The Lennox Lewis/Rid**** Bowe Chronicles the TRUTH!!!!!

**Dynamite Kid** · 08-10-2009, 03:06 PM

cCall, a 29-year-old from the South Side of Chicago, entered the ring as a 5-1 underdog because of his 24-5 record and the belief that his ambition was incurably blunted by having worked too long as a sparring partner; in a stroke he regained power for King, a patron who had been without a stake in the heavyweight championship since James Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in Tokyo 4� years ago.

Tyson remains imprisoned in the Indiana Youth Center on a **** conviction. But with his release due around May 1995, he is the key to the greatest bonanza professional sports has ever known—a blitzkrieg exploitation of the growing pay-per-view television market that might gross $100 million in a single night. And, in the fevered, gloating aftermath of McCall's sudden destruction of Lewis, King declared with aggressive certainty that he is the key to Tyson. "There is no more equivocation about who is going to fight Tyson," he said. "We now know who is going to fight him. Everybody was jockeying for position, but you don't have to worry anymore about where Tyson is going to fight if he is fighting."

[B] McCall would, King said, be ready to fight Bruce Seldon or Peter McNeeley or Frans Botha, "any one of them top guys." Since the principal distinction of those three men is that they are all affiliated with King, the point he was making could not have been plainer: The WBC title will be kept in the family until brother Mike emerges from the slammer. Seldon was stopped in nine rounds by McCall in 1991, and neither Botha nor McNeeley is close to a contender's status. But that last consideration is unlikely to faze King, whose ability to vault his fighters over more con****uously qualified heavyweights in the rankings of boxing's three major sanctioning bodies has evoked awe lately even among veteran students of his winning ways with a dollar. There was a time when King had to rely heavily on the complaisance of the WBC, whose president, Jos� Sulaim�n, has long been regarded as his lapdog. These days, however, King seems to be given an equally easy ride by the WBA and the IBF. All three organizations cooperated fully in the swift elevation of McCall—he was un-ranked at the end of '92 but No. 1 several months before the Lewis bout—and now have a clutch of King's clients at the forefront of their rankings.

Apart from the sad figure of Lewis—and the British public, which, dismissing the fact that Lewis fought for Canada as an amateur, had readily acclaimed him their first heavyweight champion of the 20th century—the most shell-shocked victims of the explosive happenings at Wembley had to be Rid**** Bowe and his manager, Rock Newman. It seems only yesterday that Bowe, having beaten Evander Holyfield in November 1992, was the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. Then, rather than fight Lewis, Bowe dropped the WBC belt in a garbage bin, and Holyfield did much the same to Bowe by winning their rematch a year later. Now both Bowe and Lewis are so far out in the cold that their careers are in danger of succumbing to hypothermia. Their match, which was scheduled for March, has been rendered meaningless.

At least Bowe, who has one big-money option on the table, against Moorer, can say he's an American who was once recognized as the true champion, the man who beat the man who beat the man. However, Lewis, in spite of having battered Bowe when they met in the Olympics in 1988, has always been seen as an upstart who gained his crown by decree.

In the midst of all this panicky positioning among the heavyweights, there is a tendency to forget how improbable McCall's achievement was, how much credit he deserves for transcending the limitations he revealed during nearly nine years as a professional fighter. Despite McCall's never having been knocked off his feet in his 29 pro fights and having actually put Tyson down during one of about 300 rounds of sparring they shared, there was a widespread su****ion that in serious company McCall would be preoccupied with survival. However, four months ago Emanuel Steward, one of boxing's most-respected coaches, moved in alongside McCall's regular trainer, Greg Page, and the response was dramatic.

Rock Newman's master plan began to unravel last Saturday night when Jesse Ferguson, an 18-9 journeyman, smacked around Ray Mercer to win an easy 10-round decision at Madison Square Garden. The day before the bout, Newman, the manager of the WBA and the IBF heavyweight champion Rid**** Bowe, had spent $10,000 on publicity photographs and on a deposit for a press party to be held at the Waldorf-Astoria on Monday. He had intended to announce at the party that Mercer would earn nearly $2 million for the privilege of being Bowe's next opponent.

