'Superfight' is still a KO

Rocky Marciano will try to deliver one final knockout at the Garden Tuesday night when he reenters the ring for the first time in 35 years to take on Muhammad Ali in what was known as ''The Fight of the Century."

The Sports Museum will screen ''The Superfight," a film that played to packed theaters around the country and in Europe Jan. 20, 1970, five months after Marciano was killed in a plane crash. The film was the brainchild of Murray Woroner, a Miami fight promoter who hired Ali and Marciano for $10,000 apiece to shoot a movie in 1969 of a fight that was not decided by undefeated heavyweight champions but by a computer. The idea was born from a popular series of such fantasy fights played out on the radio in which two great champions from different eras were matched with information fed into a computer and the outcome played out according to the computer's analysis.

Ali, 27 at the time, had been stripped of the heavyweight title two years earlier when he refused to be inducted into the US Army. He agreed to the ''fight" because he needed the money. Marciano, then 45, didn't need the money but his pride was unquenchable so he labored for months to lose nearly 50 pounds he had gained since retiring in 1956 as the only undefeated heavyweight champion in boxing history. He agreed to the fight as much to settle who really was The Greatest.

The two squared off in a North Miami gym in the summer of 1969, fighting abbreviated rounds and pulling their punches, although not noticeably, while following the computer's script. Seven separate endings were filmed to ensure no one would know the outcome beforehand.

''The intriguing thing is that nobody knew who the winner was going to be," Angelo Dundee, Ali's trainer, told Everett Skehan in his recently released Marciano biography, ''Undefeated: The Fighter Who Refused to Lose." ''Muhammad wasn't told. I wasn't told. The referee wasn't told. The only guy who knew was Murray Woroner, and he wasn't telling anybody. It was done strictly by the computer."

To learn what the computer decided, and to spend a night reliving boxing's glorious past by watching Ali and Maricano fight on film, the Sports Museum decided to host a fund-raising dinner along with the screening at Legends, the restaurant inside the TD Banknorth Garden. The $75 ticket includes cocktails, dinner, a panel discussion on the fight and the careers of both fighters that will include boxing historian Bert Sugar, Rocky's brother Peter Marciano, Mike DeLisa, executive producer of the Superfight documentary and author of ''Cinderella Man," Bob Lobel, and others. But, best of all, you get a copy of the new DVD ''The Superfight: Marciano vs. Ali," and it's a tax-deductible charitable donation because proceeds go to funding for The Sports Museum.

For more information, call 617-624-1233. As for the outcome, you'll have to show up, as a full house did at the Garden Jan. 20, 1970, to find out.

Short jabs

Undisputed welterweight champion Zab Judah was outboxed and outfought by Carlos Baldomir for 12 rounds at Madison Square Garden last Saturday night. Judah spent most of last week talking about how much he wanted to fight undefeated Floyd Mayweather Jr., saying at one point he looked at the Baldomir fight as ''a job . . . more like extra credit." Well, give Baldomir credit, he looked at it like a serious job. He was the World Boxing Council's No. 1 contender. The International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association refused to hand the titles to Baldomir, claiming he had refused to pay their sanction fees. According to Baldomir's promoters, Sycuan Ringside Promotions, ''Neither Sycuan . . . nor Carlos . . . were ever contacted or approached by the IBF or WBA in regards to paying sanctioning fees to those organizations for the right to fight for their titles." Bottom line? The guy beat the champion of all three organizations . . . Also Saturday night, IBF cruiserweight champion O'Neil Bell took the best WBC/WBA champion Jean Marc Mormeck had to offer and then knocked him cold in the 10th round to unify that title . . . It didn't take long for Baldomir to get a challenger. Joshua Clottey (28-1, 18 KOs) wants a rematch with Baldomir, who got a disputed win by disqualification over Clottey in the 11th round of their Nov. 29, 1999 fight for a low blow. . . . Word is the Bernard Hopkins-Roy Jones Jr. fight will not come off March 26 as originally announced, and that negotiations for a middleweight title fight between undisputed champion Jermain Taylor and former junior middleweight champion Winky Wright have broken down over a money dispute. Lou DiBella, Taylor's promoter, offered Wright $3 million to fight live on HBO while Taylor would receive $4 million. Wright is demanding a 50-50 split. The WBC has ordered Taylor to face Wright (50-3). If a deal cannot be made by Jan. 30, a purse bid will be ordered in which other promoters could outbid DiBella, who said Taylor would give up the belt rather than fight for unfair money . . . Former IBF junior middleweight champion Kassim Ouma (22-2-1, 14 KOs) returns to the ring Jan. 27 on ESPN2 vs. Francisco Antonio Mora (50-9, 8 KOs) . . . Remember Armando Barak, the doctor who was caught with his foot under the scale when Jose Luis Castillo was trying to make weight for his rematch with Diego Corrales the day before their scheduled Oct. 8 lightweight title fight? Well, the Nevada Athletic Commission quietly rightly revoked his cornerman's license last week . . . Arturo Gatti returns to the ring Jan. 28 vs. undefeated Danish welterweight Thomas Damgaard (37-0, 27 KOs) at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City.

Local bleatings

Former WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz filed an official protest with the WBA this week, seeking an immediate rematch with massive Russian Nikolai Valuev, who was awarded a controversial majority decision in Berlin last month. Ruiz hired CompuBox, which does punch stats for HBO and ESPN2 boxing events, to review tapes of the fight. CompuBox found that Ruiz outlanded Valuev, 195-157, and was far more accurate, landing 128 of 194 power punches to 43 of 184 for Valuev. CompuBox's review had Ruiz outlanding Valuev in eight of the fight's 12 rounds. Valuev also received seven warnings from referee Stanley Christodoulou for repeated fouling but had no points deducted. Most incredibly, considering Ruiz's reputation and size disadvantage, CompuBox found Valuev clinched 76 times in the fight to 29 by Ruiz. In the fight's final round, Ruiz landed 44 percent of his 41 punches while Valuev landed seven punches, yet two of the judges gave that round to Valuev and the third called it even . . . Undefeated Brazilian Valdemir Pereira (22-0, 15 KOs) will fight Fahprakorb Rakkiatgym (52-3, 33 KOs) Jan. 20 at Foxwoods for the vacant IBF featherweight title. Pereira will be at the Midwest Grill in Cambridge Monday at noon to discuss the upcoming title fight . . . Undefeated middleweight prospect John Duddy (14-0, 13 KOs) returns to Boston Feb. 4 at Cyclorama in the South End. Undefeated Yuri Foreman (19-0, 7 KOs) is scheduled to headline the semi-main event. For information, call 781-932-1190 . . . Rich Cappiello will promote a fight card Feb. 18 at Mohegan Sun Arena in Connecticut featuring middleweights Rasheem Brown (17-2, 5 KOs) vs. Larry Marks (27-7, 16 KOs) in the main event, and Hartford super bantamweight Mike Oliver (11-0, 5 KOs) facing Castulo Gonzalez of Wilmington.