shortly after the battle, unaware of the terrible irony. The constant pounding from Mancini began to tell on Kim in the 10th, when Green took a point from Kim for hitting-and-holding. Green was berated by Mancini's corner throughout the fight about that tactic, borderline low blows, hitting after the bell and Kim's headfirst rushes. "He wasn't dirty," insisted Mancini, who appeared to win every round from the 10th on. "Rough and tough, not dirty. We both hit heads. We both hit low. He was just the worst type of guy to fight." Said Wolf, "Already I can look back and see that [Green] did an excellent job."

By the 11th, though his left eye was purple and hideously swollen, Mancini had taken control of the fight. He fired a left hook that buckled Kim's knees, and now he began to land three punches to Kim's one. At one point Kim went to one knee, but Green correctly ruled it a push. Mancini ended the 12th scoring from a distance. He gave himself a clap and made an exaggerated nod at the end of the round. In the 13th, Mancini swarmed over Kim, starting the unanswered 39-punch sequence with a straight right hand. The right side of Kim's jaw ballooned and appeared to be broken, but he weathered that storm and even managed to punch out a weak combination. Then came the 14th, the sidestep and Mancini's initial right, apparently unseen by Kim. He reeled back, defenseless, and the second right landed point blank on his jaw.

"Let all these guys who are screaming for a piece of Ray settle with Kim first. A temporary champion would have lost to Kim today," Wolf said at the conclusion of the bout. Later, after spending four hours at the hospital and being told that Kim didn't have long to live, Wolf said, "Ray is taking this hard, and his parents are pretty shook up also. I haven't given a single thought to how this may affect Ray as a fighter, and maybe that sounds silly, but that's the last concern right now. How it affects him as a person is what concerns me. I do think he's a very strong kid and sometime in the future he will be able to look at this, in the context of great pain, and see that once he stepped into that ring with Kim there was nothing he could have done."