READY TO RUMBLE; TRAINERS GET ACTORS IN SHAPE FOR THE RING.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

How does an actor put on his boxing shorts? One leg at a time - just like a real fighter.

How do you train an actor for a role as a boxer? Work on the fundamentals, then train him hard and pray for a knockout - just like you would a real fighter.

The only difference is that you're hoping the magic will be on the screen instead of in the ring.

But any actor who expects to play Ali or Liston in the movies is likely to find himself working like a dog in some secluded, sweaty gym in the San Fernando Valley or downtown L.A. where Oscar nominations and Juilliard training don't add up to a pile of sawdust.

Just ask Terry Claybon, who spent 18 months training Denzel Washington to play Rubin ``Hurricane'' Carter in ``The Hurricane.''

``I knew Denzel had had all types of personal trainers over the years, so I didn't know what it was going to be like to work with him,'' said Claybon. ``When he came in, he said, 'I don't know anything. Start me from ground one. I want to learn how to fight like a professional.' That was exactly what I wanted to hear.''

Claybon, along with a handful of fight-movie trainers, has been busy lately. In addition to ``Hurricane'' and Ron Shelton's ``Play It to the Bone,'' which are in theaters now, there has been a recent spate of television and film boxing projects, including two TV biographies of Muhammad Ali. ``Knockout,'' featuring Maria Conchita Alonso, opens today in theaters, and Karyn Kusama's ``Girlfight,'' about a high school senior who embarks on an amateur boxing career, shared the grand jury prize at the just-completed Sundance Film Festival. Separate feature film versions of Sonny Liston and Muhammad Ali biographies are also in the works. In ``The Price of Glory,'' opening March 31, Jimmy Smits stars as a former boxer who trains his three sons to be champion fighters.

All of these need realistic-looking fight scenes with actors who can pull it off. Enter a Claybon, Jimmy Nickerson, Benny Urquidez or Darrell Foster. What these fight choreographers and trainers have in common is that they're confident, sometimes arrogant, telling you who they've trained and what they've accomplished in and out of the ring. They'll never admit to being starstruck. A client, they'll tell you, is a client.

Here's a quick look at each:

--Terry Claybon: After retiring from boxing after a career that included 39 amateur fights, three Golden Gloves championships and an undefeated professional record, Claybon wasn't itching to return to a 9-to-5 job. At the Hollywood Boxing Gym, where he is an instructor and co-owner, Claybon teaches classes and claims he can pass on his skills to anyone. Of course it helps if you come in with the skills of Denzel Washington who, his trainer said, might have had a career in the ring had that been his ambition.

``If he had started training as a fighter at the time he was starting off in acting, you could have flipped a coin,'' said Claybon, who also trained the fighters for ``Knockout.'' ``He has very fast hands and an unbelievable right.''

Claybon and Washington worked more than a year together studying tapes of Carter's fights. Working out two hours a day, five days a week during that period, Washington lost more than 40 pounds - all for a movie that has relatively few boxing scenes.

As he frequently does with his trainees, Claybon stresses defense. ``To make it real, you have to have defense,'' he said. And by teaching defense, Claybon also helps provide his trainee with the confidence that he can avoid being hit.

``You can choreograph a scene to be just like a fight,'' said Claybon, ``the punches will be so close, but he won't be glove shy because he has the security of having defense.''

While Claybon handled the moves and conditioning, Washington took care of everything else: the attitude and confidence that he could step into the ring and knock out any opponent.

``With Denzel, I was always telling him, 'When you get on the set, your first take, this is your world championship fight,' Claybon said. ``Believe me, the very first time he was on the set to shoot the scene, the tension ... I've been in world championship fights ... and the tension between him and me was like, 'Hey, we're going to go for a rumble. There's going to be a battle.' ''

--Jimmy Nickerson: He'll modestly tell you, ``It could have been anybody.'' Maybe producer Irwin Winkler and director Martin Scorsese could have picked any skilled fighter to add some realism to their now landmark 1980 boxing film ``Raging Bull.'' But they selected Nickerson, a professional stuntman and former amateur fighter from Pittsburgh whom Winkler had tapped to work with Sylvester Stallone on the first two ``Rocky'' movies.

``Raging Bull'' - which featured an Oscar-winning Robert DeNiro as Jake LaMotta - became a critical smash, renowned for its realism, and it put Nickerson on the fight film map. Since then - with the exception of ``The Hurricane'' - Nickerson has worked on a film biography of every famed boxer you can think of. Most recently, he trained Terrence Howard and Steve Harris for ``King of the World,'' the ABC version of the Muhammad Ali story.

Many of his trainees end up sweating it out at the Ten Goose Gym in Van Nuys, where Nickerson likes to work. His routines are carefully choreographed and, as ``Raging Bull'' demonstrates, unfailingly realistic. But he won't sacrifice an actor's safety for the sake of reality. If a filmmaker actually wants his performers to feel an authentic blow, then count this trainer out.

