Looking for another comeback

09:18 AM EST on Tuesday, November 29, 2005

BY LYNN ARDITI
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- Retired boxer Vinny Paz yesterday put on a pair of crocodile-skin boots with his Versace suit, slid into the passenger seat of his girlfriend's 2005 Mercedes SLK 350 and headed for his bankruptcy hearing.

Journal photo / Mary Murphy

Boxer Vinny Paz arrives with his girlfriend, Holly Dolly Lopes, for his bankruptcy hearing in Providence yesterday.

His lawyer had cautioned Paz to dress appropriately. So he had ditched his diamond-studded thumb ring and hoop earrings. He'd even switched wristwatches -- trading a flashier, Marc Ecko for his more conservative Roven Dino. "Ironically," he said, slyly, "this one [cost] ten times as much."

The five-time world champion has grown accustomed to living in style, not to mention being noticed. But on this morning, there was no crowd waiting when Paz and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Holly Dolly Lopes, stepped into a drab hearing room at the U.S. Trustee's office in Providence.

Paz, 42, who left professional boxing last year, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection from creditors last month, declaring more than $2 million in debts, including hundreds of thousands of dollars owed to the IRS and two Las Vegas casinos. Paz estimated that his assets -- champion boxing belts included -- total about $383,000.

Home for Paz is a raised ranch in Warwick's Tivoli Court. Visitors are greeted at the front door by a rusting coat of armor with a sign that reads, "The Warrior Welcomes You," and, above it, a surveillance camera.

Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection generally wipes out all debts. The filer is usually allowed to keep up to $200,000 in equity in a house and $10,000 for a car.

If the Chapter 7 petition is denied -- usually because the trustee discovers assets that could repay creditors -- the debtor can be forced into a Chapter 13 repayment plan. Creditors have 60 days from the hearing to challenge the petition.

Paz's championship boxing belts yesterday caught the trustee's eye.

"How many championship belts are there?" asked Charles A. Pisaturo Jr.

"I have three at the house right now; one that I received last night . . . given to me as an honorary thing," answered Paz.

The belts, Paz said, were worth about $2,000 each.

Also attending the hearing was Marc D. Wallick, a Providence lawyer hired by the owners of The Mirage Casino Hotel and MGM Grand, in Las Vegas, to try to collect some $300,000 of Paz's gambling debts.

"Can you identify it?" said Wallick, holding up a picture printed off Paz's Web site.

"That's the championship ring given to me from Foxwoods in 1993."

The ring was listed for sale, with the "starting bid" at $3,000.

Asked why he hadn't listed the ring in his bankruptcy documents, Paz said that he had planned to donate it to charity.

What year, Wallick asked Paz, did you sell your condo in Florida?

"Maybe around 2000," Paz said.

"Any profit?"

"I'm sure I did, but I don't [remember]."

"Where did the money go?"

"Probably in the stock market, to pay bills and on the table."

Paz, who reported that he earned just over $12,000 this year, working as a TV sports commentator and doing product endorsements, said he borrowed money from friends to pay his mortgage. He said he's a few months behind.

Any future source of income?

"I'm working on some things now to make it happen," said Paz.

To "make it happen," he is trying to sell his story for a feature film, Paz told a Journal reporter over a lox brunch special with green tea Sunday. The interview at Twist restaurant, in Wayland Square the day before his bankrkuptcy hearing, was arranged by Paz's lawyer, Peter G. Berman.

Paz arrived an hour and 20 minutes late, with his "biographer," Peter Conti, who joked that he was Paz's driver. Paz hasn't been behind the wheel since his license was suspended for a year after he refused an alcohol test last December.

On this afternoon, Conti, who teaches at City University of New York, had driven Paz back from Boston, where they'd spent Saturday night dining with a businessman whom Conti hopes will help finance his screenplay about Paz.

A natural storyteller, Paz appeared most animated when recounting how strangers recognize him. There was the time when Paz spotted Burt Reynolds at a restaurant in Las Vegas.

"Ask Burt Reynolds if he knows who Vinny Paz is?" he recalled telling the waitress. Paz got his picture taken with Reynolds.

"Like coming here, I was just in Boston . . . at the Westin, and this kid says to me, 'Come on, you gotta do one more [fight], one more!' "

Vinny grinned. "I said, 'No, it's over!' "

"It's always wild when I go out like that," Paz said.

Asked how he managed to lose millions of dollars that he earned in the boxing ring, Paz said, "Gambled a lot of it. Stock market a lot of it. Gave a lot of it away."

He looked down at his plate, poking his fork into a roll of lox. "I have fallen quite a few times, and I've always gotten up," he said.

The comeback story is one of Paz's favorites. The screenplay that Conti is trying to turn into a movie is about Paz's return to the boxing ring after a near career-ending car accident.

Who would Paz want to play his role?

He leaned his head thoughtfully on his hand and replied, "Mark Wahlberg, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Cruise. And if he ever did do it, it would be humongous. I think the best would be Mark Wahlberg," AKA Markie Mark of the movie, Boogie Nights!

Absent from this movie version of Paz's story is any mention of his gambling problem or bankruptcy.

Why, he is asked, leave all of that out?

Paz rubbed his chin and gazed out beyond where his lawyer sat.

"It would be an inspirational story of a man's will," said Paz, "of a man coming back."

Yesterday, Paz was sounding the comeback theme yet again as he left bankruptcy hearing.

"I'm always looking for that thrill," he told a TV reporter. "I'm always on the brink of disaster."

Then, with Lopes on his arm, he stepped into the street.

Contact Lynn Arditi by e-mail at larditi@projo.com or call (401) 277-7335.