Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like...Ali

By JANICE C. SIMPSON/LAKE TAHOE

When heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe steps into the ring, he is up against two invisible enemies. One is a reputation for playfulness that has earned him the nickname "Riddick-ulous Bowe." The other is the assumption that despite a professional record of 34 wins and no losses, this boxer has yet to get much of a workout.

The latter problem could be alleviated this Saturday, when he will once again meet Evander Holyfield, the man who came close to denting him in the now legendary 10th round of their encounter last November. Bowe walked away with the title, but he left fans eagerly awaiting a rematch. It will take place at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.

As for Bowe's tendency to shrug at life, the way he did when he failed to bring home a gold medal from the 1988 Seoul Olympics -- well, don't be fooled. Bowe is not the latest in the line of adolescents in oversized bodies who have populated boxing. In fact, what distinguishes him is an early, singularly mature decision to be, as he says, "different." In this course he relied in part on his mother Dorothy, who alone ruled an unruly household of 13 children in a New York City war zone with such edifying comments as, "If you go to jail, I'm not going to visit you or send you money," or, "You want this African soupbone?" when a spanking was in the offing.

In his determination to stay focused, Bowe also nurtured a passionate admiration for Muhammad Ali. "I knew Ali didn't drink, so I didn't drink," Bowe says. "He didn't smoke, so I didn't smoke. He finished high school, so I finished high school." Over the years, Bowe developed another habit of Ali's: he likes a good boast and a solid punch line to go with it. And as with Ali, there is even some truth in what he says. The prime for a heavyweight comes in his late 20s. Bowe, now 26, has the potential to be one of boxing's greatest. Standing 6 ft. 5 in. and weighing about 240 lbs. when he's in fighting trim, he towers over most competitors. He has a quick jab, a good hook and knockout power in each large fist. And while he can't dance the way Ali could, he moves with agility for a big man. "Many have compared me to the Greatest: Ali," he says. "But I hit like a truck. He just stung like a bee."

In Bowe's corner is master trainer Eddie Futch. Now 83, Futch once sparred with Joe Louis. Over the past 55 years, he has trained 18 champions, six of them heavyweights, including Joe Frazier and Larry Holmes. But Bowe, Futch declares, "has the potential to be the best I've ever had." Before he can take his place in the history books, however, a great champion needs a great opponent. Louis had Schmeling. LaMotta had Robinson. Ali had Frazier. "Greatness in fighting is gained by rubbing against other great boxers," says Bert Sugar, editor-publisher of Boxing Illustrated. Right now the list of contenders is short and flabby.

The champ has fought twice since taking the title from Holyfield, but he barely worked up a sweat to achieve first- and second-round knockouts against over-the-hill pugs Michael Dokes and Jesse Ferguson. Looking beyond this Saturday's fight, some fight fans think they might see Bowe under some strain in a matchup with Lennox Lewis, the British boxer who defeated him in the 1988 Olympics. Lewis, another 6-ft. 5-in. power tower, inherited one of Bowe's three heavyweight titles after Bowe and his manager-mentor, Rock Newman, rejected the World Boxing Council's timetable for a fight with the Brit. Lewis has defended the W.B.C. title twice, but he hasn't performed as impressively as his American rival.

Some fans say Bowe won't be truly tested until he takes on Mike Tyson, the onetime knockout bully who is behind bars for rape. "Iron Mike" is eligible for parole in May 1995 but probably won't fight again -- if at all -- before the end of that year. Says Muhammad Nassardeen, a black businessman from Inglewood, California, who recently gave Bowe an award recognizing him as a positive role model for black youths: "If Tyson never fights again, it puts a little shadow on Riddick."

These days Bowe has little choice but to keep his guard up. A month after defeating Holyfield, Bowe signed a six-fight contract with Time Warner Sports that could earn him as much as $100 million if he retains his title. And if that's not enough incentive, there is the challenge of breaking the record set by Rocky Marciano, who retired undefeated after 49 fights. "I want to take my place in history," Bowe admits. "I need 15 fights to tie Marciano's record and 16 to beat it." After that, he says, he too will retire.

In the meantime, the champ is beginning to make a name for himself outside the ring. He has become a regular on the talk-show circuit, where he is known for his not-bad impressions of Ronald Reagan, Stevie Wonder and Ali. He also has appeared in cameo roles on the television show Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, in the Broadway musical Will Rogers Follies and in a commercial for Fruit of the Loom underwear. Just last month Italian-based Fila Sportswear introduced a new Bowe Motion line of cross-training shoes and workout clothes.

For all its flair and commercial flavor, Bowe's extracurricular life has also reflected the champion's earnest side. In February Bowe took a two-week goodwill trip around the world, making stops in South Africa, where he met with Nelson Mandela and pledged his support to the African National Congress; Somalia, where he delivered medical supplies to volunteer relief workers and visited American troops; and the Vatican, where he had a private audience with the Pope.