``I've proven to everybody in the past and I've shown on tape that real punches don't work as well as my movie punches,'' said Nickerson. ``I've walked away from shows where an actor has said, 'I just want to get hit.'

``I said, 'Then you don't need me. I don't know what else to tell you.' If the guy breaks his nose, we have to sit in a hotel room for two weeks waiting for it to heal.''

--Benny ``The Jet'' Urquidez: His trainees will stretch and ache and work like crazy. But before they do, they have to answer a deceptively simple question from Urquidez: ``Do you believe I can help you get to where you need to be?''

``If if comes out of their mouth, 'yes,' I'll say, 'You've got a working relationship,' '' said Urquidez, a world champion kickboxer in five weight divisions. ``If they say it verbally, we bond to a hypnotic state of mind where I can get them to every time.''

Sounds new agey, but Urquidez - nicknamed ``The Jet'' for his flying, spinning kicks - likes to get into his fighters' minds, to have his actors ``paint me a picture'' of what they're feeling or envisioning. It helps the process of transformation, Urquidez said, of an actor into a fighter.

In David Ramsey, Urquidez had an eager pupil. The actor, who plays Ali in an upcoming Fox TV movie, had a background in martial arts and was able to develop both a physical and psychological connection with his trainer.

``I told him, 'I can't teach you the rhythms. It's already in you,' '' Urquidez said. ``All I have to do is just bring it out in a way that you can present it.' ''

As Ramsey said, ``It sounds kind of cosmic, kind of spiritual, and it is. Expressing yourself through fighting is very cosmic and spiritual. Ali is a dancer who made this incredible art form beautiful. So there was a lot of trust I placed in Benny, to learn what does it mean to dance.''

Of course, Ramsey's preparation wasn't all spiritual. The actor talks about stretching and aching the likes of which he had never before experienced. Between the five-days-a-week workouts, the stretching, running, sit-ups and carbohydrate restrictions, Ramsey was ripping too quickly.

``I was like, 'Damn, Ali never looked this good,' '' Ramsey said, laughing.

--Darrell Foster: ``Fighting is not a game,'' Foster were tell you pointedly.

Ving Rhames learned that lesson while training to play Sonny Liston. Woody Harrelson and Antonio Banderas learned by being on the receiving end of a few errant punches in the early stages of ``Play It to the Bone'' training.

And 7 1/2-year-old Spencer Breslin, co-star of an upcoming untitled Bruce Willis film being directed by Jon Turteltaub (``Phenomenon'') learned by hearing the words from the source.

``I had to explain to him to stop playfighting in the street, and if anybody on the set wanted to box around, to tell them his coach told him he can't do that,'' said Darrell Foster, 40, trainer to Rhames, Banderas, Harrelson and now Breslin.

Foster spars with his clients, runs with them, and puts himself through every move, crunch or stretch that he makes them do. In return, he asks that his trainees - actors and athletes alike - respect the sport.

Which they do. Chi McBride, who has lost 50 pounds in the past year, expects to drop several more training with Foster to play a training-reluctant heavyweight champ who teaches Breslin's character to fight.

``Actors are obsessive-compulsive by nature, and I think Darrell appeals to that aspect of an actor's personality,'' a sweat-drenched McBride said following a workout with Foster in Santa Monica.,

``So I'm actually doing all this,'' and here McBride raises his voice in comic outrage so that Foster, across the room, will hear him, ``slave driving, unmerciful training - I must be a masochist - to play a boxer who doesn't want to train!''

A semi-pro boxer with 150 victories in 152 decisions, Foster was former champion Sugar Ray Leonard's conditioning coach during much of the 1970s. He had trained with Rhames for more than a year on the as-yet-unmade Liston project when he was recommended to ``Play It'' writer-director Ron Shelton. For that film, Foster was the trainer and fight choreographer, and even took a role as the referee in the climactic bout between Harrelson and Banderas.

On location in Las Vegas, the three men stayed up late into the night talking about boxing and acting. They would sleep in the trailer and be up at 5 a.m. running in the desert.

``These are two actors who, many weeks before, had never put on a pair of boxing gloves,'' said Foster. ``They didn't have a fighter to carry them. They only had each other,'' he said, downplaying his role.

Well, and their trainer ...

``Yeah, they had me,'' he admitted. ``They had me as the referee.''

CAPTION(S):

6 photos

Photo: (1) Terry Claybon, left, works with student Brian Quinn. Claybon frequently trains actors for boxing scenes.

(2) Claybon spent 18 months training Denzel Washington for ``The Hurricane.''

(3) Benny ``The Jet'' Urquidez trained actor David Ramsey, right, for the part of Muhammad Ali.

(4) Urquidez was a world champion kickboxer in five weight divisions.

(5) Jimmy Nickerson has trained actors in movies from ``Raging Bull'' to ``Rocky.''

(6 -- color -- cover) Actor David Ramsey working out at Jet's gym.

John McCoy/Staff Photographer