Boxing: Riddick Bowe speaks with SecondsOut

By Anthony Evans: Since former manager Rock Newman talked the former undisputed world heavyweight champion into retirement in December 1996, life has been pretty rotten for Riddick Bowe. The fighter's embarrassing 11 day stint as a US Marine, the kidnapping of then-wife Judy and their children, the legal battles and eventual 17 month incarceration in a Maryland prison have been well documented.

The beautiful, cruel sport of boxing has been Riddick Bowe's saviour once before. As the seventh son in a family of 13 children, Bowe used boxing as an escape route from the swarming dangers of 250 Lott Avenue, an apartment block known to everyone in the Brownsville ghetto as being 'owned' by crack dealers. Bowe's sister, Brenda, was knifed to death by a dealer near the family home in a building where junkies would stand on sentry duty with machine and shot guns.