Bowe Is Too Much for Holyfield : Boxing: Unbeaten challenger uses height, weight advantage to win heavyweight title by unanimous decision after 12-round slugfest.

Riddick Bowe applied his greater height and 30-pound weight advantage to great effectiveness Friday night and methodically wore down Evander Holyfield in one of the great heavyweight battles of recent years.

Bowe, erasing all suspicions about his bravery, took Holyfield’s world heavyweight boxing championship by a unanimous decision. He knocked down Holyfield during the 11th round after Holyfield had faded badly in the final rounds.

A roaring, near-capacity crowd in Nevada Las Vegas’ 19,000-seat Thomas & Mack Center watched Bowe land punishing left jabs throughout, along with rights to the head and with both hands to Holyfield’s body.

Two judges, Jerry Roth and Dalby Shirley, had Bowe winning by 117-110 scores and Chuck Giampa had it 115-112. Of three Times cards, two had Bowe by margins of 118-110 and 115-112. Another had it even, 115-115.

Afterward, Holyfield, 30, indicated he would retire.

“I don’t want a rematch, I think I’m finished,” he said.

But later, he said he would go home to Atlanta “and think about it.”

The champion’s wounds probably will be soothed by a payday of between $14 million and $18 million, depending on pay-per-view sales. Bowe earned $7.5 million.

Holyfield, too, fought with the courage he had shown since he won the title with a 1990 knockout of Buster Douglas. In the interview room afterward, Bowe embraced Holyfield and told him: “You’ve got nothing to be ashamed about.”

Holyfield had defended the title successfully three times, due primarily to his ability to bravely fight out of trouble against bigger, more powerful opponents, such as George Foreman and Larry Holmes.

But this was Riddick Lamont Bowe’s night.

Scorned and ridiculed after an inept performance against Lennox Lewis in the gold medal bout at the 1988 Olympic Games, Bowe was passed over by every prominent pro promoter and manager.

All of them, the Dan Duva, Don King and Bob Arum organizations, questioned Bowe’s heart after the disappointing finish to his amateur career.

But a onetime Washington radio sports talk-show host, Rock Newman, rounded up some investors and launched Bowe on a pro career.

This fight, one that had the huge crowd on its feet several times, went to Bowe because the champion, for all his courage and effort, simply couldn’t hurt his much bigger challenger.

Holyfield, at 6 feet 2 1/2 and 205 pounds, landed left and right hands to the 6-5, 235-pound Bowe’s head in nearly every round, but never once did he have Bowe in serious difficulty.

But several times, Bowe’s thunderous, short body shots to Holyfield’s ribs and his sudden, hard uppercuts often seemed to have Holyfield on the verge of collapse.

And finally, during the 11th round, the champion collapsed. Bowe spun Holyfield into the ropes, then hit him on the back of the head with a long right hand.

Holyfield dropped to his knees for about three seconds, rose shakily and took an eight-count from referee Joe Cortez. Holyfield staggered to the other side of the ring.

A wild 10th round probably contributed to Holyfield’s knockdown.

The 10th was one of the great rounds in heavyweight history, with both fighters crashing powerful blows off each other’s head. And neither man backed down, not for an instant.

The ninth, too, took much from Holyfield. At the end of the round, he couldn’t walk a straight line to his corner. And he trudged to the center of the ring to start the 10th, where Bowe landed two powerful jabs, snapping Holyfield’s head back.

The champion was hurt, and the crowd rose, sensing the end of Holyfield’s reign was at hand. Bowe furiously tried to finish him, but Holyfield fought through his exhaustion and pain and actually landed some blows on the challenger.

Bowe’s upper body shook with the force of the exhausted Holyfield’s punches, but his knees never buckled and he never backed up. Even after the bell ended the great round, the two fought each other wildly, as Cortez rushed to separate them.

Bowe opened a cut over Holyfield’s left eye early in the eighth, but Holyfield’s cornermen kept it under control between rounds. Later in the eighth, Bowe winced in pain after Holyfield accidentally thumbed him. Between the eighth and ninth rounds, Bowe sat quietly on his stool with his right eye closed. But he fought the rest of the way with the eye open.

