Bowe To Continue Comeback Against Phillips

Former two-time heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe (42-1, 33 KOs) will continue his stalled boxing comeback bid when he takes on journeyman fighter Paul ‘Rocky’ Phillips on August 19th, 2007, in Covinton, Kentucky. Bowe, now 40-years-old, and slightly paunchy, hasn’t fought in two years since last winning a split decision over Billy Zumbrun in April 2005.

Plagued by injuries, Bowe has been unable to train or fight during the last two years, and is only now finally getting healthy again. Bowe retired on 1996, after winning two fights over Andrew Golota by disqualification, although Bowe took a tremendous beating on both occasions. While away from boxing, Bowe temporarily joined the U.S. Marine Corp, only to quit while still in boot camp. He later spent some time in jail for a family problem. During this time away from boxing, Bowe’s weight reportedly ballooned up to the 300 lb range, which made it necessary for him to pare off a huge chunk of it when he decided to make a comeback in 2004.

However, in the two fights that he had against Marcus Rhode, in September 2004, and Billy Zumbrun, in April 2005, Bowe had weighed 263 and 280 lbs. Alarmingly, Bowe came in at 280 for his last fight, showing that he was regressing in his training rather than making any headway on trying to trim down to his optimal fighting weight of 240 lbs.

Certainly, it would take a super-human effort for Bowe to get anywhere close to that weight now at his age, though if he is any way serious about his comeback, he’s going to need to if he plans on being the least bit successful. In his last bout, against Zumbrun, Bowe only looked good for brief moments in the fight due to the amount of weight he was carrying around. In the latter rounds, Bowe tired badly and took a huge amount of punishment from Zumbrun.