Nearing Top of the Hill : Riddick Bowe Has Ended All the Distractions With Only Holyfield in His Way

Eddie Futch, who is well on his way to becoming boxing’s George Burns, says he at first resisted overtures to train Riddick Bowe, the super-heavyweight silver medalist at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

“I hadn’t watched him at the Olympics, but I’d heard all the stories about him,” Futch said this week.

“I’d heard he was lazy, didn’t have much heart or discipline. I was 78 then and I told Rock Newman (Bowe’s manager) that I didn’t have enough time left to waste it on someone like that.”

Newman begged Futch to at least meet Bowe, and the legendary trainer, who has worked with 15 world champions and who was a boyhood friend of Joe Louis in Detroit, agreed.

Bowe, 22 at the time, was sent to Futch’s Reno training camp. At the time, Bowe had been passed over by all of boxing’s big-time promoters and managers. In the 429th and final Olympic Games bout in Seoul, Bowe had a bad day, on worldwide television.

Against Canada’s Lennox Lewis, Bowe fought listlessly and seemingly without much desire. An East German referee gave Bowe two standing eight-counts in the second round and stopped the match, even though Bowe didn’t seem to be in any major difficulty.

So Futch, the taciturn old master, met with the kid with the bad reputation.

Bowe remembers these highlights from their first conversation: “He said to me: ‘I don’t want any sass, no back-talk. . . . You do exactly what I tell you, and if you foul up just one time, I’m gone.’ ”

No problem, Bowe said.

For several days, Futch had Bowe doing roadwork on a Forest Service dirt road in the Sierra Nevada foothills near Reno. It was a killer--in the dead of winter, three miles long--all uphill. Even worse, the roadwork started at 6 a.m. Bowe ran hard, without complaint. Each time, Futch watched from atop the road, through binoculars.

After the third day, he told Bowe he was leaving town on business, but that Bowe should continue the 6 a.m. roadwork alone.

It was a trick. Futch wasn’t going anywhere--except to the top of the road, extra early, the next morning.

“I looked down that road, and there he was--trudging up that hill by himself, on a very cold, dark morning. I knew at that moment the kid had what it took inside. I knew he had the tools.

“When he got to the top of the hill, he was surprised to see me.”

*

Four years later, this 6-foot-5, 235-pounder has made it to the big show. Friday night, in Las Vegas’ Thomas & Mack Center, he goes after Evander Holyfield’s undisputed heavyweight championship.

And while he long ago convinced Futch--whom he now addresses as “Papa Smurf”--he had the right stuff to become a champion, he hasn’t convinced everyone else.

He is 31-0, with 27 knockouts, but many sneer at his ledger--Tony Tubbs looks to be the toughest opponent he has faced.

Another component seems to also be missing:

Meanness.

“I want to be the people’s champion--warm and intelligent,” he says.

Riddick Lamont Bowe, 25, seems as if he should be on a stage, not in a ring. He can be hilariously funny and does drop-dead imitations of Muhammad Ali and Ronald Reagan. He also does Eddie Murphy and Bill Cosby. His Bill Clinton, he says, still needs work.

That this man should be funny is in itself the oddest development of all. He grew up in a housing project known as Gunsmoke City, in Brooklyn’s Brownsville district--the same neighborhood that produced Mike Tyson.

“All I remember about Tyson from those days was that he was big for his age, very tough, and always carried a bag of cookies around with him,” Bowe said.

Newman, onetime assistant for promoter Butch Lewis when Lewis had Michael Spinks, was on the hunt for a heavyweight contender of his own. On a hunch, after the Seoul Olympics, he went to Bowe’s home in Gunsmoke City.

“I wasn’t prepared for it, I’d never seen anything like it anywhere,” Newman recalled recently.

“The building Riddick lived in with his mother and 12 brothers and sisters was a dilapidated, six-story building with broken-out windows. It was awful. I saw young kids on rooftops with Uzis, working as lookouts for drug dealers.

“On the first floor of Riddick’s building, there was a line of people. I thought at first it was a soup kitchen. It wasn’t. They were lined up for crack.

“The elevator was broken, so I started walking up the stairs. At every other landing, there was a kid with an automatic weapon. It was unbelievable.”

Newman had seen Bowe work in the gym and was convinced he had the talent to become a contender.

“I sat down with Riddick and told him: ‘Even if you do not turn pro, you and I are going to be friends.’ I told him that in my opinion, for having survived this neighborhood, he was already a champion.”

