Dokes Fights the Elements: Bowe, Time and Himself

Each word came haltingly, droning as slowly as a voice from a tape recording losing speed. The worn face of the man could pass for deep middle age, not 34. He took off his black homburg and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a white handkerchief. He seemed to be stranded, maybe lost.

“Stupendous,” he kept repeating. “Stu-u-u-pendous.”

That’s how Michael Dokes insisted he felt, but the way he answered only made one wonder about the awful storm he had walked in the face of. And the terrible detonation he had experienced in the ring since the time when fight people called him “Dynamite” Dokes and likened his fist speed to Muhammad Ali. How could a man ravaged by twin calamities of drugs and too many punches possibly stand up on Saturday night in Madison Square Garden to the heavyweight champion of the world?

“They say this is Riddick Bowe’s town,” Dokes said this week, pausing long enough for one to think he would say no more. And then he said: “But I’ve fought here more than Riddick Bowe.”

The reminder was as painful as a glance at the new yellow fight posters of Bowe, whose WBA and IBF titles are on the line, and Dokes, a Dokes so young as to be almost unrecognizable. Because the most hideous blows Dokes ever received were administered in the Garden in April 1990 by Razor Ruddock. Ruddock left him unconscious a full seven minutes and caused any number of stunned ringside observers to exclaim still, “I thought he was dead.”

On Monday during training, Dokes was hit by a punch to the side. He yelled, and he stopped sparring. It seemed to be just the latest of problems that have plagued him since he, briefly, was a heavyweight champion himself. “I was stale, I wanted to stop everything then and there,” he explained. “Maybe I’ve overtrained. I am looking for advice from people to regain my zip.”

He felt a little better Tuesday, he said. He felt still better Wednesday. He didn’t know how he would feel Saturday night, only that he would know before he stepped into the ring what the outcome might be. Everybody who has anything to do with this fight -- the Garden, HBO, even the Bowe camp -- hopes Dokes can go some piece of the scheduled 12-rounder.

“Eight rounds,” Rock Newman, Bowe’s manager said. “Then Bowe will overwhelm him.”

If the fight goes that far, it will surprise many. Dokes seems exhausted even before he steps up to a guaranteed $750,000, haunted, perhaps, by a past full of knockdowns just when he neared some achievement.

He won the World Boxing Association title in 1982 but after one successful defense -- that a 15-round draw -- he was knocked out by South Africa’s Gerrie Coetzee. Then worse troubles.

In 1983 he admitted to cocaine use before he was knocked out by Coetzee. Starting in 1985 he was out of boxing for 33 months, fighting addiction.

In 1986 he was arrested for drug trafficking in Las Vegas, his home now, after police searched his house and seized 11 ounces of cocaine. It was uncovered that the drug was for his personal use. He was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to possessing a controlled substance; the sentence was suspended and he was placed on five years’ probation.

Two months later, in April 1987, he was jailed without bail after being arrested on drug and probation-violation charges and spent almost a month in jail. He then entered rehabilitation, only to be arrested in June 1987 for driving erratically.

In January 1991 he was again arrested in Las Vegas for possession of cocaine and again given probation. He tried going straight even with his devastation by Ruddock, in the Garden’s last major heavyweight fight, fresh in mind. He says now he’s “clean,” but admits to a struggle: “You know how some people clean their house once a year in the spring? I do that to my mind on a daily basis.”