An hour after Mercer's loss, Bowe entered the same ring with the detached demeanor of an usher showing a fan to his seat. Across the way, Michael Dokes, 34, a flabby, 244-pound former champion and onetime drug addict, greeted Bowe with hard eyes. The 25-year-old Bowe ignored the glare. Champions do not cross ocular swords with 20-to-1 underdogs. Dokes was a highly suspect contender, and every round he survived would be considered a bonus for the 16,332 fans who had paid $1,603,425 to watch the mugging. The last time Dokes was in the Garden, in April 1990, Razor Ruddock hit him so hard with a hook that he was on his back for seven minutes.

Shortly after Bowe completed his $7 million workday, a search was launched to find a replacement for the discredited Mercer. Seth Abraham, the president of Time Warner Sports, which has a $100 million HBO-TVKO contract with Bowe, said that only a rematch with Holyfield would qualify as a pay-per-view event. HBO, however, would consider Frank Bruno, Alex Garcia, Alex Stewart, Tony Tubbs or Tim Witherspoon as worthy foes.

Of course, there is still Lennox Lewis, the WBC titleholder-by-acclamation. Bowe relinquished the WBC title in December—dumping the organization's belt in a trash can after having refused the WBC's demand that his first title defense be against Lewis. Bowe insists that he will never recognize the WBC by lighting its champion—"Not Lewis, not anybody," he says.

Perhaps, but while Bowe combs a dismal list of potential opponents, Lewis has signed to fight an actual contender, Tony Tucker, on May 8. After the Dokes fiasco, the pressure is on Bowe to find someone who can last more than a round. "We'll decide soon," says Newman. "Rid**** is obsessed with breaking Rocky Marciano's record of 49-0, and he only wants to fight three or four more years. That means we have to fight often."

In a few days Bowe, now 33-0, will begin a round-the-world trip, with stops in South Africa to see Nelson Mandela; in Somalia, where he plans to donate $100,000 to a relief fund; and in Rome to see Pope John Paul II. Says Bowe, "I plan on saying, 'Yo, Pope, pray for me.' "

Perhaps it should be, "Yo, Pope, pray for them."

Heavyweight champion Rid**** Bowe's first-round destruction of Michael Dokes on Feb. 6 left such an odor that Bowe's handlers last week tried to perfume the air. Raising hopes of an imminent showdown between Bowe and Lennox Lewis, the one heavyweight bout everyone wants to see, Bowe's manager, Rock Newman, made a splashy offer to the Lewis camp: a $32 million, winner-take-all fight in June in Las Vegas.

Trouble is, Newman knew his offer was one Lewis's camp could only refuse. Neither boxer would dare risk everything in a bout that might be decided by Las Vegas judges. Moreover, Newman laced his offer with a poison he knows has no antidote: Lewis would first have to renounce his WBC championship, his one claim to titular legitimacy. Bowe is the IBF and WBA champ, but the WBC stripped him of its crown in January for refusing to make his first defense against Lewis.

It remains unlikely that a Bowe-Lewis fight will take place anytime soon. Instead, the two fighters will yawn their way through a succession of lesser bouts, collecting paychecks at minimal risk as they build the gate for their eventual meeting, probably in mid-1994. That's the way it's done in boxing, a sport that has always been perfume resistant.

**Dynamite Kid** · 08-10-2009, 03:07 PM

when Bowe won the undisputed title from Evander Holyfield in Las Vegas, Newman has been blustering here and bluffing there, negotiating this deal and signing that, and mocking his rivals while avenging unforgotten grievances. He is mercurial and articulate, often angry and obstreperous and forever unpredictable.

At times the spectacle has been rather unseemly, as when Newman lunged toward an Associated Press photographer, Douglas Pizac, who was on the ring apron shortly after Bowe won the title. At times it has been low comedy, as when Newman wisely ducked a commitment to the World Boxing Council to fight the winner of the October 1992 Lennox Lewis-Razor Ruddock fight—a commitment he had agreed to keep if Bowe won the title—and then called a press conference in London, Lewis's hometown, where Bowe deposited his WBC belt in a garbage can before the organization had the chance to strip him and give the belt to Lewis. And at times it has been a show of artful dodging, as when Newman deflected the heat he got in the aftermath of February's Bowe-Michael Dokes one-round fiasco by grandly proposing a $32 million, winner-take-all fight contract with Lewis, which he had mined with terms so unacceptable to Lewis's camp that the contract blew up at first touch. In the midst of all this, Newman worked out a six-fight deal with Time Warner Sports (HBO and TVKO) that could ultimately gross $100 million for Bowe. It is potentially the most lucrative individual sports contract in history.

