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Can Rid**** Bowe Answer the Bell?
id**** (Big Daddy) Bowe is pacing, as if he's warming up before a title fight. A few purposeful steps to the left, then an abrupt turn as if he has reached the ropes. He is not, however, in a 20-foot ring at Caesars Palace. Nor is his left hand sheathed in a 10-ounce glove, ready to inflict damage. No, the left hand of the former heavyweight champion of the world is wrapped in a red sweat rag. It's sweltering inside his 12-car garage, and Bowe, now weighing nearly 300 pounds, daubs perspiration from his brow and stares thoughtfully at his machines: two Mercedeses, a Rolls-Royce Seraph, a BMW 750, a Harley, a Bentley, a vintage 1970 Caddy, a customized Ford Suburban and, Bowe's first car, a 1990 Jeep Cherokee. After a minute, Bowe's small brown eyes widen. He turns to me and flashes the clownish grin -- now made even more impish by the addition of braces -- that delighted and confounded boxing fans just a few years ago.
"How about if I trade in the Rolls and the BMW?" he asks. His speech is raspy and slurred, eerily reminiscent of a 40-ish Muhammad Ali, just at the onset of his Parkinson's. "I never drive the BMW. That's smart, right?"
I shrug, trying to convey neutrality. Bowe tosses me the key to the BMW. "Let's roll."
Bowe rounds up his fiancee, Terri Blakney, and 5-year-old daughter, Diamond, the youngest of his five children, all by his former wife, Judy. They pile into the Seraph, and we're off to the dealership, where a new Rolls Corniche convertible, retailing at $363,000, awaits him.
Stephen Rodrick is a contributing editor for George ****zine.
Bowe, it turns out, bought that same Rolls two days before when the dealer slyly told him that Rock Newman, Bowe's now estranged manager, coveted it. But the next day, Bowe, believing that he'd been played, returned the car, vowing never to do business again with the dealer. Now he has changed his mind again. "It's a birthday present," reasons Bowe, who would turn 33 later in the week.
Such behavior might simply be chalked up to the fickleness of the idle rich had Rid**** Lamont Bowe not recently been declared brain-damaged in federal court. After Bowe pleaded guilty to abducting his estranged wife
and their children from her North Carolina home in 1998, he could have been put away for more than two years. But based on the testimony of two doctors, last spring a federal judge sentenced Bowe to just 30 days in prison, as well as six months of house arrest.
House arrest doesn't seem to preclude field trips to the Rolls dealer, though. Or, much to my dismay, reaching speeds of up to 105 miles an hour on Washington's Beltway. Bowe, in his Rolls, bobs and weaves through heavy traffic. Not knowing the location of the dealership, I try to keep up in the BMW, passing cars in the breakdown lane. Motorists swerve out of our path. Some recognize the former champ and wave.
After half an hour, we arrive at EuroMotorcars in Bethesda. Matthew Smith, a slight blond man in glasses and tie, greets Bowe warmly. He expertly removes the tags from the cars Bowe is trading in and ushers him inside to fill out paperwork. Smith gives Bowe $175,000 for the Seraph and $70,000 for the BMW; more than $100,000 less than Bowe paid for the two cars a few months earlier. Things go smoothly until the phone rings. It's the used-car lot across the street. There's damage to the BMW from where Bowe's nephew hit a mailbox. Although it has been repaired, Smith now wants to give Bowe only $66,000.
"No way, bro -- you give me 70 or put the tags back on the cars and we're out of here," Bowe says. He folds his arms across his chest and stares down his opponent. Smith caves. He'll give Big Daddy 70 for the Beemer.
Bowe struts out into the sunlight, and with his massive hands, he stretches open his eyelids so I can see his pupils. "Now who they saying brain-damaged?" he whispers triumphantly.
The roll of recent heavyweight champs and contenders could be mistaken for a most-wanted list -- Mike Tyson, Michael Dokes, Trevor Berbick, to name a few. Rid**** Bowe was supposed to be different: too smart, too talented, too endearing to fall like the others. But Bowe, who is younger than the current champ, Lennox Lewis, hasn't fought competitively for years and probably never will again. His days are passed inside a two-story suburban house, with a small pond out back that holds Japanese fighting fish named Tyson, Evander and Lennox. The shrubbery spells out "Big Daddy," and there's an enormous rec house complete with video arcade and a regulation-size boxing ring. The walls are a shrine with framed relics from the glory days; championship belts, his 1988 Olympic silver medal and 1997 New York tabloid clippings extolling him for retiring with his brains intact.
