Bowe May Be Fighting for Title Next Year : Boxing: Road to a championship fight keeps getting shorter for promising heavyweight.

When Riddick Bowe and his friends walk in someplace, you think: Now here comes a boxer with an entourage. Then you realize: There aren’t that many guys with him, it’s just that most of them are big. They could be Redskins’ linemen. Joe Jacobys. Only a few fill up Bowe’s ample living room in suburban Maryland. Bowe’s not just a heavyweight, he’s 6 feet 5, about 235. He needs sparring partners with names like Bear, or Bad News. Wouldn’t you know? The fellow filling up a corner of the room by himself is Hurricane. He wears the look of a storm on the skyline.

The talkers of the group are smaller: Eddie Futch, at 80 the dean of trainers, mentor of such champions as Joe Frazier and Ken Norton-Bowe respectfully calls him Papa Smurf; Rock Newman, 39, Bowe’s Washington-based manager, who has on a straw hat and his Howard University baseball letter sweater, the big yellow “H” on blue. When Bowe won a silver medal instead of gold at the Seoul Olympics in 1988, he found that almost everyone wanted to put the whole Pacific Ocean between them and him.

“Lazy, crazy, ridiculous Bowe” -- that’s Newman recounting what boxing people said back then. But that’s not what they’re saying now that the 24-year-old may be fighting for the heavyweight title sometime next year--something Newman keeps talking up, hoping that talking will help make it so. Bowe will be going for a 27-0 record Tuesday night at the Washington Convention Center, against 34-year-old Elijah Tillery.

Having grown up in Washington, Newman knows lobbying -- and that’s what he did recently in Bangkok where the World Boxing Council met. Subsequently, Bowe rose to being the No. 2 contender in the WBC ratings behind Mike Tyson.

Butch Lewis, who managed Michael Spinks, could have signed up Bowe after the Olympics, and Newman, then working for Lewis, tried to persuade him. Newman insisted, “I know Bowe.”

He knew that Bowe had gone into the Olympics leery of throwing his right hand, which had been operated on. Worse, Bowe was burdened by family tragedies back in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, specifically the deaths of two of his 12 siblings: His sister Brenda was stabbed to death; brother Henry died, Bowe said, “mysteriously.”

After Lewis rejected Bowe, Newman decided he wanted to do the managing.

“I was always afraid to leave home,” said Bowe, meaning even when he was into his 20s and one would think be afraid of nothing. But soon after Newman visited him, he was ready to move. He and his wife Judy were living with their two children, Riddick Jr. and Ridicia, in one room of Bowe’s mother’s apartment.

“I had this Siamese cat who used to climb up onto the window ledge,” said Bowe, rocking in a big chair, holding their third child, year-old Brenda. “Then the cat got real sick. Somebody gave it poison. ... But I knew I had to get out.”

The only thing that bothered Bowe about living in the country were the woods behind most houses. When he settled on his large one-level with a basement big enough to easily house his video game room, he had a large fence put up because he did not want the kids wandering off. Holding Brenda practically in his palm, Bowe said, “I always fight hard because Brenda likes to run around this big house.”

After “all the negative comments I’d heard” about Bowe, Futch wondered if Bowe had the motivation to be a champion when Newman sought him as trainer. “At this stage of my life, I have no time to waste,” explained Futch.

They were out in Reno, Nev., in winter, snow on the ground, temperature below zero. “I told him I had to go away but I left this training schedule for him,” said Futch. “I wanted him to run and I told him where and when. I had this Jeep, a rental car, and I drove out to the end of where he was supposed to run, and after he was supposed to have started I drove back. About half way, I passed him. He came over this hill, puffing and huffing. ... I said to myself, ‘Okay, I think he’s going to be okay.’ ”

Futch knows Bowe--he knows, for instance, Bowe’s opponent Tillery. Futch engaged Tillery several years ago as a sparring partner for Spinks, and Tillery (23-4) seems to be exactly what Futch wants in an opponent for Bowe, “a guy he can learn a lot from and still beat.” Tyrell Biggs and Tony Tubbs were perfect. Over 10 rounds with Tubbs, Bowe learned about coping with a counterpuncher. Fitch said of Tubbs, “He wouldn’t lead in a gold rush.”

When Futch speaks, Bowe listens. “He’ll be looking for your right hand,” Futch told him in August before his fight with Bruce Seldon. Bowe knocked out Seldon in one, with his left.

From the outset Futch built Bowe’s confidence in him, assuring him his right hand would be fine. He introduced Bowe to a physical therapist, and added his own personal touch. “I bandaged his hands the way I bandage hands. I wrapped Joe Frazier’s hands for 12 years.”

Futch liked Bowe’s jab but has been showing him how to make it more effective, teaching him to hook, helping him gain confidence in the right. Futch likes Bowe’s right. “When he touches you with that right hand, things happen.”

Bowe knows how Futch feels about him. “He’s a better fighter than Norton,” said Futch. “He has the potential to be the best heavyweight I ever had. That’s saying a lot. He’s not there yet. But he can go there.”