"Let me make one thing clear," Newman says. "I have but one agenda as Rid-**** Bowe's manager, and that is to make him as much money as possible in the shortest period of time. Everything I do is geared to that." Of course, manager Newman gets nearly a third of Bowe's take, but no one in the game would seriously argue that the man has not earned his cut of the action. Butch Lewis, Newman's onetime mentor in the business—they went two years without speaking until a recent reconciliation—says, "Of the high-profile players, I don't think anyone could have done a better job with Bowe than Rock has.

Given all they've been through together, Newman and Bowe have grown close outside the ring, sharing not only the fame and perquisites that come with the heavyweight championship, but also Newman's perception of what a champion should be: a visible, influential world figure on a world stage. Late in January, while Bowe was training for Dokes, Newman was busier mapping out Bowe's approaching tour of Africa and Europe than he was preparing him for the fight. There was the trip to Somalia, the meeting with Nelson Mandela in South Africa and even an audience in Rome with the pope. Bowe was sitting in Newman's room one day when the manager heard through a Vatican emissary that the pope would be expecting them on Ash Wednesday. Newman leaped up when he got the call.

"Bo Diddley!" Newman cried to Bowe. "We're going to have an audience with the pope."

"What does that mean, an audience?" asked Bowe.

"It means we have a meeting with him," said Newman. "Maybe 10 or 15 minutes."

The fighter smiled softly. "Man, we're going to be blessed now," he said. "Hang-in' out with the pope."

"What I hope will happen with Rid**** is there will be a universalism about him," Newman says. "These kinds of things will validate Rid****'s world reign and elevate his status as a world figure."

As Bowe rose, so rose Newman, leading interference while warding off pursuers, scratching together fights and funds and sparring partners. "I've spent night after night without sleep, getting him opponents," Newman says. "I've paid Rid****'s purse, his opponent's purse and the opponent's manager's travel expenses. I've fed the opponent." Newman has drawn upon the diversity of his past to help him make his way.

While Newman was a star of the highlight films for those matches, he was busy fighting larger battles in boxing's corridors of power. A year ago, with Mike Tyson off to jail and everyone jockeying to get a shot at heavyweight champion Holy-field, Newman says that WBC president Jos� Sulaim�n quietly urged him to retain Don King as his promoter. "Don is the best," Sulaim�n, a longtime King ally, told him. "He's made the most money for fighters." Having come so far with Bowe, Newman said no. "Why should I work with King or anyone else?" he said. The WBC's answer came in February 1992, when its ratings committee, in a split vote, leapfrogged Razor Ruddock, a King fighter who had lost twice to Tyson, ahead of Bowe in its rankings. Newman says the move deprived Bowe of a guaranteed shot at the title. Newman called Sulaim�n and said, "You are a dirty, no-good——! You forced Rid**** out because I would not do business with Don King." Sulaim�n denied this vehemently, but Newman promised revenge. He eventually got it at that garbage can in London, vowing that Bowe would never fight Lewis as long as Lewis wore the WBC belt.

Desperately looking for another avenue to Holyfield, Newman found himself last spring sitting in a conference room in the Manhattan offices of HBO. Newman had been carrying on a long battle with the cable giant, believing that Seth Abraham, president of Time Warner Sports, had been patronizing toward him and his fighter, offering them piddling sums of money. Abraham disagrees. "When Rid**** started to fight on HBO, Rock had one value that he thought Rid**** should be paid, and we had another," he says. "It was never patronizing. I think he misread what we do here. This is not the Salvation Army for handouts."

The tension between Newman and Abraham culminated in that conference room, where they were meeting to iron out a deal for a fight between Bowe and South African-born Pierre Coetzer, then the World Boxing Association's No. 1-ranked heavyweight challenger. The fight would be offered as a cofeature with the junior welterweight title bout between Pernell Whitaker and Rafael Pineda on July 18, 1992. The meeting began poorly when Abraham offered $400,000 for Bowe, and it descended steadily from there. Newman ranted at the offer. "This is an insult!" he said. "You are disrespecting me. You arc disrespecting Rid****!"

"Rock!" Abraham said. "Pernell Whitaker is fighting for the title! Who ever heard of Pierre Coetzer in the U.S.? You're the cofeature. You're getting exposure. And I don't think $400,000 is insulting!"

Newman became increasingly agitated. Abraham's voice rose. The dialogue grew so heated and profane that the seven other people in the room sat listening in stunned, awkward silence. "It was like two rhinos," Abraham says. "Everybody moved out of the way."

