Boxer confident he will prevail in bid for Tennessee license

After nearly four hours, Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle said the fact that the state denied Bowe’s application a day later deserved more testimony. The state answered with one witness, the assistant commissioner who denied the license, then rested.

Closing arguments will be Friday, but Lyle’s ruling had Bowe optimistic that he would be licensed.

“I expect a knockout,” Bowe said.

Attorney Derek Crownover said Lyle’s decision not to dismiss their argument that state officials had acted too quickly in denying Bowe’s application left their case largely intact.

“I felt like we have succeeded in showing that there’s a need for a third party evaluation of Riddick, which is what we’ve wanted from day one. I think we have good chances tomorrow,” Crownover said.

Tennessee licensed Mike Tyson in 2002 when no other state would but has been much tougher with Bowe.

Officials in the state Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees the boxing program, obtained a copy of a February 2000 sentencing hearing in which Bowe’s attorneys argued for leniency because the fighter was brain damaged from too many punches.

Robert Gowan, the assistant commissioner in charge of regulatory boards, said he had studied the transcript and new medical reports submitted by Bowe’s attorney for four months before the fighter applied for a license on Oct. 27, 2004. Gowan’s letter denying the application was dated Oct. 28.

With two cameras filming the hearing for a documentary on Bowe, Gowan testified that he was influenced by the number of doctors, those paid by Bowe and those appearing for the government, who reported in 2000 that Bowe had permanent brain damage.

“I can’t take that type of evidence lightly,” Gowan said.

Bowe took the stand in his own defense Thursday, and admitted that he agreed with his attorneys’ plan in 2000 to work for a more lenient sentence by portraying him as brain damaged because he didn’t want to go to jail.

“I’ve seen several doctors that say I don’t have any (brain damage) …. Actually, they said my brain looked better than theirs,” Bowe testified.

Crownover asked Bowe about his slurred speech, which was used against him in the 2000 hearing as proof he had brain damage. The fighter said he had learned some bad habits coming from the ghetto.

Bowe’s attorneys failed in trying to show that state officials were biased against Bowe before he applied and tried to make an example of the boxer.

They called the head of Oklahoma’s boxing commission, Joe Miller, who testified that he received a page from that 2000 sentencing hearing from the Tennessee investigator looking into Bowe’s application. The page included a quote from a federal judge saying that Bowe should “cease and desist” boxing.

Miller told Lyle that the investigator said Bowe would not be licensed in Tennessee based on the documents he had. But Miller licensed Bowe after having Oklahoma doctors study a recent of MRI of the fighter’s brain.

A timekeeper and boxing judge testified Miller asked the same investigator last year if Bowe would be licensed to fight in Tennessee and was told Bowe likely would not because he had brain damage.