Riddick Bowe Is Fighting Back to Respect

For your listening pleasure, the young heavyweight unbeaten in 21 pro fights will slip into the soft, seductive voice of Ronald Reagan and invite you to join him and Nancy for Thanksgiving dinner. Without much coaxing, Riddick Bowe also does Richard Pryor, Stevie Wonder and some others -- and can recite The Legend of Cassius Clay as Cassius Clay.

This has been, for the 23-year-old Bowe, as much hindrance as help. Adept at appearing to be what he is not, Bowe years ago unwittingly created the impression of being more style than substance. All his punches the last couple of years have been directed toward correcting that; the most important ones come here Saturday against comeback-minded Tyrell Biggs.

Bowe’s manager, Rock Newman, talks about “serious negotiations” with Don King for a “potential showdown with Mike Tyson” and the possibility of a multifight arrangement that “could culminate in a showdown with Evander Holyfield.”

Such scenarios cause Newman to declare: “This fight is the biggest in Riddick Bowe’s career.”

Before Bo came Bowe. His in the summer of 1988 was not splashy national attention, though there was that potential. During the Olympic trials and most of the Seoul Games, Bowe’s charm was enchanting. He named his punches (“Ghetto Whopper,” for example) and suggested opponents would be hit so hard “they won’t remember Christmas.”

As Olympic heavyweight champion, the gold medal draped around his neck, Bowe could have stepped immediately from the ring onto Madison Avenue. Unfortunately for him, a lackluster performance against Canadian Lennox Lewis turned gold into silver. From Bowedacious, he became Ridiculous Bowe.

“Crazy and lazy,” he said, accurate and entertaining as always.

Only one person in boxing bothered to cultivate Bowe. That was Newman, a former guidance counselor at Howard University who also was among the few who knew the sort of physical and mental hurt Bowe had carried through the Olympics.

“I’d tried to do everything I could to keep him from fighting” during the late-June trials because of an injury to his right hand that required surgery in April, Newman said. After the Games, “he’d been brow-beaten by so much negative stuff.”

During that Olympic period, his sister, Brenda, had been stabbed to death while resisting a crack addict’s attempt to steal her welfare money. Brother Henry was dying as Bowe fought in South Korea.

“It (the clown angle) was the wrong story,” Newman said. “And afterward, people were saying he was the next Mitch Green. I knew how farfetched that was.”

Newman was in the process of leaving promoter Butch Lewis, whose assessment of Bowe was: “He’ll break your heart.” Which is sort of what happened, although not nearly in the way Lewis had intended. It started shortly after Newman casually mentioned he would come to Bowe’s home in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn -- and Bowe cocked an eye.

“I’d been a counselor at Howard for five years” through 1982, said Newman. “I said maybe Shelley Finkel or Dan Duva or Bob Arum wouldn’t go there. But me? Not only would I go there, I’d walk in and take names.

“Well, there was a kind of guard at the (project’s) gate.”

“Lookout,” said Bowe.

“The guy said, in effect, ‘Want that (car) there when you come back?’ ” Newman said. “I handed him a 10 dollar bill. It was there. We walked up six floors, to a two-room apartment that housed 16 people, because the elevator had been broken for something like six years.”

“It was a treat,” said Bowe, “just seeing that thing work.”

Newman went on: “I’d thought I might see a gun or two. Hey, there was a guy with an automatic weapon on every landing. There was a pool of blood down the hall from his apartment -- and the body of a man who’d been shot and left all night.”

Bowe was considering a return to school or the army. Newman and Bowe forged a mutual trust and began fighting more than fighters.

“Everyone was super turned off” by Bowe and his often-carefree attitude, said Newman. “I was super turned on. But it is hard sometimes to keep a straight face and fuss at him. Behind that happy-go-lucky, playful nature, under that wonderful smile is some animal that likes hurtin’ people.”

That accounts for 19 knockouts in those 21 bouts. That and Eddie Futch. Newman two years ago spent $63 on a phone call to the great trainer who, five months shy of 80, figures he might be molding his sixth heavyweight champion.

“I questioned his desire,” Futch admitted. “But in talking with him I realized here’s a boy in a man’s body. He needed direction, somebody he could follow, somebody he could believe in.”

The man-child, 6-foot-5, 230 pounds, soon took to calling the wise old trainer “Poppa Smurf.” Futch knew it was Bowe’s unique way of showing respect.

“He told me Poppa Smurf seems to know everything,” said Futch. “Riddick always had a good left but was very, very tentative about the right, because of the operation. I told him I’d wrapped Joe Frazier’s hands for 12 years and he never had a day of hand trouble. Leave it to me, I said. Now his right hand’s a thing of beauty.”

Biggs reluctantly recalls Bowe, then 16, splitting his lip during a sparring session in 1986. Biggs was a pro nearly two years by then.

“And I’ll whip his butt again,” Bowe said. “Biggs has a lot of lateral movement. I got a trick for him. A big trick. He might be looking at the lights.”

The negotiations with King and other power brokers have been recent and reluctant. For ever so long, it was the novice Newman and the ridiculed Bowe battling alone.

“We’ve done this without anyone in the boxing establishment doing anything,” Newman said. “We were determined not to get caught up in promotional ties. He’s fought and not gotten paid. Many times. And when he got paid I paid the purse-and the opponent and the expenses and everything else.

“The last thing the establishment in boxing wants to see is an independent, high-marquee young heavyweight. That drives them crazy. And we’ve gotten to that point now. Everybody in the industry seriously underestimated Riddick-and seriously underestimated me.”

Bowe has moved his wife and two children from the Brooklyn battleground to Newman’s relatively safe area, Forestville, Md.

Now, dreams are possible.

“The greatest dream in this arena is to be the heavyweight champion,” said Newman. “Or to be the representative of the heavyweight champion. We share that. It’s been a rough, rough road.

“I remember Arum once saying to me that one day it’s not going to matter if there’s only a thousand people in the stands. There’s going to be a million people paying $20 each and sitting in their homes watching.

“That triggered something. I felt a great sense of doing something positive at Howard. Those were my most rewarding years in terms of feedback and giving things to people. But I wanted in on the millions.”