Spaceship Sighted in Training

Someone better get Evander Holyfield aside and warn him. Tell him what they are doing to him.

I can’t bear to look.

Get a load of what they are matching him up with for his heavyweight title defense.

I mean, in the first place, this guy walks without a limp. He can see without glasses. He doesn’t have a pot belly. His stomach is as flat as a washboard. He doesn’t look as if he could bleed. Not a pimple on him. He is 6 feet 5, weighs 235 pounds and it is all muscle. He has never lost a pro fight.

He is--come closer, I wouldn’t want Evander to get wind of this--only 25! And barely that.

Now, you and I know Holyfield likes opponents who have to be helped into a ring. He likes guys who were heavyweight champions back in the Coolidge Administration--or, at least, the first Nixon years.

He gets his challengers out of a line at Lourdes. Or intensive-care wards, if possible. The combined age of his last two opponents was 86--and they both went the distance with him. He won the title from a guy so overweight they had to tether him. He looked at ringside like something they found floating over Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.

So when you got a look at Holyfield’s latest opponent--they will meet on Nov. 13 at the Thomas & Mack Arena in Las Vegas--you got the feeling someone goofed.

Holyfield has a hard job getting the public to take him seriously, anyway. He is hard-working, sincere, he is always in shape. He is not in prison. He is rich.

He also is boring. At least, his opponent of Nov. 13 says so.

“I have a duty,” Bowe says, “to bring some excitement back to the heavyweight division.”

Bowe is not boring. He talks a better fight than he delivers. His resume shows very few fights of the century. And a lot of victories over household names such as Garing Lane, Elijah Tillery and a Manassa Mauler or two named Conroy Nelson or Everett Martin.

Bowe seems to suffer from a lack of concentration. The eminent fight doctor, Ferdie Pacheco, once described Bowe as “a spaceship.” English translation: You are around him any length of time, and you begin to wonder what planet he is from.

First of all, his idol is Muhammad Ali. He can do anything Ali could do except, possibly, fight. He can imitate him to a T--until the bell rings. He can also imitate Stevie Wonder, Bill Cosby and Ronald Reagan. His connections would be happier if he could imitate Jack Dempsey, but Bowe marches to his own bell.

You might think Bowe is fighting Holyfield for the title and money. Not so. Bowe is fighting Holyfield for America. It is his patriotic duty.

You see, it is the unclouded view of Bowe that Holyfield is bad for the country, for the economy and as a role model.

To be sure, he is no Joe Louis--but it is not Holyfield’s fistic skills Bowe finds fault with.

“Evander is so boring,” he complains. “The American public needs some excitement in its life and it is up to the heavyweight champion to provide it.”

Holyfield fails dismally at this. I mean, he doesn’t do card tricks, tap dance, get indicted, wreck cars. He is a terrible disappointment to the tabloids. He might as well not be champion.

Bowe intends to take up the slack as soon as he defeats Holyfield. Bowe doesn’t plan to rob banks, take prisoners, cure cancer or run for President.

He simply thinks the office of heavyweight champion calls for a guy to be noisy, visible, voluble. He should go around as if he were leading a parade. Holyfield went to the Olympic boxing in Barcelona most nights and nobody really noticed, but when Magic Johnson came in one night, the place almost rioted.

Bowe likes to be noticed. He came into the Broadway Gym in Watts the other day where Holyfield was holding court and he immediately went into his full-court Ali press. “All pretenders to the throne evacuate!” he announced. “The savior of boxing is here! Your time is up!”

Holyfield looked amused while he went on patiently answering negative questions as to whether he felt his record and his size (he was cruiserweight champion before gaining the big title) somehow robbed him of respect. “How could a man be the highest-paid athlete in the business and not be said to get respect?” he demanded. “That’s the highest form of respect, that’s the kind of respect I want.” Did Bowe’s style bother him? “He was my sparring partner,” Holyfield said. “How’s he going to surprise me?”

Bowe was outraged at the description. “Sparring partner?” he exclaimed. “I was 17 years old at the time. I was a kid making a buck trying to stay out of the street gangs. You think he thinks I’m the same fighter now? I hope so. What does he do? I’ll tell you. Beat someone who is 42 years old. He fights everybody who is too young or too old. On Friday the 13th, you will witness the beginning of a new era in boxing. The Riddick Bowe era. I predict the seventh round. The American public needs some excitement in these times. I’ll bring it to them.”

Holyfield shrugs. “You don’t win fights with your tongue,” he says. Of course not. You win by getting your opponent to spot you 15 years.