By Mitch Abramson
He doesn't trace the dazzling footwork that a fighter might use to befuddle his opponent. Oh, he notices these movements, it's impossible not to, but they are basically graphics crawling along the screen, a Picasso of arms and legs that sort of get in the way.Look at the man with the funny bow tie in the corner. Look at the way he walks around the ring like he took a wrong turn, tricked the heavyset security guard with the Elvis chops and landed right in the middle of the ring like he bought the best ticket on earth. But there he is, unabashedly breaking the fighters apart like he owns the place. Then sliding away and making himself invisible like the whole thing never happened.At the moment, Willis, a resident of Jamaica and graduate of Flushing High School, is thinking about Arthur Mercante Sr., a legendary referee in boxing circles with 137 world title fights and a reputation built not so much on what he did in the ring, but what he did not do. Mercante had the ability to make himself disappear during fights, to get smaller and smaller until he was gone.”When I referee, I want to have the elegance of Arthur Mercante,” Willis said. “I want to have the ability to just sit in a corner during the whole round like Frank Cappuccino and to be on my toes like a Joe Cortez. Those are guys I really look up to in the business. These are real guys.”After refereeing roughly 500 amateur bouts, a conservative amount by his estimates, Willis, 40, broke into the professional ranks in 2000 with the goal of becoming one of the best referees in the world. After a couple of initial hiccups, his dream is finally beginning to take form under the newly minted New York State Athletic Commission chairman, Ron Scott Stevens, barely unwrapped from his protective seal after taking over the job last year.”I like what I see so far of Willis,” said Stevens, who controls the fate of every New York commissioned referee, when they work and how often. “He's focused, diligent, athletic and so far has made all the right decisions, which is pretty important.”But why would anyone want to be a referee? For the most part referees are afterthoughts in boxing, officials who get in the way of what fans pay money to see, and at the same time, referees are indispensable players in the sport: A good one can enhance the viewing pleasure of a fight while a lousy one can ruin the tempo and even affect a fight's outcome.”You need to have good choreography as a referee,” Stevens explains. “You need to be able to move in and out of the action, to move with the fighters when they move while always staying in between them. You need to be able to control the action with your voice. A referee shouldn't be obvious in the ring; he should be able to blend in.”Willis isn't a former fighter, and he gets dizzy when he sees old tapes of Joe Louis or Jersey Joe Walcott, legendary fighters who for a brief time masqueraded as referees and made more trouble for themselves than was necessary. Willis was a baseball player in high school, good enough to earn a baseball scholarship to the University of Central Florida. When he couldn't get baseball out of his system, Willis headed to Yankee stadium after graduation, not to try out for the team but to work at the ballpark as a security guard.Outgoing and expressive, Willis made inroads with the umpires there and eventually enrolled himself in umpire school. He had a certain gift for the job, able to exercise his common sense behind the plate on the collegiate level, in class A ball and in the New York-Penn League. When Willis, a focused and intense man, saw how limited his options were as far as the Big Leagues were concerned, he changed course and set his sites on boxing, where the opportunity to advance was greater than in baseball.”The main difference between boxing and baseball,” he said, “was that boxing people try to help you. In the baseball world, everybody is trying to get to the top, and if you don't know the right people or have the right connections, it can be a long haul. I spent too many summers traveling and living in a Motel 6.”Willis always had a fondness for boxing, dating back to 1985 when he watched Marvin Hagler and Thomas Hearns duke it out for three rounds. Even then he couldn't help but notice referee Richard Steele tend to the action, at first a little cross-eyed on whether to separate the fighters, then properly backing off to admire the action from a distance.With baseball in his rearview mirror, Willis turned his full attention to boxing. He learned the subtleties of refereeing at the Thomas Jefferson Recreation Center in Harlem from Mike Rosario Jr., the chief of officials for Metro Boxing at the time and an Olympic official at the International Amateur Boxing Association. Once he had spent hours in the ring refereeing sparring sessions, Willis signed up with USA Boxing and judged hundreds of bouts and other administrative duties to get his feet wet. He got his chance to put his second-hand knowledge to work during the 1998 Junior Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., when the chief of officials there became irate over the performance of one of his referees and inserted Willis in his place for the remainder of the bouts.”That's how I got my start,” he said. “Rosario Jr. said: 'OK, let's step it up now,' and I started doing the PAL nationals, PAN AM Games, Friendlies, Golden Gloves, everything, and then I became the chief of officials for Metro Boxing.”When an attempt to pass the International Amateur Boxing Association's exam failed (out of 50 applicants, he came in eighth out of the seven spots that were available), Willis narrowed his focus even more to the pro ranks. He got his license in 2000 from the New York State Athletic Commission, and after Stevens took over, Willis began to work regularly.”When I first got my pro license, I didn't work for two years,” he said. “The commission was gun shy about putting on shows after all the stuff that was happening with the riot at the fight between Bowe and Golotta and when James Butler hit that guy after the bell and Gatti and Gamache. New York City was dead when it came to boxing. When they had shows, only the same two or three referees worked. When Ron Scott Stevens got appointed, everything changed. I called him up and said that I hadn't worked in a while. He put me on hold then came back and gave me a show to work.”That show was eventually canceled, but Willis would eventually see plenty of action, beginning with a card at Jimmy's Bronx Cafe, in which he was chosen, in his first pro assignment, to work the card's main event. Willis quickly got himself under control and focused, as he always does, by gathering “intelligence” about the two fighters and then “turning on the switch,” as he calls it, first removing his watch and then his glasses to get into character.”We're dealing with life and death inside the ring, so I try to get serious,” he said. “I don't put pressure on myself, but the boxers are putting their safety into your hands. Before the fight, I need to get my mind right, as I call it.”He still works a couple of jobs to support himself. He is a personal trainer at a Bally's in Little Neck and does insurance inspections on the side, but boxing is the engine that drives his ship.”You want to be the best at your profession, which in boxing means refereeing championship bouts,” he said.He has already worked a minor title fight, and on Aug. 26 at the Huntington Townhouse on Long Island he will referee again. As always, Willis expects the unexpected. He has already refereed at a strip club; presided over a bout between two heavyweights in which the ring literally collapsed from too much weight; had to break up a melee that started when a boxer body-slammed his opponent and, at the 2000 World Championships, was a fly on the wall when the Cubans lost to the Russians and a near riot would have broken out if not for a well-placed call by Fidel Castro to a pay phone at the gym ordering his team to go home.”In the pros, the elegance of the referee is what separates them from everyone else,” Willis said. “You need to have some class in there. A lot of people put down boxing, but (if the referee does his job) boxing is actually a very safe sport. I try to make sure everyone is safe when I referee.”Reach reporter Mitch Abramson by e-mail at timesledger@aol.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 130.
