I could hardly believe my eyes when I read that Former Heavyweight Champion Riddick Bowe lost a Muay-Thai kickboxing match in some god-forsaken arena in Thailand this past week, knocked out in the second round by some bum who wouldn’t have been allowed to rinse Bowe’s mouthpiece in his heyday. Amazed that Bowe would subject himself to this indignity. Amazed that it would be allowed. Amazed that there are people lowdown enough to trot out old Riddick Bowe and let him compete in anything where combat is even remotely involved.
Bowe’s Erratic, Tragic Post-Career
Riddick Bowe is 45 and damaged goods. I won’t profess to know all the ins and outs in Riddick’s life at this point. This much I do know–he’s physically and psychologically wrecked from the brutality of his boxing career. His speech is slurred and gone is the happy, almost boyish jokester who was once Heavyweight Champion.
There is no way to circumvent the reality that Bowe is one of many tragic stories to emanate from this most unforgiving sport. He had all the potential in the world and he only realized a small portion of it. But he was champion, he did beat Evander Holyfield two out of three times, and was probably the best heavyweight from the first half of the 90’s, potential all-time top ten material who got old before he was old.
In 2005, long after his life had gotten sideways, I had the misfortune of going to Pechanga Casino to see Riddick Bowe, now bloated and morose, barely get a decision over a clubfighter named Billy Zumbrun. He probably should not have gotten the decision, as he was whacked at will by a fighter who wouldn’t have lasted 45 seconds with him in his prime. If you told me that 8 years later, he’d still be involved in any form of combat, I’d have said you were crazy.
A few things need to stop. First of all, anyone who is working to get Riddick Bowe into a ring at this point is a weasel–point blank. The same thing would have applied to someone who tried to get Muhammad Ali to fight in a jiu-jitsu match in Brazil back in 1989. This is 2013 and Riddick Bowe has no business being in a position to accept more blows. Thankfully, reports from Thailand are that Bowe was felled by leg-kicks. It’s a sad testament to a former heavyweight championship fighter when people are happy that he only got knocked out by getting kicked in the legs repeatedly.
Someone needs to put the hammer down on anyone looking to recycle old names from boxing by having them fight in some other discipline. That goes for anyone trying to put Roy Jones in an MMA ring. Whatever it is–it’s unseemly. With all the different forms of fighting these days, and all the disconnected worldwide jurisdictions, a guy can keep getting recycled until he ends up headlining a sambo card somewhere in Siberia.
We live in a society of heightened regulation. These days, a guy can’t even open a hotdog cart without going through miles of red tape. A high school QB with a concussion will have to sit out part of the season. Then you have the fight business, the one area of life where somehow anything goes. As a kid, I bristled at the tales of old–how the great Sugar Ray Robinson would be battered in a Tijuana prize ring. Or how some old champ would be beaten to bits, before launching several more comebacks and ending up a vegetable. They seemed like stories from the Stone Age. Then we see tales like Bowe’s and realize the old days of untold brutality are still in place.
Riddick Bowe is unable to make these kinds of decisions for himself. That much is obvious. Guys who headlined PPV cards in Vegas and New York should not end up fighting in makeshift outdoor arenas in Thailand where admission is free. Anyone involved in debacles like this should be black-balled from the world of legitimate combat sports. The whole thing is just sad and someone should make it stop.