Bowe proudly gives me the grand tour, then invites me back the next day with just one request. "Bring videos," he implores. "That's how I pass the time. Comedies, dramas; I watch anything. But don't bring scary. I don't like scary."
Bowe's home holds plenty of places to watch them. There are big screens in the basement, living room and master suite. Next to one of his VCR's, I find some of his old fight tapes. I ask him if we might watch his final bout, against Andrew Golota. Bowe firmly shakes his head: "We don't watch that one. Ever."
Why would he? Who wants to relive the moment his life enters a long, irrevocable spiral?
Like Mike Tyson, Rid**** Bowe survived the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn. Unlike Tyson, he was never a thug. He was the 12th of 13 children, and early profiles made much of the fact that Bowe would walk his mom, Dorothy, to and from her night-shift factory job. As a teenager, he racked up three straight Golden Gloves championships, then scored a silver in the 1988 Olympics. In 1992, Bowe fought Evander Holyfield in an epic title bout that included one of the single best heavyweight rounds ever (the 10th). Bowe won on a unanimous decision.
"He was 6-5; he could box; he could fight inside; he could do anything," recalls his veteran handler Eddie Futch. "He could have been one of the all-time greats."
Bowe also possessed a charisma not seen in the heavyweight ranks since Ali. Sitting on his stool right before his 10th-round war with Holyfield, Bowe flashed a wide-eyed goofball smile for the camera. "People just identified with him," says Seth Abraham, who as president of Time Warner Sports signed Bowe to a $100 million contract with HBO. "He was huggable and appealed to nonboxing fans like an Ali or a Ray Leonard."
Bowe, third from right, his children and his new wife, Terri, fourth from left. Photograph by Erin Patrice O'Brien for The New York Times.
After the Holyfield conquest, the new champ took a trip around the world, meeting with Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II and visiting starving children in Somalia. His manager, Rock Newman, wanted to turn Bowe into a global celebrity like Ali, but it was the beginning of the end. Never fond of training, Bowe had a hard time getting back into shape after the trip. He kept a refrigerator in his bedroom, and his weight swelled to near 300 pounds. For his 1993 rematch with Holyfield, Bowe showed up grotesquely out of shape and lost a close decision
id**** (Big Daddy) Bowe is pacing, as if he's warming up before a title fight. A few purposeful steps to the left, then an abrupt turn as if he has reached the ropes. He is not, however, in a 20-foot ring at Caesars Palace. Nor is his left hand sheathed in a 10-ounce glove, ready to inflict damage. No, the left hand of the former heavyweight champion of the world is wrapped in a red sweat rag. It's sweltering inside his 12-car garage, and Bowe, now weighing nearly 300 pounds, daubs perspiration from his brow and stares thoughtfully at his machines: two Mercedeses, a Rolls-Royce Seraph, a BMW 750, a Harley, a Bentley, a vintage 1970 Caddy, a customized Ford Suburban and, Bowe's first car, a 1990 Jeep Cherokee. After a minute, Bowe's small brown eyes widen. He turns to me and flashes the clownish grin -- now made even more impish by the addition of braces -- that delighted and confounded boxing fans just a few years ago.
"How about if I trade in the Rolls and the BMW?" he asks. His speech is raspy and slurred, eerily reminiscent of a 40-ish Muhammad Ali, just at the onset of his Parkinson's. "I never drive the BMW. That's smart, right?"
I shrug, trying to convey neutrality. Bowe tosses me the key to the BMW. "Let's roll."
Bowe rounds up his fiancee, Terri Blakney, and 5-year-old daughter, Diamond, the youngest of his five children, all by his former wife, Judy. They pile into the Seraph, and we're off to the dealership, where a new Rolls Corniche convertible, retailing at $363,000, awaits him.
Stephen Rodrick is a contributing editor for George ****zine.
Bowe, it turns out, bought that same Rolls two days before when the dealer slyly told him that Rock Newman, Bowe's now estranged manager, coveted it. But the next day, Bowe, believing that he'd been played, returned the car, vowing never to do business again with the dealer. Now he has changed his mind again. "It's a birthday present," reasons Bowe, who would turn 33 later in the week.
Such behavior might simply be chalked up to the fickleness of the idle rich had Rid**** Lamont Bowe not recently been declared brain-damaged in federal court. After Bowe pleaded guilty to abducting his estranged wife
and their children from her North Carolina home in 1998, he could have been put away for more than two years. But based on the testimony of two doctors, last spring a federal judge sentenced Bowe to just 30 days in prison, as well as six months of house arrest.
