An Education In Boxing Spokane Fighter Using Sport To Fuel Dream

REPLAY: Sports, December 1, 1998: Dan Vassar did not judge the Rick Welliver-Steve Mussachio fight, as reported Sunday. The judge referred to in the story was Ray Kerwick.

Once, he thought.

Rick Welliver would subject himself to the rewards and punishments of a professional fight just once, for any of a half-dozen reasons.

He was fat and lazy (his words), a 5-foot-9, 220-pounder who’d just broken up with his girlfriend.

“I needed money,” he remembers. “I needed self-esteem. I didn’t want to be one of those guys who hangs around the gym at 45 saying I wish I’d have done it.”

So he stepped up training, shed 15 pounds on his way down to his fighting weight of 181, polished the skills he’d earned in some 50 amateur bouts and just did it. Fought professionally. Took on a kid named Sean Elliott at the Fairgrounds.

He won. The purse was $400. Somebody asked for an autograph. He felt like a million.

Three years and 17 fights later, Welliver grins at the memory.

“Wow,” he said. “Four hundred bucks. I grew up in Hillyard. You could always find a fight in Hillyard. To get paid to beat somebody up has got to be the greatest thing in the world.”

He laughs a just-kiddin-you’ laugh. He did go to Rogers. He did grow up in a boxing family. He does have the scars of some unfortunate other’s teeth marks on his knuckles, left over from a fight outside a Stateline night spot. (“There’s always some guy who has it in his mind that you’re a boxer, welllllll, they’re a street fighter,” he explains. “They usually wake up drooling all over themselves.”)

But if he’s had his share of fights in and out of the ring, he’s a thoughtful, almost cheerful warrior who fights for a dream.

He wants to teach.

“It’s all I ever wanted to be, a teacher,” he said. “This is boxing. This is nothing.”

Although he’d make some school district one one hell of a recess monitor, Welliver for now gives boxing its due. He puts in time at the gym, at Spokane Falls CC, where he attends classes, and at the Spokane Karate Center. He’s trading punches for tuition, suffering bruises for books, plotting to land that teaching job in special education.

“My last fight paid for winter quarter,” he said. “My next one will pay for spring.”

It gives him a loftier purpose, although what he’s doing now reflects a certain grisly nobility. Even if you hate blood-sport you can admire the skill and fury that Welliver summons every time he climbs through the ropes.

His fight a couple of weeks ago at the Coeur d’Alene Tribal Bingo Casino in Worley, Idaho was a rematch with Steve Mussachio, a 25-year-old who looks as if he were laced up from shavings off a slab of rawhide.

Their 6-round preliminary was the highlight of an entertaining night of boxing. In a world gone mad for the fakery of pro rasslin’, Welliver vs. Mussachio was an island of savage honesty, where punches weren’t pulled and the pain and blood were all too real.

Welliver vs. Mussachio. Two men beating separate paths, one aiming for the glory of a championship, the other reaching for the security of the classroom.

Mussachio, a strong, superbly conditioned natural southpaw from Las Vegas, harbors his own humanity.

He juggles priorities, sleeping in shifts, stocking shelves at a Las Vegas supermarket (“just throwin’ cans around,” he says) while training for his next fight.

He works the graveyard shift from 10 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. He’s home in time to rouse the children, a boy, 6, and a 3-year-old daughter who came with his two-month-old marriage to his wife, Kelly.

Mussachio typically gets the kids ready for school while Kelly prepares for work. After everybody is hustled off, he naps until his early afternoon workout. Then it’s out to school to pick up his son and back for homework, family time, dinner and a nap before work.

Mussachio in the ring is dangerous and unorthodox, the type of fighter they might want to duck.

Not Rick Welliver, known as Pit Bull. Welliver welcomed the opportunity to reverse the outcome of their first fight, when a Mussachio uppercut took him out in the fourth.

Welliver and Mussachio traded shots in that first fight, then went out for a beer.

“I can’t hate the man,” Welliver said, “but in the ring, this time, I will give him a half-hour of hell. I’m 5-9 with a 3-foot wing span. I got to get inside and rock him. That’s what it’s all about for me.”

Mussachio carries his hands low. With his face exposed, he catches more than a few with his face.

On this night, for $2,000, in their rematch in front of about 2,100 fans, Welliver is wading in, absorbing and countering, picking off blows before they gather steam.

But Mussachio’s reach advantage is substantial. He lands an overhand right that catches Welliver behind the ear. Welliver staggers, rubber-legged, away from his attacker, squints into the lights and is hit with a disturbing thought.

“What,” he later remembers thinking, “in the hell am I doing here?”

Mussachio, unaware that Welliver is in trouble, is slow to press his advantage. With his extensive experience as an amateur, Welliver is the more balanced boxer. He survives, and by round’s end answers with a sharp left hook that channels into Mussachio’s eyelid.

