Fighting for Respect : Michael Dokes Guns for More Than Money During Comeback From Drug Addiction

Remember the scene in “Rocky” in which the hero prepares for his title match against Apollo Creed by pounding his fists against slabs of meat in a frozen locker?

Pure Hollywood hokum? A scriptwriter’s imagination out of control?

Difficult to say because in the unorthodox world of the heavyweights, reality and hokum often merge. In a training camp, anything goes. Especially when the publicists are as important as the pugilists.

Take Michael Dokes, for example. Here is a former heavyweight champion, preparing for his big fight against Evander Holyfield at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas on Mar. 11 by running up the hills of Saugus with a rifle in hand.

Say what?

OK, so it’s not loaded. Dokes uses the weapon as a conditioning tool, not to mention as a publicity tool, placing it on the back of his neck, with both arms hanging over either end, for his daily four-mile run up the 1,000-foot hill behind his training headquarters at the Big Oaks Lodge.

The purpose is to strengthen the arms, says John Smyth, Dokes’ conditioning coach and the owner of the Saugus lodge. “We just want to make sure his arms don’t start dropping during the fight. We’re just taking out some insurance to make sure his hands stay up.”

Smyth has used his place, nestled in the woods of Angeles National Forest, to prepare such fighters as Jerry Quarry and Tex Cobb.

“He’s a madman,” Dokes said of Smyth during a break in training. “Going up that mountain, it’s goat time. He’s got me doing the running and the calisthenics, duck walks up the steps here and the weightlifting. I’m doing 23,500 pounds in 18 minutes. I taste death here four or five times a day.”

But it’s been a sweet taste. In the nearly six weeks since he arrived in Saugus, Dokes has dropped from 250 pounds to 223.

But Dokes, now a Los Angeles resident, is doing more than just losing weight in the picturesque hills around camp. He is also gaining confidence in himself, as both a fighter and a person.

“I have never felt better about myself,” he said. “For me, this fight is not about money. It’s about integrity. I am trying to re-establish my self-respect as a human being.”

For Dokes, that has been an uphill battle tantamount to that daily trek up the hills. In the early 1980s, Dokes was king of the hill. A ring career that began in 1976 climaxed in 1982 when he beat Mike Weaver on a first-round TKO to win the World Boxing Assn. heavyweight title.

Dokes retained his title in ’83 when he fought to a 15-round draw with Weaver in the rematch, then lost the championship on a 10th-round knockout at the hands of Gerrie Coetzee later that year.

Dokes’ downhill slide, however, had just begun.

He only fought three times in the next four years, winning all three. In the meantime, he was losing a much bigger battle to drug addiction.

Dokes finally licked that habit two years ago and began a comeback in December, 1987, with a fifth-round knockout of K. P. Porter in New York. Dokes has fought seven times since and won them all, six by knockout, to boost his record to 37-1-2 with 23 knockouts.

But Holyfield (20-0, 16 knockouts), the former Olympic boxer and cruiserweight and junior heavyweight champion who is stepping up to the heavyweights, will be Dokes’ first name opponent since his days as champion. Can Dokes beat a quality fighter?

“For me, there are no more comebacks,” Dokes said. “I’m not going to wait for another shot. I can’t imagine what it would be like to lose.”

While Dokes pictures Holyfield in his mind’s eye, he refuses to augment that image by watching his opponent on film.

“I did that with Coetzee, the only fight I lost,” Dokes said. “I anticipated him doing certain things, but all my preconceived ideas were blown to hell. He did something else from what he had done with others. So now, I’d rather ad lib.”

While Dokes believes he has put his dark past behind him at age 30, he doesn’t mind dredging it up for conversational purposes.

“It’s therapeutic for me to talk about it,” he said. “The best way to clear up a problem is to meet that problem head-on. If I can help one person by talking about it, then I’ve been a success.

“We’re talking about something of epidemic proportions here. It’s going to take every individual, every parent and the government to defeat it.”

And how did Dokes defeat his own problem?

“When I saw all the people around me whose lives were being affected,” he said, “I realized it was not worth it.

“There’s no temptation now because I know where it can lead. The last two years have been better than the 20 before. The last two years, I’ve had freedom. I have no dependents--no alcohol, no drugs, no hang-ups, no money problems. I’m in touch with my feelings.”

So if you’re in Saugus over the next few weeks and happen to see a 6-foot-3, 223-pounder heading your way with a rifle, have no fear. It’s just Michael Dokes, on his way back uphill.