Everett Teen Boxer Uses Jekyll-Hyde Combination Well

Lance Holcomb is the 5-foot-5, 132-pound, light-haired, blue-eyed, clean-cut, well-mannered winner of hearts all over Everett.

``Kind of preppy-looking really. The kid next door,'' said Bob Kahler, his adoptive father. ``The mothers all like him. The girls all like him.''

Then there's Lance ``Schoolboy'' Holcomb with the lightning punch, who is rough-cut, ill-mannered and the winner of his first two professional boxing fights.

``He told me the other night he's almost Jekyll and Hyde,'' Kahler said. ``When he gets in the ring, he changes.''

Holcomb, 18, is a senior at Everett High School. He turned pro this summer and won a four-round unanimous decision in Yakima July 26, and then won a week ago in Fife with a third-round technical knockout of Harvey Pina of Union Gap.

``I guess I hurt him (Pina) right off the bat. I took his heart away from him and took the fight away from him,'' Holcomb said.

``Right now, I don't think there's a prelim (fewer than eight-round bouts) fighter who can beat me.''

That's what his trainer, Ed Rodgers, likes to hear.

``That's the attitude to take. He's got to carry that positive attitude,'' said Rodgers, who was Holcomb's assistant trainer most of their four-year association, until the fighter turned pro.

``Lance is a two-year project. He's young enough that we can really take our time with him,'' Rodgers said. ``Our goal with Lance is to make him a champion of the world, and if I didn't think he had what it took, I would really be very hesitant about working with him.

``I've been around boxing 20 years. He's got that special little desire that it takes.''

Bruce Siebol, promoter of the Yakima card, said, ``I didn't know what to expect. They told me he was good, but a lot of managers tell you that. I saw him and he was great. Then I saw him in his second fight, and he was even better.

``I see him world-ranked some day.''

The career began seven years ago on the wrong side of Everett.

As much as he might change when he steps into a ring, Jekyll never changed as much as an ``unkempt and disheveled-looking'' 11-year-old kid did after he stepped into Bob Kahler's life.

``I always have trouble with the project kids, and he was one of the project kids,'' said Kahler, a retired Everett police officer. ``They used to come down and tease my dogs.''

They did one day while Kahler was working out. He came out of his house. They ran. He pursued.

``I caught this kid, and I just shook the living hell out of him.''

That was the last Kahler expected to hear of it. But not long after, a pair of other kids noticed the heavy punching bag through his window and asked if he could teach them to box. He put them in touch with someone who could.

``Then they said, `We've got this cousin who wants to box, too, but he's scared to death of you because you shook him,' '' Kahler said.

Lance had his first bout less than a year later, losing to a kid with about 60 fights, Kahler said.

``Most kids would have given up, but he hung in there for some reason,'' Kahler said.

He has won four local Golden Gloves titles, a pair of regional Golden Gloves titles. Two years ago he was seventh in a national Golden Gloves tournament.

And he hung around with the Kahlers. Bob and Loretta took him in ``one shoe at a time,'' Kahler said. He was living with the couple at 12, and they legally adopted him at 16.

``They loved me,'' Holcomb said. ``She (his biological mother) couldn't really afford me. There were so many kids.

``She still loves me and stuff, but she wanted the best for me.''

And Holcomb feels he's found it.

``Boxing's all me. I love it.''