Hawaiian Businessman

When Bobo Olson was a 15-year-old in Hawaii he was so keen to be a professional fighter that he had his arms tattooed and shaved his chest every day to make the hair grow faster--all so he would look old enough to get a fighter's license. Last week Middleweight Champion Olson, a balding 25-year-old, was candidly bored by the whole business: "I'm tired of fighting. I don't like it anymore. I'm doing it for the money alone--until I get enough to go into some kind of business to provide security for my family."

As he climbed into the Chicago ring for a fight with Welterweight Champion Kid Gavilan. Businessman Bobo should have been fairly well pleased. An audience of 18,582 fans had paid a whopping $334,730 at the gate. Another $100,000 in television rights brought the total to a record for a non-heavyweight bout. Bobo's share of all this was 35%. On good-natured impulse, he took a lei from his own neck and draped it over the neck of the startled Gavilan, then walked to his corner to await the opening bell.

As a fighter, Bobo is somberly effective, if not flashy. Boring in steadily with a mixture of flicking lefts and chopping rights to the body, he set himself to close in and take the jumping-jack spring out of bouncy, flurry-punching Kid Gavilan. It was no easy matter. In the ninth round infighting, Olson butted Gavilan with his head, opened a cut on the Cuban's right cheekbone.

In the tenth, flailing away with four of the fastest fists in the business, the two fighters stood toe-to-toe and slugged it out while the crowd howled. Gavilan unleashed one of his famed bolo punches, a freewheeling uppercut that starts with a backswing. Olson shrugged it off, kept right on boring in.

At the end of the 15 rounds, both fighters were still upright, still relatively unmarked. To the referee and one judge, the decision was close but clear-cut: Olson. That was enough, since the remaining judge carded it a draw. After the fight, Family Man (four children) Olson hopped a plane for San Francisco and home. Before he left, Bobo announced his plans for the future: "A big outdoor fight with Joe Giardello in New York this summer.--A real big-money fight."

In another fight last week, television fans and 4,200 jampacked customers in a Brooklyn skating rink caught a short glimpse of an up-and-coming heavyweight who throws such a whirlwind of punches that he is nicknamed "Hurricane" Tommy Jackson, 22, a product of the Georgia cotton fields who carries a Bible with him although he cannot read, whipsawed Dan Bucceroni, third-ranked heavyweight, into helplessness in six rounds.

Hurricane's assortment of punches included an original one of startling appearance if limited ring value: a double uppercut, i.e., simultaneous uppercuts with the left and right hands.

In his 20 months of professional fighting (16 victories, one loss, one draw), Hurricane Jackson has put on 20 Ibs., now stands a strapping 6 ft. 2 1/2 in., 192 Ibs., and is still growing. Former Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey, a ringside witness of Jackson's butchering of Bucceroni, appraised Jackson's prospects: "With experience, he'll be a great fighter.

He's tough enough now as it is."

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