Thursday, June 4, 1998 | 10:53 a.m.
He was tooling around town running a few errands when a call came in on Freddie Norwood's cellular, asking him if he could meet at the Top Rank Gym.
Agreeable, he said he could.
Moments later he walked in, the picture of splendor in a beautiful white suit that included all the sparkling accessories.
"I'm looking good right now," he said a few minutes later, although he wasn't so much evaluating his appearance as he was stating his position in boxing. After a disjointed journey that began nine years ago, the Las Vegas resident has become a world champion.
"It was a hard road, both mentally and physically," Norwood said of continually winning fights but failing to land a championship bout until April 3. "But look where I'm at. My whole life has changed."
Before his decision victory over Antonio Cermeno in Puerto Rico, Norwood held the distinction of being the best fighter in the world without a major championship. A left-handed featherweight, he cast off that albatross and raised his record to 29-0-1 by defeating Cermeno by 8, 7 and 6 points on the judges' cards.
"It was a big relief," he said of winning the WBA title, which he'll defend June 13 in Atlantic City against mandatory challenger Genaro Rios. "But I'm not done yet. I want to have all three of the (126-pound) championships and I'm going to go on national TV after I beat Rios and call the other champions out."
With the WBA agreeing to a partial alliance with the WBC, a Norwood vs. WBC champ Luisito Espinsa fight is a possibility. The IBF champ is Manuel Medina, and while the WBO is not regarded as a major organization it has a big-money champ in featherweight Naseem Hamed.
"Freddie beats them all," said his trainer, Kenny Adams. "He's going to be a hard guy to beat for quite awhile. He's good defensively, he slips well and he's got the offense."
He'll face Rios, 17-4, in a bout to be televised by ABC.
"I'm going to hurt him," Norwood said. "He's a runner, so how can he hurt me? I'm going to break him down early, in the first round. He's got nothing to keep me from tearing him apart."
With 18 wins by knockout, Norwood has taken apart an array of fighters since turning pro in 1989 after going 123-12 as an amateur. Among his victims: Vuyani Bungu, the reigning IBF junior featherweight champion who is 33-2 despite a 1992 loss to Norwood in South Africa.
"I didn't know it until I got there, but I was supposed to lose," Norwood said. "My manager at the time (Donald Curry) was setting me up and I was just supposed to be an opponent. But I knew I could beat Bungu when I saw him in the ring because I sensed the fear in his eyes."
Yet even that victory didn't catapult Norwood into the limelight. In fact, the opposite happened and fights became even harder to come by.
"No one would fight me," he said. "I always thought, 'Damn, champions are supposed to fight the best.' But I came to realize the game had changed and it was all about money. The fact that I'd whacked so many guys out was working against me."
So he was inactive for a stretch of almost two years.
"I was real frustrated," he said. "I thought I was done and I told my wife, 'Well, I'm 16-0 or 17-0 and at least I got out of the sport without anyone beating me.' But then our second daughter was born and I figured I had to get back involved."
In the key behind-the-scenes move of his career, Norwood was signed by Top Rank and has since gone on to get and win the fights it took to establish himself as a world champion.
"He always knew how to fight," Adams said. "All I did when I came on with him was to refine him a little bit, add a few things. He's a hard-working guy who's relentless in the gym."
The no-quit approach is vintage Norwood.
"After coming this far, I'm not going to fail now," he said. "Look at the situation: I've spent my whole life working to get where I am today.
"There's no way, no way at all, that I'm going to let this get away from me after all I've been through."
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