Tennessee officials ordered to reconsider Bowe application

But Bowe’s manager isn’t ready to sign anything yet, not even after a Davidson County judge Tuesday ordered Tennessee officials to reconsider Bowe’s application for a boxing license.

“All we can do now is wait and see what they do,” Adams said. “It makes more sense to go ahead based on everything that they grant a license. If not, if they want to pick a doctor, we’ll go. … That’s all we’ve ever asked from the beginning is to treat us fairly.”

State officials had cited the testimony of four doctors in a February 2000 sentencing hearing and a federal judge’s ruling that Bowe had brain damage as the reason for denying him a license last October. They also argued that Bowe had to prove his physical fitness to box in Tennessee.

“The Court concludes that he has carried that burden,” Chancellor Ellen Hobbs Lyle wrote. “The doctors’ reports Mr. Bowe submitted opine that he is fit to box in Tennessee, and the reports contain the opinion of a physician that the (2000) medical testimony is not a proper basis for establishing Mr. Bowe is unfit.”

She gave state officials 30 days to either study medical records Bowe submitted last year, have their own doctor examine the boxer or adopt the opinion of Bowe’s doctor that recent tests outweigh the opinions of doctors who testified in 2000.

But this likely isn’t the end of the legal wrangling.

“Together with the office of the attorney general, we are reviewing the Court’s order and considering our legal options,” Kelly Brockman said in a statement for the state department that handles Tennessee’s boxing program.

Bowe’s legal team in Tennessee will be ready if the state appeals Lyle’s decision.

“They’ll have another fight on their hands,” attorney Derek Crownover said.

Bowe, 37, is trying to revive his boxing career since his release from prison last spring after serving an 18-month sentence for kidnapping his then-wife and five children. He has boxed twice since, in Oklahoma last fall and California on April 7.

On Oct. 27, 2004, he applied for a Tennessee license but was rejected a day later. State officials also dismissed his appeal, and he filed a lawsuit seeking relief.

Lyle heard nearly four hours of testimony last Thursday and closing arguments on Friday — all chronicled by a film crew making a documentary on Bowe — before considering the case over the weekend.

She wrote that the doctors in 2000 agreed that Bowe had brain damage because of boxing. But she said those same doctors disagreed about how much damage the boxer had suffered, exactly what type of damage he had and whether it was treatable.

None of the doctors addressed the issue of Bowe’s fitness to box.

“The testimony is not alone a competent basis on which to deny the license because the physicians did not address the effect of the brain condition on Mr. Bowe’s fitness to box,” Lyle wrote.

Bowe currently does not have a fight scheduled, but Adams said he is trying to line the boxer up for a fight every two to three weeks to help Bowe work himself into shape with his eventual goal a title bout. If Tennessee grants a license, Adams said he would like Bowe to fight in Nashville in June and in Memphis in July.

“Tennessee can be a hero. If they find something wrong with Bowe, prove there’s something wrong with Bowe, they’re finding stuff nobody else can find, we’ll quit,” Adams said. “If something’s wrong with Bowe, we don’t want to fight.”