When Henry Lamar, Harvard's boxing coach and chairman of the Massachusetts Boxing Commission, introduced a resolution before the National Boxing Association earlier in the month, he almost had the backing of the entire ring hierarchy. But not quite.

Although the N.B.A. executive board unanimously approved his motion to allow a fighter to contract his own matches if his manager has been suspended, New York Commissioner Julius Helfand took violent issue with the measure.

Helfand, who heads the only state commission which does not belong to the N.B.A., demands that all commissions suspend every boxer contracted to a manager who has been suspended.

In his effort to clean up New York boxing, the former racket busting District Attorney from Brooklyn contends that any boxer who is connected with a crooked manager is probably crooked himself.

But Lamar claims that "one man cannot be held for the sins of another."

"I have not locked horns with Helfand," he says, "and I admire his efforts in New York. . . . If New York, or any other state, will mention boxers by name when it suspends people connected with them, we will comply.

"But I can't suspend a boxer unless he is named. I would leave office first."

Although Lamar admits that a boxer could, as Helfand objects, secretly split his profits from a fight with a suspended manager, he feels that a boxer cannot be penalized for what could happen. "Individual commissions cannot be expected to find out the name of every boxer under the control of a certain manager, nor can they be expected to spy on every boxer who is contracted to a suspended manager," he adds.

Lamar explained that a fighter is under no obligation to a suspended manager because his contract goes out of effect as soon as one of the parties commits an illegal act. But even if a fighter kicks back to his manager, the Bay State Commissioner questions, "Do I have any right to tell anyone what to do with his money?"

A boxer's earning power is limited to a comparatively short time. If Helfand's views are upheld, a fighter could be put out of business during the most productive years of his ring career. Some boxers know little else besides how to fight and can be exploited by unscrupulous managers, Lamar claims.

"But there is the right of a human being to be a human being. There is the right of that man to earn his living. That must be considered primarily," he adds.

And despite Helfand, that is the way the N.B.A. sees it.

The association's president, Lou Radzienda of Illinois, summed up the organization's position when he said, "Not only in boxing, but in a lot of other things, people are starting to trample on other people's rights. It's got to be stopped."