Riddick Lamont Bowe was born on August 10,1967 and is an American former professional boxer who competed between 1989 and 2008.
66 Facts About Riddick Bowe
2.
Riddick Bowe held the undisputed world heavyweight championship in 1992, and won the super heavyweight silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.
3.
That same year, Riddick Bowe was named Fighter of the Year by The Ring and the Boxing Writers' Association of America.
4.
Riddick Bowe vacated the WBC title later that year in protest, instead of defending the title against their number one contender, Lennox Lewis.
5.
Riddick Bowe later regained a portion of the world heavyweight championship in 1995, defeating Herbie Hide for the WBO title.
6.
In doing so, Riddick Bowe became the first boxer in history to win the titles of all four major sanctioning bodies: the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO.
7.
Later that year, Riddick Bowe vacated the WBO title in order to fight Holyfield for a third time, and won decisively by being the first boxer to defeat Holyfield by knockout.
8.
Riddick Bowe retired from boxing after the Golota fights, making low-key comebacks in 2004 and 2008.
9.
Riddick Bowe was born on August 10,1967, the twelfth of his mother Dorothy Riddick Bowe's thirteen children.
10.
Riddick Bowe was born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York City.
11.
Riddick Bowe was in the same elementary school sixth-grade class with Mike Tyson.
12.
Riddick Bowe was training at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Boxing Association Gym or the "Bed-Stuy BA" for short.
13.
Riddick Bowe's friends called him "Don King" because of his hairstyle.
14.
Riddick Bowe won two bouts as a 178-pounder in 1984 before failing to show for a third bout.
15.
Riddick Bowe was a light heavyweight runner-up for the 1986 World Championships and 1986 Goodwill Games but for some reason didn't qualify.
16.
Roosevelt Sanders, the head coach, said he was aware that Riddick Bowe's hand was being treated, but had not known it was broken.
17.
Riddick Bowe said he kept those injuries secret from the US team coaching staff for fear of being kept out of the tournament.
18.
At first, Riddick Bowe was dismissed from the Olympic-year training camp, because US Olympic boxing Coach Ken Adams didn't like him.
19.
Riddick Bowe won the silver medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, outpointing Soviet Alex Miroshnichenko in the semifinals, and losing a controversial match in the finals to future world heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis.
20.
Riddick Bowe had a dominant first round, landing 33 of 94 punches thrown while Lewis landed 14 of 67.
21.
The referee gave Riddick Bowe two standing eight counts and waved the fight off after the second one, even though Riddick Bowe seemed able to continue.
22.
Riddick Bowe finished his amateur career with a record of 104 wins, 18 losses.
23.
Eddie would say that Riddick Bowe had more potential than any boxer he had ever trained.
24.
Riddick Bowe turned professional in March 1989 and knocked out Lionel Butler.
25.
In September 1990, Riddick Bowe made his first step up in class, fighting faded ex-champion Pinklon Thomas, whom he dominated until Thomas gave up after eight rounds.
26.
In March 1991, Riddick Bowe knocked out 1984 Olympic Super Heavyweight Gold medalist Tyrell Biggs.
27.
Riddick Bowe fought two interesting bouts against Elijah Tillery in 1991.
28.
Riddick Bowe won a unanimous decision in an entertaining fight, flooring Holyfield in the 11th round.
29.
Lewis's manager, Kelley Maloney, rejected another offer of two million for Lewis to fight on a Riddick Bowe undercard, citing his distrust of the Riddick Bowe camp after the aforementioned financial negotiations.
30.
Riddick Bowe responded by holding a press conference in which he dumped the WBC world heavyweight championship belt into a trash can and relinquished it in order to protest the actions of the WBC and WBC President Jose Sulaiman concerning the fight payoff.
31.
In February 1993, Riddick Bowe met Pope John Paul II during the pope's general audience at the Vatican, a day after Riddick Bowe completed a goodwill mission to Somalia.
32.
In Riddick Bowe's next fight, May 22,1993, at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, Riddick Bowe knocked out Jesse Ferguson in the second round to retain the title.
33.
Riddick Bowe ended up losing the belts to Holyfield by a majority decision.
34.
Riddick Bowe stated afterwards he thought the bout should have declared a 'technical draw' or a 'no contest' owing to the unfair delay.
35.
Riddick Bowe faced the much smaller Buster Mathis Jr and, after struggling to connect with his bobbing and weaving target, hit Mathis while he was down with what was ruled an accidental blow, and the bout was ruled a 'No Contest' by referee Arthur Mercante, Sr.
36.
In March 1995, Riddick Bowe won the WBO version of the world heavyweight championship by knocking down England's Herbie Hide six times en route to scoring a sixth-round knockout.
37.
