Chris
Wilcox is renting Madison Square Garden so he can workout in front of pro
teams, including, presumably, the Knicks. This is notable for the
audacity, and for whose idea is almost certainly is. That would be Rock Newman,
Wilcox's new agent.
Newman has been in and out of dumb situations, and was
previously banned from the Garden for his role in a pre-fight brawl.
Eddie Futch ridiculed
him, saying this in an interview:
"The toughest to train was Riddick
Bowe. He didn't have good boxing people around him except me. Rock Newman was in
it for self-gratification and the money. He cared little about Riddick Bowe the
man and the fighter. Bowe was just a meal ticket. There were a lot of mistakes
made. The first was throwing the WBA belt into the trash can. That was the most
damming thing he could have done. I was 78 years old and i didn't have any time
to waste. I told Rock Newman to just leave me alone and that I would make Bowe a
great champion. He had all the tools. The world tour was the second biggest
mistake. I found out about the tour the day before they were to leave town! The
first stop was in Johannesburg, South Africa. The first words out of Nelson's
Mandela's mouth when they met him were, 'Where's Eddie Futch?' The tour
continued on to Rome to meet the Pope...and Bowe would never be the same."
The
late Shirley Povich said this of Newman, after Mike Tyson was suspended for
biting Evander Holyfield's ear:
"And of course Rock Newman, Riddick
Bowe's manager, would get into the act. Rock explained away the whole thing in
terms of racism, and why did Tyson get the works where as Andrew Golota was
treated so differently for being disqualified twice for fouling Bowe with low
blows. Newman thus equated the groin with the ears, a stretch. Newman could
perceive racism in a vanilla ice cream cone."
We're obviously not
Maryland fans, but still, we feel bad for Chris Wilcox. When you get past
the talent and the potential, what you have is a kid from a very small town in
North Carolina, who spent one year in Raleigh and two in College Park. He could
do better than Rock Newman.