Cedric Kushner, Coetzer's promoter, watched in disbelief. "I've had nicer meetings with my enemies," he says.

The whole deal nearly blew up entirely when Abraham finally said, "Putting a Bowe-Coetzer fight on in July will add not one rating point to Whitaker-Pineda."

That did it. Newman jumped from his chair, his face wine red, and bolted for the door. Kushner chased him, fearing Newman would blow the deal. He almost did. "Screw 'em!" Newman said. It took some mollifying by Kushner before Newman decided to return to the room, but return he did. When Abraham raised the offer to $650,000, Newman grudgingly agreed. "It still wasn't enough," he says.

But it was the wisest managing move Newman had ever made. Bowe beat Coetzer, and the victory ultimately carried him to Holyfield in the fall. To the $100 million promise. To where Newman and Bowe arc today. "We're on a roll," Newman says. "The wind's at our back. Everything we've touched has turned to gold." To be sure, Bowe is the only heavyweight champion in the world to have won his title in the ring. For now, at least, the rest of the division is right where Newman wants it. On the defensive, up the creek. And Rock has all the paddles

**Dynamite Kid** · 08-10-2009, 03:07 PM

Lewis's victim that night, his 16th in a row as a pro, was Mike Weaver, the former WBA heavyweight champ, a grandfather and still fighting at 39, because, says his manager, Don Manuel, "he needs the money. I could get him a real job, but he doesn't want to work." It's apparent that after being knocked out by Lewis in the sixth round of their bout, Weaver should rethink his job options.

It is a yardstick of Lewis's progress that since stopping Rid**** Bowe in less than two rounds in Seoul, he is fighting guys like Weaver and like Glenn McCrory, the former cruiserweight champ whom he outweighed by 10 pounds and knocked out on Sept. 30 in London. Worse, Weaver and McCrory were, in all probability, Lewis's toughest opponents since the Games. Lewis may be Great Britain's latest hope for a heavyweight champion, but as a professional he has been dining on tomato cans named Noel Quarless, Jorge Dascola and Jean Chanet, all of which has done him about as much good as a half hour's pounding on a heavy bag.

Almost immediately after Lewis teamed with Davenport, a group of British money men lured them to England with a six-figure signing bonus. "I arrived in London shortly after Mike Tyson knocked out Frank Bruno," says Lewis. "Everyone was saying, 'Oh, wasn't our Frank very brave.' He was a hero. I thought, Good Lord, what will they do if they have a winner?"

Lewis's reception in the land of his birth was not very warm. "It was weird," says Lewis. "In England they said I had an American accent and that I was a North American. In America everybody always said I had an English accent and that I was English. I couldn't win."

"Maybe the English would love you if you lost a fight," Davenport says sarcastically. "They do seem to love a loser." Davenport's dislike for England and the English has not made his job with Lewis any easier.

Lewis now has a five-fight package deal—two bouts to be shown on HBO and three to be carried by Time Warner's pay-per-view operation, TVKO. Lewis will fight in a prelim on the Evander Holy-field-Mike Tyson card in Las Vegas on Nov. 8, and will appear at the Royal Albert Hall again in December. Tyrell Biggs may be next. Also, Frank Bruno has just been cleared by the British Boxing Board for a comeback. "To be taken seriously, he has to go in against me," says Lewis. "If he doesn't, he has no hope of going anywhere in boxing again." That certainly seems true.

And after Bruno? Perhaps Bone-crusher Smith or Tommy Morrison or Ray Mercer or a rematch with Bowe. Those nervous money men across the pond have even been heard to mutter, "Holyfield" and " Tyson." Dear, dear, dear. If that lot has its way, forget the Queen; God save Lennox Lewis.

A 2-to-1 underdog at Earl's Court arena in London, Lewis needed only three minutes and 46 seconds to dispose of Razor Ruddock and lay claim to a shot at the winner of the Evander Holyfieid-Rid**** Bowe title light in Las Vegas on Friday the 13th of November.

