BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : Bowe Has Too Much to Do to Be Concerned About Lewis

It is a blazing Thursday in Los Angeles, and Riddick Bowe is huge.

Bigger than life, pleasant to a fault and heavier than he should be, Bowe rumbles on throughout the day, looking pleased to have briefly escaped the boredom of his training camp at Lake Tahoe.

The lights are on, the cameras focused, and the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation heavyweight champion is ready to play.

The schedule: Fly in from his training center in the morning, do an ESPN talk show, breakfast before taping a commercial, public workout in Century City at noon, news conference after that, a radio show appearance, “The Tonight Show,” then a flight to Sacramento by evening for an exhibition Friday night.

A heavyweight schedule.

Maybe Friday, while he is up in Sacramento, he will find time to watch Lennox Lewis, his main rival, defend the World Boxing Council’s version of the heavyweight title Bowe cast aside a year ago. And maybe Bowe won’t really care what happens.

“To be quite honest with you, I don’t even think about Lennox Lewis much,” Bowe says en route from one appearance to another. “I know he thinks about me a lot.

“I guess when the time is right, we’ll fight. I’m looking forward to shutting his big, arrogant mouth up and moving on to bigger and better things.”

Bowe says he doesn’t really care about Lewis against Frank Bruno (Lewis stopped him in the seventh round) because he can’t take Bruno seriously as a contender for any kind of heavyweight belt. Bowe tossed the WBC version into a trash can almost a year ago to protest the WBC’s rules and leadership, and the organization has not exactly covered itself with laurels since.

“Bruno is a nice guy, I like Bruno,” Bowe says. “But as far as being cream of the crop, he’s not. Any time Bruno has fought a big-name fighter such as (Tim) Witherspoon, Bonecrusher Smith, these guys always knock him out.

“If Lennox doesn’t get a quick knockout, he needs to take that WBC belt and put it back in the garbage can where he found it. He’s just a trash man, anyway, picking up what I’ve thrown away and thinking he’s the champion.”

Anyway, Bowe has his own things going on, and if you think he was going to let Lennox Lewis mess up his busy day in L.A., you don’t know Bowe.

*

Last Nov. 13, Bowe beat the man who beat the man who beat the man. . . . Now, after a year of cat-and-mouse negotiating with Lewis and quick knockouts of journeymen Jesse Ferguson and Michael Dokes, Bowe has decided his best bet is beating the same man again.

Evander Holyfield, against whom Bowe won a unanimous decision to take the undisputed heavyweight title, has been lured back into the ring, and Bowe-Holyfield II is scheduled Nov. 6 at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

Bowe-Holyfield I was full of more action than most expect from heavyweights, but nobody really expects Holyfield to be able to recapture the fire he had a year ago and give Bowe much of a fight.

Unless . . . you take a look at Bowe’s midsection and hear the whispers about his arriving at camp a couple of weeks ago weighing about 280 pounds. Unless you remember he was way under 240 for his first Holyfield fight. Unless you recall Buster Douglas.

Bowe laughs and says he is 250-255 now and can easily get down to his fighting weight of 235-240 by November.

And he says the whispers about his bypassing too many workouts and not enough buffet tables are typical distortions of his very public figure.

“They talked bad about Muhammad Ali when he was heavyweight champion--who am I to think they’re not going to talk bad about me?” Bowe says. “It comes with the territory. These are some of the things you’ve got to figure on and don’t pay any attention to it.

“Look at it. I just turned 26 years old. I’m 6 foot 5. My mother’s big, my father’s big. I’m just going to be a big guy naturally.

“I don’t see the big deal about weight, anyway. When you’re a heavyweight, that means there’s no weight limit. So if you’re not 247 pounds and sloppy, out of shape. . . .

“I weighed 244 pounds when I fought Dokes and I fought Jesse Ferguson. Did I look bad to you? If anything, I probably looked like I had more muscles than any other fight prior to that.

“Don’t worry about my weight. I’m in good shape.”

*

Rock Newman, Bowe’s manager, says he has offered Lewis $11 million to fight Bowe, free of promoter’s fees or anything else, guaranteed by both HBO and Caesars, and Lewis has refused.

So he has put Bowe against Holyfield for his third title defense, has a probable fight in March lined up against No. 1 contender Michael Moorer, and has little desire to wait around for Lewis.

“I had a provision put in (the Holyfield-Moorer two-fight) contract that said we have a window to fight Mike Tyson or Lennox Lewis if they became available,” Newman says. “So if Lewis would be available, we’d fight Lewis next and say to hell with Moorer. But I don’t think it will happen.”

Newman says Lewis wants to make as much money as possible, drag out the suspense before jumping into a possible defeat against Bowe. Right now, the earliest Bowe-Lewis could happen is probably next summer.

And Bowe sounds tired of hearing Lewis talk about how Lewis, fighting for Canada, beat him in a 1988 Olympic super-heavyweight bout in Seoul, and now about how Lewis, who considers Jamaica and England also to be his homes, talks about being the real heavyweight champion.

“People know I’m for real, I’m truthful,” says Bowe, who is from the same Brownsville neighborhood in New York City as Tyson. “You speak to a guy like Lennox Lewis, you know the guy’s a phony. He doesn’t know whether he’s Jamaican, British or whatever he may be. He doesn’t know. He’s a fella who’s mixed up.

“Me, I know where I’m from and I know what I am.”

Right. Large and in charge.

Boxing Notes

Shane Mosley did nothing to diminish his reputation as one of the more promising lightweights with his one-jab knockout of Miguel Angel Pena 1 minute 40 seconds into the first round Monday night at the Forum. Mosley, 22, ran his record to 5-0, all by knockout.

“I know I’ve got power with my left hand, but I didn’t expect to knock him out with a jab,” said Mosley, who has had a little trouble recently getting opponents. “I think this fight here might scare some more off, but there are still people out there who might want to fight me.”

Mosley holds amateur victories over Oscar De La Hoya and Rafael Ruelas and lost in the semifinals of the U.S. Olympic trials for Barcelona. He recognizes that although others in his peer group are major contenders, he is a little behind.

“Yeah, they’re all ahead of me,” he said. “I’m trying to play catch-up right now. I accept it, but it’s a little frustrating because I know my abilities.”

Neither the opponent nor location for De La Hoya’s potential fight for a world title have been determined, but the possible dates apparently have been narrowed to Feb. 4 or 5. “Feb. 4 would be a great date for us,” said De La Hoya’s co-manager, Steve Nelson. Why? “That’s Oscar’s 21st birthday.”