The blood flows. Later, nine stitches will be required to close the wound.

A mouse has lumped up under Welliver’s left eye. By the fifth his face is splotched and beginning to puff. Blood is rolling into Mussachio’s eye. He is warned for holding and hitting.

Through six rounds of give and take - “swapping blood,” Welliver calls it - neither is clearly ahead on points. The fight ends with the crowd up and applauding and the fighters taking turn parading around the ring, projecting victory.

One Spokane judge scores it 58-56, Mussachio. A second has it 59-56. A third, Dan Vassar, Sr., awards every round to Mussachio, 60-54. The decision is unanimous. Mussachio is jubilant and grateful.

“I don’t know what held him up,” Mussachio says. “He came to fight. I didn’t expect him to throw as many punches. The last time I fought him, he was loading up. He didn’t load up as much this time. He kept trying to catch me with that left hook. He caught me a couple of times but he he never really shook me.”

The judges agreed.

Welliver was disappointed but gracious. Back in the dressing room he looked for his 14-month-old daughter, Madisen. Minus his eyeglasses, in boxing trunks, holding a sponge to his face, he was somehow different. Vulnerable, maybe. The little girl didn’t recognize him.

“She was saying, ‘Daddy? Daddy?”’ Welliver said.

He sighs.

“I don’t hurt but I feel like (dirt). It’s hard to lose. I didn’t win a round? (on the one judge’s card?) That’s hard to believe. Ah, well, I’m not complaining about the decision. I expected a draw, but that’s boxing.”

Although a pittance given the sacrifice, the purse isn’t a bad night’s work for a 25-year-old in Spokane. Beyond the payday, the fight re-affirmed Welliver’s grasp of his craft. He’s good, maybe not championship good but a boxer/puncher with a capacity to administer and absorb punishment.

A crowd-pleaser.

While Welliver fights for scholarship and tomorrow, Mussachio sees this as life’s work today.

Welliver finds amusement in many forms. Noticing Kelly, Mussachio’s stunning wife, at ringside, Welliver murmurs, “Too bad it wasn’t winner take all. I might have fought harder.”

So when do you get married, Rick? Welliver is asked.

“I’m not that punchy,” he replies.

Mussachio may have won this fight with preparation. Welliver in Spokane has trouble finding sparring partners. Mussachio in Vegas has the opportunity to mix and match.

“I worked with (former champion) Roger Mayweather to get ready for this fight,” Mussachio said. “Rick is quite a bit shorter than I am. So is Roger. I sparred well over 100 rounds for this fight.”

A high school baseball catcher in his native Florida, Mussachio grew up known as Steve Speidel. “My dad’s name was Mussachio,” he said. “People tend to follow an Italian name. I’m halfItalian. I’m having the name legally changed. It’s kind of a marketing ploy.”

It worked for Rocky.

“I didn’t have an amateur career,” Mussachio said. “I’ve learned everything the hard way. The story of my life.”

His losses in his brief 7-2 career were first-round knockouts.

“I got caught with wild punches,” he said. “You back a tiger into a corner, it’s the most dangerous time. I got caught. The first loss was really hard. I wasn’t hurt. They stopped it because earlier that night, a kid got killed (on the same card). Johnny Montantes (it was September, ‘97 in a fight with James Crayton in Las Vegas).

“I was fine but they waved it off. I say this now. I almost hit the referee, but I controlled myself.”

How does death in the same ring on the same night weigh on a man in this business?

“It’s not as traumatic as you might think,” Mussachio said. “It could happen to me, it could happen to him. If I were to hurt somebody badly enough, and they were to die, I’d be very, very remorseful. But I don’t think I would let it affect me like it affected Boom-Boom Mancini. He was never the same after he killed Duk Koo Kim (in 1982).

“I’m not your friend in the ring. That’s just how it is. I started at 23, with no experience. I was supposed to lose my first five fights. I was the opponent. I’ve had to fight to people in their hometowns. I’ve won as an underdog. The two guys who beat me won’t fight me.”

The future?

“I see myself within the next two years with a title shot. Cruiserweight or light-heavyweight. I’m talking major title fight - WBC, WBA, IBF. No reason to be in this business unless you’re serious about it.”

“One thing my old manager told me. Either you is, or you ain’t. To put it bluntly, I is.”

Welliver overhears part of the conversation.

“A championship?” Welliver says. “He’s going to lose his next fight.”

To whom?

“Me.”

Mussachio is talking about a fight in a couple of weeks, in California. He said he’d come back to the House of Fury, to fight somebody else. He’s 2-0 against Welliver. A third fight would prove nothing.

Two nights in the ring with the pit bull is plenty.