Lewis's double-barreled skills add luster to a division that, since Tyson's incarceration, has sadly dwindled to Holyfield, Bowe and a bunch of old fat guys in short pants. Still, if Bowe wins next week's fight in Las Vegas, it is possible that he will try lo duck Lewis. Bowe's strategists are said to be eager to have their man meet George Foreman in a bout that would put millions of dollars in the bank. But Bowe-Foreman is probably not going to take place. Foreman has signed for three fights between January and next fall, and Bowe is not likely to be one of the opponents. In addition, Jose Sulaiman, the WBC president, decreed that Lewis (or Ruddock, if he had won Saturday's fight) would get the next title fight—or else. In the event that Bowe defeats Holyfield and signs to fight anyone else, the WBC will proclaim Lewis its champion by default.

No sooner did we figure out what heavyweight champion Rid**** Bowe meant when he said, "I am the man who beat the man who beat the man who beat the man"—Bowe decisioned Evander Holyfield, who stopped Buster Douglas, who KO'd Mike Tyson—than the WBC, reacting to Bowe's refusal to fight No. 1 contender Lennox Lewis (a refusal that Bowe, who retains the WBA and IBF crowns, elucidated by dumping the WBC belt in a trash can), awarded its version of the title to Lewis, which is just as well, since, having whipped Bowe for the Olympic gold medal in 1988, Lewis is the man who beat the man who beat the man who beat the man who beat the man.

Come Again Again?

Given the foul, degrading and disingenuous manner in which business is often conducted in boxing, Lewis may have to wait until 1994 to make the case that he's the best. When he flattened Ruddock, Lewis and his manager, Frank Maloney. believed that Lewis would get the first shot at the winner of the Nov. 13 Evander Holyfield-Rid**** Bowe title bout, a shot that both Holyfield and Bowe had indicated they would give him.

However, after Bowe outpointed Holyfield, it quickly became clear that Bowe's manager, Rock Newman, had no more intention of having his fighter meet Lewis right away than he had of dancing with a chain saw. Newman tossed a low-ball offer at Lewis, which Lewis rejected; then, looking for big money and easy pickings. Newman and Bowe signed a six-fight contract with Time Warner Sports, whose president, Seth Abraham, had been pushing Lewis as the greatest heavyweight in the world—"Lennox Lewis is the real deal," Abraham said last fall—right up to the Bowe-Holyfield fight, after which he began hyping Bowe. "Rid**** Bowe could make as much as $100 million if he wins all six fights," Abraham said.

The dead-meat parade begins at Madison Square Garden on Feb. 6, when Bowe steps into the ring against 34-year-old Michael Dokes. a 250-pound spent bullet whose battle against ******* addiction has been quite as spectacular as any he has waged in the ring. Once he has dispatched Dokes, Bowe will entertain Ray Mercer in Atlantic City in May in another waste of time. After Mercer he may take on George Foreman and even Larry Holmes, boxing's senior citizens.

On Dec. 14 Bowe relinquished the World Boxing Council's version of the heavyweight title by dumping the WBC belt in the trash. It was an unnecessary bit of showmanship; the WBC was going to strip him anyway for ducking Lewis. No longer the undisputed champ, Bowe now holds the World Boxing Association and International Boxing Federation belts. The WBC conferred its title on Lewis.

As things turned out, Lewis also ended up in the bosom of Abraham. On Jan. 14 Time Warner Sports announced that it had signed Lewis to a four-fight, multimillion-dollar contract. Like Bowe. he must win to advance to the next bout. "We knew we couldn't make [Bowe and Lewis] fight each other," Abraham explains. "So we decided the next best thing is to put both men under contract and use our influence to get them to fight. It's courtesy and it's politic and it's good business to start with Bowe. If we start the other way, Rock Newman would not make a deal with us.

No sooner had Lewis been given the WBC title, than WBC president Jos� Sulaim�n, a career lapdog and puppet of promoter Don King, told Lewis to fight the WBC's No. 1 contender, Tony Tucker, who happens to be a client of ...let's have a little drumroll here ...Don King!

On looking back, it is likely that the WBC's aim in all this was to set things up for King, who has a stake in Ruddock. By whipping Lewis, Ruddock would have had a shot at the undisputed title or. again with Sulaim�n's connivance, the inheritance of the WBC title by default. Lewis skewered the scenario by beating Ruddock. The WBC's demand that Lewis fight Tucker gives King his only chance to stay active in a division in which he has been a bit player ever since former heavyweight champ Mike Tyson was sent to prison. Lewis is hoping to avoid Tucker—at 34 still a gifted fighter—preferring the tamer Alex Stewart, but he is unlikely to get his wish.