In June 1995, after a heated build up, Riddick Bowe defended the WBO heavyweight title against his archrival in the amateurs, Jorge Luis Gonzalez, At the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
38.
Seconds after Golota was disqualified, Riddick Bowe's entourage rushed the ring, attacked Golota with a two way radio and assaulted Golota's 74-year-old trainer Lou Duva, who collapsed in the ring and was taken out of The Garden on a stretcher.
39.
On September 25,2004, after seven and a half years away from boxing, Riddick Bowe returned with a second-round knockout over Marcus Rhode.
40.
On December 13,2008, with the help of new manager Bob Bain, Riddick Bowe, 41, returned to the ring for the first time in over three and a half years on the undercard of the Wladimir Klitschko versus Hasim Rahman world heavyweight title bout in Mannheim, Germany and won an eight-round unanimous decision over Gene Pukall.
41.
Yet, as late as 1995 and past his peak, Riddick Bowe was good enough to become the first man to stop Evander Holyfield, outclass former amateur standout and undefeated pro, Jorge Luis Gonzalez, and bludgeon over-matched Herbie Hide to win the then lightly-regarded WBO version of the world heavyweight championship.
42.
The consensus was that Riddick Bowe, described as both a "super talent" and a "super waste", only had one great fight, when winning the title from Holyfield, and ultimately disappointed in squandering his obvious natural ability due to laziness.
43.
Riddick Bowe's reputation suffered because of the weak challengers he faced as champion before losing the title to Holyfield in their rematch.
44.
Riddick Bowe is widely criticized for relinquishing the WBC title rather than defending it against mandatory challenger Lennox Lewis, thus fracturing the undisputed championship until Lewis unified the titles in 1999.
45.
Riddick Bowe is the first boxer in any division to hold all four major versions of the world championship during his career, an accomplishment emulated in the heavyweight division only by Tyson Fury.
46.
Alongside Gene Tunney, Rocky Marciano, Sultan Ibragimov and Nikolai Valuev, Riddick Bowe is one of five former heavyweight champions to have never suffered a stoppage defeat during his career.
47.
In March 2013, Riddick Bowe announced his Muay Thai debut, having trained under Kru Airr Phanthip and Kru Chan in Las Vegas.
48.
Riddick Bowe faced Levgen Golovin for the WPMF Super Heavyweight World Title in Pattaya, Thailand.
49.
On June 14,2013, Riddick Bowe was knocked down five times from kicks to his leg.
50.
Riddick Bowe said he made the decision both to make his mother proud and to rededicate himself to training, with the intention of returning to boxing shortly after.
51.
Riddick Bowe arrived at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island on February 10,1997.
52.
On his first day of recruit training, Riddick Bowe discussed leaving the Corps with Marine commanders, and quit after three days of heavy physical training with his platoon in Parris Island, South Carolina, on February 21,1997.
53.
Shortly after winning his first title against Evander Holyfield, Riddick Bowe saw a news story on television that revealed a million dollars worth of medicines donated to the Somali refugees and orphans were not able to be transported to the war-torn region due to a lack of funds to pay for the charter aircraft needed.
54.
Riddick Bowe immediately had his representatives contact AmeriCares, the NGO leading the effort, and pledged the 100,000 dollars needed to fund the trip - on the condition he could go to the country with the goods, and make sure they got to their intended recipients.
55.
Riddick Bowe was accompanied by several members of his management team, including manager Rock Newman and Head of International Sales Alexis Denny.
56.
Riddick Bowe took action when he heard news of other tragedies.
57.
Riddick Bowe relayed this news to Bowe, and explained to the media at the time 'The heavyweight champion was very moved by the story and having lost a brother and a sister earlier in life, decided to make a financial contribution to the family of Mr Yap.
58.
Riddick Bowe was convicted of the February 1998 kidnapping of his estranged wife Judy, and their five children.
59.
Riddick Bowe forced her and their children into a vehicle and set out for his Fort Washington, Maryland, home.
60.
Riddick Bowe agreed to a plea bargain of guilty to "interstate domestic violence", and was sentenced to 18 to 24 months in prison.
61.
On February 8,2001, Riddick Bowe was arrested in Long Island after a domestic dispute with his new wife.
62.
Riddick Bowe allegedly dragged his wife and left her with cuts on her knees and elbows.
63.
In 2013, Riddick Bowe announced his intentions to start training to be a professional wrestler.
64.
Riddick Bowe was to make his debut for the UK-based Preston City Wrestling organization on March 1,2014.
65.
In 1993, a video game entitled Riddick Bowe Boxing was released for various platforms.
66.
Also that year, Riddick Bowe appeared in an episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, entitled "You Bet Your Life", as a bully named "Bo".