Bowe fought throughout at a cool, patient, measured pace. The rap that he couldn’t go 12 hard rounds was also proved false. Holyfield created most of the action, but Bowe’s punishing jabs and counter shots simply wore down the smaller champion.

Bowe was at his best in clinches, when his short, ripping uppercuts snapped the champion’s head back. Or he would spin Holyfield to one side, then unload powerful punches to his ribs.

The second round was a wild one, too. Holyfield started it off with two thumping right hands to Bowe’s head. But Bowe gave no visible reaction to either.

Bowe missed a chance to end the fight with one punch midway through the second. Holyfield missed badly on a three-punch combination, stumbled off balance and was for an instant unprotected. But Bowe didn’t react, and the opportunity passed.

Afterward, Bowe indicated that no one could question his courage now.

“I told you when this fight was over, a lot of questions would be answered,” he said. “What happened tonight was totally different from Holyfield’s fights with George Foreman and Larry Holmes. I’m a younger and fresher fighter.”

Bowe must now decide if he wants to defend his championship against Foreman in Beijing, based on a supposed $20-million offer from the Chinese government, or seek a rematch with his Olympic conqueror, Lewis. Lewis, who knocked out Razor Ruddock in London in a heavyweight eliminator two weeks ago, was at ringside Friday night.

“Bowe called me a big ugly bum,” Lewis said, laughing.

“But that was after I told him I’d knock him out.”

Said Foreman: “Rock Newman said he wanted to talk to me before they made any decisions.”

Holyfield said he was surprised only at Bowe’s staying power.

“I wasn’t surprised how tough he fought,” Holyfield said.

“I was surprised he didn’t fold a little bit. I thought he’d tire in the late rounds, and that I’d have a chance to take him out of there.

“He was able to use his jab well, and he leveraged his height on me.”

*

On the undercard, four fighters improved upon their unbeaten records.

In a 12-round super-middleweight match, Tim Littles of Flint, Mich., moved to 20-0 with a unanimous decision over John Scully of Windsor, Conn. (27-3).

Brooklyn bantamweight Junior Jones improved to 26-0 with a one-punch knockout of San Diegan Jose Quirino. Jones, 117 pounds, who has 18 knockouts, flattened Quirino, 115, with a left hook 44 seconds into the third round and referee Mills Lane counted him out.

Heavyweight contender Michael Moorer of Detroit improved to 30-0 with a second-round knockout of outclassed Billy Wright (12-2) of Kaysville, Utah. Moorer, a bit paunchy at 224 pounds, hadn’t hurt Wright until he nailed him with a left-right-left combination in the second.

Wright collapsed, rose shakily to his feet, then fell again and referee Tony Gibson stopped it at 1:26. Moorer has 28 knockouts in his 30 victories.

Raul Marquez of Houston, the U.S. light-middleweight at last summer’s Olympics, moved his pro record to 3-0 with a one-round victory over Jose Gonzales of Lowell, Mass. Marquez is trained by Lou Duva, Holyfield’s trainer.

Connecting freely on an over-matched foe--Gonzales is now 2-5-- the aggressive Marquez answered the first bell in hot pursuit of Gonzales and rocked him immediately with several right hands to the ribs. Marquez, eliminated in the quarterfinals at Barcelona nearly decked Gonzales with a left hook to the chin late in the round.

Gonzales was on his stool after the first when it was stopped by ringside physician Dr. Flip Homansky.

Punch Line

A breakdown of the punches thrown in Friday night’s fight between Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe, as provided by CompuBox, Inc.:

Holyfield Bowe Total punches 475 711 Punches connected 242 357 Pct. connected 51 50 Jabs thrown 161 248 Jabs connected 63 132 Pct. connected 39 53 Power punches thrown 314 463 Power connected 179 225 Pct. connected 57 49 Knockdowns 0 1

Bowe wins the undisputed heavyweight title with a 12-round unanimous decision over Holyfield.