**Dynamite Kid** · 08-10-2009, 03:08 PM

The following February, Maloney was sitting in the London office out of which he was promoting fights—"I was just breaking into big-time boxing," he says—when a British sports photographer, Lawrence Lustig, called him from Las Vegas. "How would you like to manage the first British fighter in this century to win the heavyweight championship of the world?" asked Lustig, who was in Vegas to cover the Tyson-Bruno fight. Maloney laughed and said, "What are you talking about?" Lustig told him that the young super heavy who had just won the Olympics was in Vegas looking for a manager. "He's a Canadian!" said Maloney.

"He was born and raised in east London," Lustig replied. "He's British. Do you realize what it would mean?"

Maloney, who was born in rough-and-tumble southeast London, a ****ney by birth and a former amateur flyweight by choice, knew precisely what it would mean. "It would be like having your own bank," he says. Which would be quite a change for Maloney, who once worked as a groom at Epsom, looking to be a jockey.

Looking for money to sign Lewis, Maloney acquired backing from a group of investors who worked for British financier Roger Levitt, and made Lewis an offer. By then, Lewis had decided to fight out of his birthplace. "I saw it as a good place to start," Lewis says. "I didn't see it as an economic thing."

Even Boehm urged him to leave Canada. "The people that wanted him to stay were doing nothing for him, only for themselves," Boehm says. On April 24, 1989, Lewis signed with Maloney.

"I knew I was going to get used in boxing," Lewis says. "I just didn't want to get used too much. I wanted to control my destiny. I couldn't sec being thrown in the ring before I was ready. Frank allowed me more freedom, more say."

**Thread Stealer** · 08-10-2009, 03:14 PM

Good read.

**Stab Judah** · 08-10-2009, 03:18 PM

Saved so I can read it all later.
Thanks.

**1SILVA** · 08-10-2009, 03:18 PM

Originally posted by Dynamite Kid

Before facing Tucker, Lewis had hoped that an impressive victory would force a fight with Bowe, who has avoided him ever since he took the title from Evander Holyfield in November. "I stopped Rid**** in the [1988] Olympics," said Lewis. "He can't forget that. I think after this fight the American people will demand he fight me. Until he does, they won't give him any credibility."

Bowe, who watched the bout on pay TV in Hot Springs, Ark., where he is training for next week's defense against a warm body named Jesse Ferguson, wasn't biting. "Them two big clowns," said Bowe. "Holyfield would beat them bums hands down. Take away his one big weapon, his right hand, Lewis is pitiful. I better fight that guy before somebody else gets him."

The first somebody will be Lewis's countryman Frank Bruno, a slow, lumbering pantomimist with no particular fighting skills and a porcelain chin. After that, Lewis hopes Bowe is still talking. He would like a word with hi

"This is the biggest scandal in Washington since Watergate," said Frank Maloney, the manager of Britain's Lennox Lewis, who holds the WBC version of the heavyweight title only because Bowe gave it up. Lewis is the man everyone wants Bowe to fight, but that bout won't take place until after Lewis has met his countryman Frank Bruno, another tired contender, in October.

A November rematch with Holyfield is likely to be Bowe's next project, but Holyfield first has a date with Alex Stewart on June 26. A loss or a poor showing by Holyfield would erase him from the picture. The public won't buy a third straight certified victim. "We won't make a decision until after the Holyfield fight," says Seth Abraham, the head of Time-Warner Sports, which is shelling out the millions for Bowe's fights on HBO. "If Evander looks good against Stewart, we will want him in November and then Lewis in the spring. If not, we will most certainly want Lewis in November."

Bowe had said that he wanted to fight again in August, but Abraham said no. Low viewership makes August a bad time for HBO fights, even if the contender looks as though he might last longer than, say, the sixth race at Santa Anita. Although Washington had not hosted a heavyweight title bout since Joe Louis beat Buddy Baer in 1941, the fans were wise enough to stay away from the execution of Jesse Ferguson. Fewer than 9,000 people turned out in the 55,000-seat stadium, and 3,500 of them got comps from Rock Newman, Bowe's manager, who bought $300,000 worth of tickets. Still, the crowd was too large for Ferguson, who is more comfortable sparring in front of a few hundred folks in a gym. "I froze," said the guy whose wife suggested he find another line of work after he lost to Dokes last year.

Maybe now he will listen to her.

