UNDERSTANDING BOWE : He Is Having the Time of His Life as Heavyweight Champion--Now if People Only Would Take Him Seriously

LAS VEGAS — Riddick the Light-Hearted is propped on his favorite throne again--on stage, speaking before a satellite-feed crowd of millions. The Bowe Show is ready to begin.

Wipe that smile off his face at your own risk.

“I’m having a lot of fun,” Bowe said at Wednesday’s prefight news conference leading up to Saturday’s defense of his International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Assn. titles. “I’ve been having fun since I won the title.”

You can question his work ethic, his not-quite-Mr. Olympia body or his choice of challengers. You can question the timing of some of his more intemperate jibes.

But, from his trash-talk jabbering in the face of Evander Holyfield, his opponent Saturday, to his two heated exchanges with Jorge Luis Gonzalez, a possible future foe, to his giddy responses to questions of all kinds, you cannot doubt Riddick Bowe’s devotion to enjoying himself.

Twenty-six-year-old heavyweight champions just wanna have fun.

Which is why, at times, it is easy to take such a heavy man--he says he will enter the ring against Holyfield at about 245 pounds--so lightly.

How can a man who could double as a Disney character have the inner fire to remain on top of this brutal sport?

Isn’t he known as the most-talented underachiever in the ranks of a weight division filled with talented underachievers?

Holyfield, a man never accused of not using the utmost of his talents, based his whole strategy in their first fight last year on the premise that Bowe would quit if Holyfield pressured him enough.

Holyfield staggered Bowe in a furious 10th round, but Bowe did not quit and won the fight easily.

Now, with a year of heavyweight championship glory and millions of dollars in the bank, the old questions about the still-young fighter have re-emerged. He is so much bigger than the normal heavyweight. Does that mean his fall will be harder, too?

“Everybody has misunderstood this kid,” said Bowe’s legendary trainer, 82-year-old Eddie Futch. “He’s outwardly cocky, but he’s a nice kid.

“When he came to me, he weighed 226 pounds, he was 6 foot 5, 21 years old. And inside he was about 17 or 18. Everybody thought he was a man, you know, because he was so big. Here was this big, hulking guy acting foolish. People think he’s a flake.

“But I saw the big kid in him. And there’s still a lot of kid in him. I understood all along. Here’s a kid who needed direction, needed somebody to follow. He’s growing up. He’s growing up a lot.”

Futch, whose involvement with champions includes Joe Louis and Joe Frazier, says he doesn’t mind Bowe’s antics--his prolonged taunting of Holyfield on Wednesday during an interview that was supposed to be Holyfield’s alone was close to embarrassing.

“He knows just how far to go,” Futch says.

Interestingly, the one issue that seemed to push Bowe beyond his normal put-on was that Holyfield did not take him seriously.

“For some reason, you think I’m a joke, don’t you? I’m just a big joke to you?” Bowe said to Holyfield after the interview was done. “I’m no joke, Evander.”

In an earlier interview, Bowe was very serious when he was asked about Holyfield’s belief that, going back to his days as an amateur and as a Holyfield sparring partner, Bowe was susceptible to surrendering when things got tough.

Most people point to his loss in the super-heavyweight gold-medal match against Lennox Lewis, now the World Boxing Council champion, in the 1988 Olympics as the symbol of what he lacks.

“I think people always misjudge me,” Bowe said. “People said I had no heart, I was lackadaisical, the whole nine yards. But success is the best revenge, and I’m proving all of them wrong, even Evander Holyfield.”

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In the weeks and months after his unanimous-decision victory over Holyfield last November to win the undisputed title, Bowe did things no heavyweight champion has done since Muhammad Ali.

He had an audience with the Pope. He visited Somalia. He embraced the talk-show circuit.

“I wouldn’t trade positions with anybody,” Bowe said. “I just love the position that I’m in.

“The heavyweight champion of the world shouldn’t just be heavyweight champion of the world. He should use his position to help other people, such as myself.

“I think Ali was a good example of that. Even if he wasn’t the champ, he was still the people’s champ because he not only did things for himself, he helped people out.”

Bowe, with his promoter-manager-confidante Rock Newman, has plotted a large presence for himself, free of many of the super-powerful people who have controlled boxing for years.

“That’s one of the reasons why they don’t want me around,” Bowe said. “They want fighters to be all stupid and dumb, and I can’t go that route. Me being able to speak my mind, they’re not that keen on that.”

But the grandeur of his out-of-the-ring life clashed with the dreariness of his post-title fight calendar. First, he dumped the WBC belt in protest of that body’s rules.

Then, he destroyed journeymen Michael Dokes (knockout in the first round) and Jesse Ferguson (knockout in the second) on successive defenses.

Bowe has pocketed about $20 million gross but has heard criticism that until he fights Lewis, he won’t get the respect he craves. A Lewis fight, talked about for months, does not appear close--with both sides accusing the other of ducking the fight.

“Let me explain something to you,” Bowe said when asked about his lightly regarded foes, “Ali didn’t fight a Bengal tiger every time out. Mike Tyson didn’t fight a tiger every time out.

“With Evander Holyfield, I anticipate this being a hard fight. But each time out, you don’t want it to be a hard fight. Not to mention, you burn yourself out that way.

“I love this sport, but I’m in it to make money. With Jesse Ferguson, Michael Dokes, I made money but I wasn’t taking a big risk. Now with Evander Holyfield, I’m making more money, and he’s a greater risk. Each time out you don’t want to take a great risk.”

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These days, much of Bowe’s attention seems focused beyond Holyfield and on his fellow Brownsville, N.Y., native, Mike Tyson.

Bowe recognizes that he needs great challengers to be considered a great champion, and he knows that one of these days, probably in the middle of 1995, Tyson will be a free man again.

“If I knock Lennox Lewis out, there aren’t too many people out there for me to fight,” Bowe said. “But I think when Mike gets out and he decides to fight, I think boxing will definitely come back alive because people are excited about Mike Tyson.”

Bowe visited Tyson in his Indiana prison before he went into training for this fight, and Tyson followed that up with a phone call.

“I’m extremely proud of Mike,” Bowe said. “I think Mike’s handling his situation extremely well. He’s not bitter. He’s not down on himself.”

Though he seems the happy-go-lucky antithesis of the raging Tyson, Bowe says he has learned from Tyson’s experiences. Bowe is always side-by-side with his wife, Judith--pregnant with their fourth child--and is rarely spotted on the jet-set party scene. He’s content designing a monstrous dream house in the Washington suburbs, and settling down.

“I’m capitalizing off of the mistakes he made,” Bowe said. “Not only Mike Tyson but a variety of other different champions. I think by seeing the mistakes they made allows me to steer clear.

“I’ve surrounded myself with people who are going to speak their minds. Even though I’m the champ, they’re going to tell me what’s right and what’s wrong and not going to tell me I’m right just because I am the champion.

“Mike, he had yes-men around him. I have people who really care. If he had more people around him who really cared, he wouldn’t be in the predicament that he’s in.”