And so a successful partnership was born. Later, Futch made it a three-man team. And all who passed on Riddick Bowe have lived to regret it.

Shelly Finkel, Evander Holyfield’s manager, remembers Bowe working out at Lou Duva’s gym in late 1988.

“We took a long look at him, and we just didn’t see the desire we thought he should have,” Finkel said. “Rock and Eddie have done a wonderful job with Bowe, there’s no question about that.

“And he’s not a quitter, like a lot of people used to say. When Evander beats him Friday night, it won’t be because he’ll quit.”

“There is no riddle to Riddick Bowe, he is a bad dude,” Newman said. “He’s focused, he’s eager to become the champion. Believe me, he’s all business when the bell rings. That’s why I call him ‘Big Daddy.’ ”

It wasn’t always that way. Bowe was a goof-off.

One day at USA Boxing’s Colorado Springs training camp, in 1987, three-time U.S. Olympic Coach Pat Nappi, infuriated, sent Bowe home.

At the 1988 Olympic trials, he almost didn’t make the plane to South Korea. In his deciding match for the Olympic team berth, against U.S. Army boxer Robert Salters, Bowe was in an even bout after two rounds.

As 1988 Olympic Coach Ken Adams shouted instructions to Bowe between rounds, a ringside spectator began yelling: “Hey, Riddick! Hey, Riddick!”

Bowe turned to see who it was. An exasperated Adams grabbed Bowe’s head and turned it back to where he faced him.

Then came Seoul, and his uninspired performance against Lewis.

Bowe’s evaluation of that bout--one that conceivably could have produced a million-dollar contract for him had he won impressively--is that his Olympic performance is an anchor he must carry.

“The talk that I don’t have any heart, I have to take that,” he said. “Unfortunately, the Lewis fight did take place and it’ll follow me around even if I become champion, and long after that.

“I ain’t no joke.”

What happened in Seoul was more than merely a bad day, Newman said.

“Riddick tore a tendon in his right hand during the Olympics, and he had an ankle sprain,” he said. “Also, his sister, Brenda, was blown away by a crack addict who was after her purse a month before the Olympics.

“Any talk that he showed a lack of courage at the Olympics is said by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”

*

While Bowe somehow escaped the drug traffic of his old neighborhood (traffic that found some members of his big family), he did become addicted to fast food.

Enter Dick Gregory, the 1960s civil rights activist/comedian who is now a nutrition activist. Gregory, who says he once fasted from 360 pounds to 85, was hired by Newman to supervise Bowe’s meal preparation for the eight weeks leading up to Friday’s match.

At a session with writers Monday, Bowe said: “I’m going to whip up some of Dick’s maggot juice and force you guys to drink it, to show you what torture I’ve been going through.”

“Maggot juice” is a concoction consisting of juice blended from beets, garlic, cabbage, onion, asparagus and olive oil, swirled in a blender with megadoses of vitamins.

“It’s a vegetable diuretic,” said the trim Gregory, 60. “I told Riddick I can’t help him box, but I can help him clean out and overhaul his engine.

“A lot of athletes think the best way to load up on carbohydrates before competition is to eat pasta. That’s wrong. Nothing beats uncooked fruit for carbohydrates.

“He eats no red meat, nothing fried, no heavy sauces and no sweets.”

Sure enough, Bowe seems more trim than in recent matches. He came in at 235 pounds at Wednesday’s weigh-in after being in the high 240s for previous bouts.

Said Bowe, grinning: “I really haven’t accepted Dick. He’s just there. Let me put it this way. The night after I become the heavyweight champion, I’m going to have my mom fix me a feast of fried chicken, ribs, and macaroni and cheese. And a half gallon of orange Slice (banned by Gregory).”

*

Win or lose, Bowe arrives at boxing’s big money Friday night.

He is fighting Holyfield for a guaranteed $7.5 million. Holyfield, whose compensation is tied in part to pay-per-view sales, will earn something between $14 million and $18 million.

Twice in 1991, Bowe earned $500,000 paydays, his previous high purses.

But Friday’s payday will be dwarfed if Bowe beats Holyfield and takes the championship to China, Newman said.

“There’s been an offer made by the Chinese government that they’ll pay a $20-million site fee for a Bowe-George Foreman fight in Beijing, with Lennox Lewis on the card,” Newman said.

“It would be the biggest-grossing fight of all time.”