Bowe welcomes the chance to set an example. He doesn't drink or do drugs. He married his high school sweetheart, Judy, a born-again Christian he knew for three years before they exchanged their first kiss. A share of his earnings is invested in trust funds to provide college educations for his children: Riddick Jr., 7; Riddicia, 5; Brenda, 3; and a baby due in April.

This devotion to old-fashioned family values makes Bowe an ideal champ for the puritanical 1990s. So far, the closest he has come to scandal has been a charge by a former girlfriend that he is the father of her son. Bowe immediately agreed to support the child, until blood tests revealed he wasn't the father after all. "You might consider it a pressure ((to be a role model)), but it's no pressure for me," he says. "I'd be privileged to help someone out. And look where I came from. If it weren't for Muhammad Ali, where would I be?"

Where he came from is a housing project in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, where battles for drug turf were so regular that residents called it Gunsmoke City. Bowe was the 12th of 13 children raised by a single mother who worked the graveyard shift at a plastic-bottle factory and held weekend card games to earn money for a few extras. Even so, "we'd have to eat the same meals -- like beans and rice -- four times a week," says Bowe's brother Darryl Wright, 27.

Despite Dorothy Bowe's strong talk and strong arm, several of the brothers and sisters got caught up in drugs and ran into trouble with the law. Riddick never did. A seventh-grade English teacher helped set him on a different path. When she brought in a video about Ali, Bowe was so impressed that he got into a fight with another boy in the class who liked Joe Frazier better. After breaking them up, the teacher told Bowe he was pretty good with his hands and should consider boxing himself. Within four years, he had won his first Golden Gloves title. He would go on to win that amateur title three more times.

He also hoped to win a gold medal at the Olympics, as Ali had. But in the four months before the 1988 Games, Bowe suffered several blows. His favorite sister, Brenda, was killed in a mugging. A brother, Henry, went into the hospital with AIDS. The young boxer, recovering from hand surgery and a foot injury, made it through the semifinals and tried holding on in the final bout against Lewis, but the referee stopped the fight in the second round, giving the victory to the British boxer. Managers and promoters who had wooed the young hopeful before the Games were no longer as eager to sign him up. "It was my goal to win the gold medal and come back and have everyone love me," Bowe says now. "But my wife and my kids were the only ones who met me at the airport. I was crushed. I wanted so badly to do what Ali had done."

Rock Newman, a fast-talking assistant to boxing promoter Butch Lewis, thought Bowe was getting a bum deal. When Lewis stopped pursuing the young fighter, Newman decided to manage Bowe himself. His first priority was to recruit Eddie Futch. The legendary trainer, who had heard the "Riddick- ulous" rumors, wasn't interested in the job. At 78, he told Newman, he didn't have the time to waste. But a meeting with Bowe changed his mind. "He was big and he looked like a man," says Futch. "But he was only 20, and I realized something that the others didn't: he was a boy and what he needed was guidance."

Futch, affectionately nicknamed "Papa Smurf" by his latest champion, was hospitalized with heart problems earlier this year but seems to have recovered and remains a stabilizing force for Bowe both inside and outside the ring. "I'm going to get me one of these, Papa Smurf," Bowe muses as he settles into a seat on the Caesars Palace jet that is flying him from his training camp in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, to a promotional event in Los Angeles.

It took four years to get Bowe to the point where he could contemplate buying a $10 million plane. Because Newman refused to make an alliance with one of the big-time boxing promoters like Don King or Bob Arum, he had to pay expenses for Bowe's fights out of his own pocket. By the time the Holyfield fight came around, Newman had exhausted his savings, sold his BMW and borrowed from friends to invest more than $300,000 in his fighter. Those days of debt are gone. This month, construction will begin on the $6.6 million house Bowe is building in Fort Washington, Maryland, where he moved 2 1/2 years ago. The ( 32,000-sq.-ft. mansion includes six bedrooms, a 25-seat movie theater, a four- lane bowling alley and a fully equipped gym.

The nouveau-riche excess of the place has not escaped Bowe, who jokingly calls the house "the Riddick Bowe Presidential Estate." But he adds, "I get a kick out of providing my family with the necessities and giving them things they don't need." Requests from his siblings have become so frequent that none now have his home phone number. Still, Bowe bought a $350,000 home for his mother, and supports his sister Brenda's four children and two other nephews whose mother is struggling with a drug problem. About a month after winning the title, he also bought marble tombstones for the unmarked graves of his dead brother and sister. It was, in many ways, a particularly symbolic Bowe gesture -- a practical commemoration of his past and its defeats, and with nothing ridiculous about it.