House arrest doesn't seem to preclude field trips to the Rolls dealer, though. Or, much to my dismay, reaching speeds of up to 105 miles an hour on Washington's Beltway. Bowe, in his Rolls, bobs and weaves through heavy traffic. Not knowing the location of the dealership, I try to keep up in the BMW, passing cars in the breakdown lane. Motorists swerve out of our path. Some recognize the former champ and wave.
After half an hour, we arrive at EuroMotorcars in Bethesda. Matthew Smith, a slight blond man in glasses and tie, greets Bowe warmly. He expertly removes the tags from the cars Bowe is trading in and ushers him inside to fill out paperwork. Smith gives Bowe $175,000 for the Seraph and $70,000 for the BMW; more than $100,000 less than Bowe paid for the two cars a few months earlier. Things go smoothly until the phone rings. It's the used-car lot across the street. There's damage to the BMW from where Bowe's nephew hit a mailbox. Although it has been repaired, Smith now wants to give Bowe only $66,000.
"No way, bro -- you give me 70 or put the tags back on the cars and we're out of here," Bowe says. He folds his arms across his chest and stares down his opponent. Smith caves. He'll give Big Daddy 70 for the Beemer.
Bowe struts out into the sunlight, and with his massive hands, he stretches open his eyelids so I can see his pupils. "Now who they saying brain-damaged?" he whispers triumphantly.
The roll of recent heavyweight champs and contenders could be mistaken for a most-wanted list -- Mike Tyson, Michael Dokes, Trevor Berbick, to name a few. Rid**** Bowe was supposed to be different: too smart, too talented, too endearing to fall like the others. But Bowe, who is younger than the current champ, Lennox Lewis, hasn't fought competitively for years and probably never will again. His days are passed inside a two-story suburban house, with a small pond out back that holds Japanese fighting fish named Tyson, Evander and Lennox. The shrubbery spells out "Big Daddy," and there's an enormous rec house complete with video arcade and a regulation-size boxing ring. The walls are a shrine with framed relics from the glory days; championship belts, his 1988 Olympic silver medal and 1997 New York tabloid clippings extolling him for retiring with his brains intact.
Bowe proudly gives me the grand tour, then invites me back the next day with just one request. "Bring videos," he implores. "That's how I pass the time. Comedies, dramas; I watch anything. But don't bring scary. I don't like scary."
Bowe's home holds plenty of places to watch them. There are big screens in the basement, living room and master suite. Next to one of his VCR's, I find some of his old fight tapes. I ask him if we might watch his final bout, against Andrew Golota. Bowe firmly shakes his head: "We don't watch that one. Ever."
Why would he? Who wants to relive the moment his life enters a long, irrevocable spiral?
Like Mike Tyson, Rid**** Bowe survived the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn. Unlike Tyson, he was never a thug. He was the 12th of 13 children, and early profiles made much of the fact that Bowe would walk his mom, Dorothy, to and from her night-shift factory job. As a teenager, he racked up three straight Golden Gloves championships, then scored a silver in the 1988 Olympics. In 1992, Bowe fought Evander Holyfield in an epic title bout that included one of the single best heavyweight rounds ever (the 10th). Bowe won on a unanimous decision.
"He was 6-5; he could box; he could fight inside; he could do anything," recalls his veteran handler Eddie Futch. "He could have been one of the all-time greats."
Bowe also possessed a charisma not seen in the heavyweight ranks since Ali. Sitting on his stool right before his 10th-round war with Holyfield, Bowe flashed a wide-eyed goofball smile for the camera. "People just identified with him," says Seth Abraham, who as president of Time Warner Sports signed Bowe to a $100 million contract with HBO. "He was huggable and appealed to nonboxing fans like an Ali or a Ray Leonard."
Bowe, third from right, his children and his new wife, Terri, fourth from left. Photograph by Erin Patrice O'Brien for The New York Times.
After the Holyfield conquest, the new champ took a trip around the world, meeting with Nelson Mandela and Pope John Paul II and visiting starving children in Somalia. His manager, Rock Newman, wanted to turn Bowe into a global celebrity like Ali, but it was the beginning of the end. Never fond of training, Bowe had a hard time getting back into shape after the trip. He kept a refrigerator in his bedroom, and his weight swelled to near 300 pounds. For his 1993 rematch with Holyfield, Bowe showed up grotesquely out of shape and lost a close decision
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