BOXING / TIM KAWAKAMI : Bowe, With Eye on Holyfield and Tyson, Lines Up Gonzalez

This is the road back to the heavyweight title?

The Riddick Bowe camp sat through another sneering Jorge Luis Gonzalez performance Thursday, the last time before next Saturday night that the two men will be allowed to be in the same room.

What is it that has drawn the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, which promotes Gonzalez, to offer Bowe, who holds the lightly regarded World Boxing Organization heavyweight belt, the chance for as much as $10 million to fight Gonzalez?

Bowe, who can be cleverer than most, recently offered up his theory.

It can’t be Gonzalez’s skill, Bowe reasoned, because Gonzalez (23-0, 22 knockouts) hasn’t beaten a ranked contender and has yet to display any fistic grace.

It can’t be his personality, because Gonzalez, a Cuban defector, wears a black hat and a perpetual scowl, and has a limited command of the English language that apparently centers on the words kill , assassinate and shut up , to list the printable entries.

“See, the MGM has sunk all this money into him, and he’s not doing anything for them,” Bowe said. “How do they get rid of him and not have to pay him any more? They get me to beat him, and then he’s gone. That’s what’s happening, if you think about it.”

Well, maybe. Bowe said this with a grin, and more recently, said he didn’t care what the motivations are, he simply wants to cash in on the promised pay day.

For a year and a half, Gonzalez, who has the flair (and hair) of a World Wrestling Federation ultra-villain and a fighting style to match, has dared Bowe to try to shut him up.

In November 1993, leading up to then-champion Bowe’s unsuccessful rematch against Evander Holyfield, Gonzalez mocked Bowe at a news conference and shoved him in a separate incident.

Last April, Gonzalez screamed at Bowe during a joint appearance, then charged him, drawing a glass-tossing (it missed, wide right) response from Bowe, who had his own ugly scene when he punched Larry Donald at a news conference before their fight last December.

Next Saturday, the two towering heavyweights (Gonzalez is 6 feet 7, without the hat, and Bowe is 6-5) will finally meet in a fight that might not do much for Bowe’s journey back to a major title but, thanks to Gonzalez’s antics, promises to be a more intense Bowe performance than his recent outings against Herbie Hide and Donald.

Because of past theatrics, the Nevada Athletic Commission has barred the two from appearing together in Nevada in the days before the bout, either for media conferences or the weigh-in.

Thursday’s appearance, complete with hockey-rink plexiglass window set up at the dais to keep them apart, was a relatively subdued affair, with only a few minutes of screaming by Gonzalez and his manager, Luis DeCubas, and a couple of light jabs thrown by Gonzalez against the glass to liven things.

“I guess he thinks he’s back in Cuba where he has to prove he’s a tough man,” Bowe said. “This is his big challenge, big test, and I don’t believe he knows how to handle it.

“I’m better, I’m more known, and he wishes he could be Riddick Bowe. And unfortunately, he’s not. But I’m going to beat him up on the 17th, and we won’t have to deal with this anymore.”

Bowe, who has won three fights in erratic fashion since losing the title, says he plans to fight at about 242 pounds.

When they were both amateurs, Gonzalez, who already had beaten Cuban legend Teofilio Stevenson, knocked Bowe down several times and took a decision in a semifinal match during the 1987 Pan-American Games.

Gonzalez, who also won the gold medal in the 1983 Pan-Am Games but missed out on the Olympics because of Cuban boycotts, took the gold medal by defeating Lennox Lewis in 1987.

“That’s what, eight years ago, a kid who was 19, very inexperienced as far as fighting internationally,” Bowe said, also pointing out that Gonzalez is three years older.

“This is the pros now, and it’s a whole new ballgame. He hasn’t been hit; how will he react when someone hits him and shakes him up? Everyone he’s fought has allowed him to be relaxed, let him do what he wants to do. I’m going to be in his face from bell to bell.”

Recently, Bowe’s trainer, Eddie Futch, whom Gonzalez called “ignorant” Thursday, conceded that because of Gonzalez’s strength and size, he does have a slight chance to win the fight.

“Oh, yes, he’s 6-7, that’s two inches taller than Riddick,” Futch said. “And he’s kind of a cagey guy. He’ll just hold his own during the first part of a round and then the last 20 seconds, 30 seconds, he opens up with both guns, and that’s how he tries to steal the round.

“When he stages those 20-second rallies, you’ve got to be ready and not get caught short. Oh, he’s awkward. But there’s skill there. He’s awkwardly clever.”

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Bowe, who lost the World Boxing Assn. and International Boxing Federation titles to Holyfield in the rematch, says he’d like nothing more than to play out the trilogy, now that Holyfield has made a comeback from what was diagnosed as a congenital heart problem.

A Holyfield fight might happen in the fall, while the Bowe camp bides its time waiting for, no surprise, a mega-deal with Mike Tyson, which Bowe manager Rock Newman hopes could set the stage for a spring fight.

With George Foreman being guided toward a November rematch of his controversial fight with Axel Schulz (by IBF mandate and/or a promise of a huge financial package) and the WBA and WBC in the hands of Don King, Bowe and Newman say the major organizations no longer interest them.

“If Tyson continues to have the kind of popularity we think he has, Bowe and Tyson would be the biggest fight in history,” Newman said. “But I’ll go four or five days and won’t think about Tyson. There’s no obsession there. If it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen when it’s supposed to happen.

“But there’s no doubt [Tyson’s people] are thinking about Bowe.”

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Boxing Notes

Julio Cesar Chavez, though diminished, still has the clout to nudge Oscar De La Hoya out in a battle to hold a Las Vegas bout on the key Mexican holiday weekend of Sept. 16. With Bob Arum and Don King both maneuvering to land the date for separate promotions, King has stuck to a Chavez-David Kamau bout (with Frankie Randall on the undercard), possibly at the MGM Grand, forcing Arum to move the De La Hoya-Genaro Hernandez fight, originally scheduled for Sept. 16 at the Thomas & Mack Center, a week earlier at Caesars Palace.

Former two-time world champion Michael Nunn, reunited with trainer Joe Goossen and hoping to eventually land a bout with Roy Jones Jr., is scheduled to fight a super-middleweight bout against Earl Butler on USA Network Tuesday in Moline, Ill.