Riddick Bowe

Riddick Lamont Bowe (born August 10, 1967) is an American former professional boxer who competed between 1989 and 2008.

Bowe was born on August 10, 1967, the twelfth of his mother Dorothy Bowe's thirteen children.

Bowe was born and raised in the East New York section of Brooklyn, New York City.

His brother Henry died of AIDS, and his sister Brenda was stabbed to death by a drug addict during an attempted robbery.

Bowe was in the same elementary school sixth-grade class with Mike Tyson.

"We went to school together the sixth grade in P.S. 396 (in Brownsville.) I really didn't know him," Bowe recalled.

Bowe was training at the Bedford-Stuyvesant Boxing Association Gym or the "Bed-Stuy BA" for short.

As an amateur, Bowe won the prestigious New York Golden Gloves Championship and other tournaments.

In 1984, age 17, he knocked out opponent James Smith in just 4 seconds.

He won two bouts as a 178-pounder in 1984 before failing to show for a third bout.

In 1985, at the National Golden Gloves championships, he lost to Fort Worth heavyweight Donald Stephens.

Apart from boxing he attended Kingsborough Community College, where he studied drama — in hopes of an acting career after boxing — also he took up a business administration study.

His friends called him "Don King" because of his hairstyle.

Bowe said he was emulating Mark Breland, "I got a majority of my experience with Mark, I'm inspired by what he's accomplished. It makes it possible for me to do the same," said Bowe in an interview.

Bowe won four New York Golden Gloves Championships.

He won the 1985 178 lb Novice Championship, 1986 178 lb Open Championship and the 1987 and 1988 Super Heavyweight Open Championship.

Already in 1985 Bowe was ranked #1 light heavyweight in the United States.

He was a light heavyweight runner-up for the 1986 World Championships and 1986 Goodwill Games but for some reason didn't qualify.

U.S. Army superheavyweight Robert Salters, a Brooklyn-born 25-year-old artilleryman of Fort Bragg, NC, who took up boxing in 1986, and had less than twenty amateur fights in his 16-months-long record before they first met at the 1988 AAU National finals, where Salters floored Bowe twice before ref stopped the fight, became a real nemesis for Bowe during his amateur career, as they fought each other to nearly a draw in the 1988 Olympic Box-offs at Caesars Palace, after Bowe lost to Salters in the Olympic Trials (Bowe came in at 231 lbs, Salters at 247. ). "He was talking' trash about me, and that helped me mentally," Salters said.

Meanwhile, during the year-and-a-half hiatus he gained well above thirty pounds and jumped from light heavyweight to super heavyweight, coming back for the 1987 United States Olympic Festival.

Prior to 1987 Pan American Games, Bowe said he had suffered a hairline fracture in his right hand during one of his two fights at the Olympic Festival in July 1987.

The injury, he said, was revealed in X-rays he had taken at home.

Roosevelt Sanders, the head coach, said he was aware that Bowe's hand was being treated, but had not known it was broken.

Bowe said he kept those injuries secret from the U.S. team coaching staff for fear of being kept out of the tournament.

At first, Bowe was dismissed from the Olympic-year training camp, because U.S. Olympic boxing Coach Ken Adams didn't like him.

After turning professional in 1989, Bowe went on to become a two-time world heavyweight champion.

He held the undisputed world heavyweight championship in 1992, and won the super heavyweight silver medal at the 1988 Summer Olympics.

In 1992 he became the undisputed heavyweight champion by winning the World Boxing Association (WBA), World Boxing Council (WBC) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titles by defeating then-unbeaten former undisputed cruiserweight champion Evander Holyfield.

That same year, Bowe was named Fighter of the Year by The Ring magazine and the Boxing Writers' Association of America.

Bowe vacated the WBC title later that year in protest, instead of defending the title against their number one contender, Lennox Lewis.

In a rematch with Holyfield in 1993, Bowe narrowly lost the WBA and IBF titles in what would be his only professional defeat.

Bowe later regained a portion of the world heavyweight championship in 1995, defeating Herbie Hide for the World Boxing Organization (WBO) title.

In doing so, Bowe became the first boxer in history to win the titles of all four major sanctioning bodies: the WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO.

Later that year, 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.

1996 saw Bowe engage in two brutal slugfests with Andrew Golota, both of which ended controversially when Golota repeatedly hit him with low blows.

This left the undisputed championship fragmented until 1999.

Bowe retired from boxing after the Golota fights, making low-key comebacks in 2004 and 2008.

In a 2010 article by Boxing Scene, Bowe was ranked the 21st greatest heavyweight of all time.

In 2015, he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.

As of 2023, Bowe remains the last undisputed world heavyweight champion from the United States.