Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, May 20, 1993 TAG: 9305200066
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: WALLACE MATTHEWS NEWSDAY
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long
Riddick Bowe really does wear Fruit of the Looms. Apparently he wasn't just grabbing the bucks when he did that sugary TV commercial a few months ago with his son, Riddick Jr., and a pair of well-fitting white briefs.
He really does wear them because that is all he wore during a recent interview conducted entirely from his hotel room bed. But they don't fit quite so well anymore. Six months into his reign as heavyweight champion of the world and less than a week from his second defense, now Bowe's puffy belly spills over the waistband and he answers questions in between yawns and glances at a TV set.
It is the kind of behavior that can only be indulged in by royalty, movie stars or, in this case, the heavyweight champion of the world. It was a fitting metaphor. Bowe, who makes his second defense against career sparring partner Jesse Ferguson on Saturday night at RFK Stadium, appears both totally comfortable and slightly bored with his position.
"It does have a tendency to grow on you a little bit," Bowe said. "I guess you get accustomed to it."
And yet, there is an aura of "who cares?" around Bowe and his entourage in relation to the fight and the immediate future of the division. Ferguson is a 40-1 underdog, odds so long that if he wins, the fight could supplant Tyson-Douglas as boxing's biggest all-time shocker.
The fight is being held in Bowe's new hometown - he had his New York homecoming in February with the one-round blowout of Michael Dokes - and yet, the fight is not exactly setting D.C. on fire. Reports are that fewer than 8,000 tickets have been sold. On Monday, a deadline imposed by Bowe's manager, Rock Newman, for the Lennox Lewis camp to accept a $12 million offer for the next fight came and went.
Bowe is trying to create some anger within himself toward Ferguson - last Friday, he said "Jesse's got eight days to live," but without much real conviction, and when last checked, Ferguson had yet to make out his last will and testament.
So barring an unexpected turn of events that causes a Bowe-Lewis showdown, the road ahead is strewn with the likes of opponents that make Ferguson seem threatening - Herbie Hide, Oliver McCall, Alex Garcia and even Larry Holmes.
No wonder Bowe yawns when he talks about what his first half-year as heavyweight champion has been like and what he expects the next six months to bring. "Ferguson right now is the most important thing," said Bowe, flicking channels with the remote control. Next to the TV program he's watching, he means.
"Well, who are the good fights out there?," he asks, somewhat defensively. "You tell me. I'm in this to make money. What am I supposed to do, go into hibernation for a year until my mandatory comes around? Is it my fault the division is so weak?"
Newman, whose job it is to create something out of nothing - he has created a $3.5-million payday for Bowe against the 36-year-old Ferguson - nearly gasped when he heard Bowe's assessment. "I certainly am disagreeing if Riddick thinks there's no excitement in the division," Newman said. "But one of the benefits you get with Riddick is that he says what he believes. There's not an ounce of pretentiousness or con. You may not always like what he says, but that's part of his charm."
Newman acknowledged a possible backlash against Bowe if he continues to fight second-rate opponents. He then went on to lay out a case for the likes of Holmes ("Could be a big fight on HBO"), Tommy Morrison ("the biggest fight out there for us assuming he has a spectacular victory over Foreman [June 7]") and giant Cuban heavyweight Jorge Gonzales, who is unbeaten in 15 fights but has shown ability only in antagonizing fans with his hot dogging against mismatched opponents.
"I agree with the axiom you're only as good as your last fight, and I recognize there could be some backlash," Newman said. "But you wipe all that out with one good win."
Bowe - who likes to say "Dorothy Bowe didn't raise no dummies" - wasn't buying any of it. "There ain't no Bengal tigers out there," he said. "Only Morrison, and he ain't much but he's a white boy and you can make some money with him."
Bowe's blase attitude is reflected in his waistline, which looks even bigger than it was before the Dokes fight, and for that one he weighed 243, eight more than when he won the title from Evander Holyfield last November. Gone is nutritionist/maggot juice merchant Dick Gregory and so, it appears, is the trim, 235-pound Bowe.
"I'll tell you what, people put too much emphasis on weight," he said. "I'm a big man, 6-foot-5, big-boned. I'm not gonna deplete myself. If I came in like Tony Tubbs, with big blobs on me, that's one thing. But if I feel good at 240, so what?"
The prospect of facing Ferguson certainly has not inspired Bowe to take up a Spartan training regime. He already missed between three days and a week of sparring, depending on whom one speaks to, because of a rib-cage injury suffered in sparring, although Newman still is putting out the cover story that it was a injury. "You say rib, I say wrist, you say tomato, I say to-mah-to," Newman said.
Plus, Bowe was hampered by a bad cold early in camp and had to deal with the distraction of filing a lawsuit for custody of 7-year-old Tammani Rice, the son of a woman Bowe had a brief affair with while a high school student. But Bowe dropped the suit when he found during the discovery process that a Brooklyn court had previously ruled another man was the boy's father. Bowe considers the incident to have been his own potential Robin Givens-Ruth Roper affair.
"That girl and her mother were crazy," Bowe said. "She never said what she wanted for Tammani, just what she wanted for herself. I was willing to give her $170,000, no blood test necessary. But no, that wasn't enough. Her own greed did her in."
Greed is one deadly sin Bowe has become quite familiar with. Before the Dokes fight, Bowe was besieged by demands from friends and family - he has 10 surviving brothers and sisters - for a share of his new-found wealth. Rather than subsiding, Bowe says the demands have intensified and now come from total strangers as well. "It's hard to believe, but there are people out there working just as hard to get my money away from me as I am trying to keep it," he said. "How do I deal with it? I don't. When it comes to money, I'm like talking to a brick wall."
And about his opponent Saturday: "Jesse won't be around too long," Bowe said. "A few minutes, then he'll be taking a dirt nap."
Not to be confused with the kind of nap Bowe then took, in his Fruit of the Looms with the covers pulled up around his neck and the TV playing softly in the background.
by CNB