Settled in among the 25,000 fans in Cardiff was Tommy Virgets, the trainer of Tommy Morrison, the muscular American heavyweight who will get the next shot at Lewis, on March 5 in Las Vegas. Virgets found it hard to believe that Lewis, undefeated in 24 fights, could be so limited in skill. "I came over here wondering if Tommy was ready for Lewis," said Virgets. "Now I wonder if Lewis is ready for Morrison. Tommy loves a war, and Lewis obviously doesn't. He retreats under the slightest pressure. If this doesn't motivate Tommy to keep away from the booze and women for the next six months, nothing will."

"He pushes his jab," said Virgets. "He doesn't throw combinations. He doesn't attack. When he did get aggressive, Bruno came right back at him, and Lewis immediately backed off. He just doesn't want to get hit."

Rid**** Bowe's disgust was complete. Here on the TV screen before him was Lennox Lewis getting out-jabbed by Frank Bruno. Frank Bruno! Lewis had slipped so far that only a desperate seventh-round punch would save him, and it was dawning on Bowe that he might soon find himself without a proper pay-per-view nemesis. "Rock," he finally cried to his manager, Rock Newman, sitting next to him, "we got to get him quick!"

Of course, this is heavyweight boxing, and nothing happens quick. Bowe, who was in Sacramento to fight an exhibition that evening at the Arco Arena, is in training for a Nov. 6 rematch with Evander Holyfield. And although Bowe complains that Lewis, who holds the WBC title that he forfeited, is further avoiding him by planning a fight with Tommy Morrison, Bowe has Michael Moorer penciled in after Holyfield. The soonest Bowe and Lewis could meet would be late 1994.

Still, Bowe was surprisingly agitated. While Newman was almost gleeful�"Ted Mack's Amateur Hour," he kept hollering�Bowe, watching Lewis struggle, could barely contain his impatience. "I wanted to be the first guy to expose him," said Bowe. "I wish I could get him before Tommy Morrison does. Morrison will take him out with that big hook."

Lewis is the man who beat Bowe for the gold medal in the 1988 Olympics, but that is not the source of Bowe's contempt for the British champion. Rather, the tortuous negotiations over a title unification�and comments uttered during those negotiations�have stoked a mutual disrespect that is truly heavyweight. "He's nothing but a wannabe," Bowe said after watching the Bruno fight. "He would do anything in the world to be Rid**** Bowe. Holyfield would give him fits."

Some folks are wondering if Holyfield isn't going to give Bowe fits. But reports that Bowe had ballooned to 290 pounds since a pair of desultory title defenses last spring are apparently exaggerated. And veteran trainer Eddie Futch says that in all of his 82 years he has never brought in a fighter out of condition�and won't now. "Why all the fuss?" Futch complains. "He's a heavyweight. Ain't no weight to make." Then, invoking a comparison that undermined his case, Futch added, " Primo Carnera weighed 270!" And by Newman's own account Bowe did weigh a Carneraesque 271 when he entered camp in Lake Tahoe four weeks ago, about the same as when he began training for the first Holyfield match.

Nobody in camp is concerned, but Bowe admits he might do things differently after this light. "To be honest," he says, "this is the first time I ever let myself go. I ate everything put in front of me. I deserved it, but I don't think I'd do it again."

During the exhibition it was impossible to get a read on Bowe's condition. Newman ordered TV cameras turned away, and Bowe, soft but not Buster Douglas-like, kept his T-shirt on. The action was unsatisfying. Bowe and Everton Davis, whose hands were so thickly upholstered he seemed to be waving armchairs around, didn't so much spar as shadowbox, very softly. This is the nature of exhibitions. Still, the boos were so blistering that Futch called a halt after two rounds. "No need for catcalls," he said. Bowe was stunned by the reaction: "They want a championship fight for $10?"

But Bowe, of all people, should understand that impatience. It is exactly what he claimed to feel, watching Lewis and Bruno eat up ring time. It's what every fight fan feels these days. It's always the wrong people in the ring, no matter how much the fans pay.

Excellent post. That was a fight that should have happened that never did.

**Dynamite Kid** · 08-10-2009, 03:30 PM

Cheers ive done my best to edit it. I did not post in the order i wanted to but here you go anyway.

What **** King and Suiliman are.

**Benncollinsaad** · 08-10-2009, 03:45 PM

That Bowe would murder Lewis. Seriously. A 3rd round KO. But Bowe's peak time was too short.

The Lennox Lewis/Rid**** Bowe Chronicles the TRUTH!!!!!