Starting a comeback climb

By Ron Kantowski

Monday, June 8, 2009 | 2 a.m.

It has been nine years since Clarence “Bones” Adams was the baddest man on the planet — or at least one of them — in the super bantamweight division.

He says the World Boxing Association still owes him a title belt.

In March 2000 he upset Nestor Garza as an 8-1 underdog to win a unanimous 12-round decision at Mandalay Bay. He became a world champion, realizing the dream every kid has before he laces up the gloves for the first time.

Adams says he never got a belt to wear, although, to be truthful, I have yet to see a pair of pants with loops big enough for a boxing championship belt. But it would have been nice to have one, if for no other reason than to show his pals as proof that he did it, and to give his handlers something to hold over his head as he made his way from the dressing room to the ring.

“He didn’t bring the belt,” Adams said of Garza. When he wrote the WBA months later and said he was Bones Adams and had yet to receive his world championship belt, the WBA wrote back and said “Who is Bones Adams?”

“They didn’t even know who I was.”

When it comes to being champion, Adams gets less respect than Rodney Dangerfield, lemme tell ya’. After losing a couple of fights, one of them disputed, to Paulie Ayala and another to Guty Espadas, Adams quietly retired before launching a comeback highlighted by a victory over David Martinez for the WBC Continental Americas featherweight title. Or was it the NABO featherweight title? With boxing, it’s hard to know.

Bones got the belt, or at least a belt, that night in front of the ESPN2 cameras. The very next night, he says, two different guys fought for the same belt. Or belts. “You can look it up on BoxRec.com,” he said.

I tried, but finding the listing of the second fight proved more difficult than finding my 1998 tax return. But I’ll take Bones’ word for it. In addition to being a nice guy, he seems like an honest guy.

He’s also a flat-broke guy, which sort of explains why he will fight somebody called Alex Baba (at least at last notice) in the 10-round main event in a Sterling McPherson-promoted card at the Palms on Friday night. Baba, of Doraville, Ga., sports a record of 26-15-1, at least according to BoxRec.com. Nobody seems to know if he calls his posse the Forty Thieves, but I had to ask.

When I asked Adams, 34, how much he was making for this fight, he said “peanuts.” But if he wins and looks good doing it, he said, he could bring ESPN2 along for a bigger fight against a bigger opponent for more peanuts. That’s the plan, anyway.

He had big peanuts for a while, but then this is boxing, so now he doesn’t have much of anything. Bones hails from Henderson, Ky., just across the Ohio River from Evansville, Ind., and although he dropped out of school in the eighth grade, he says he’s pretty educated. That explains why he lost nearly $1.5 million in real estate instead of spending it on fast cars.

Adams says his manager, Greg Hanley, set him up in the door-to-door magazine selling business during his boxing exile. That may not seem like much to fall back on, but it kept the lights on in the Las Vegas home in which Bones, his wife, Millette, and his 2-year-old son, Achilles Bones Adams, have been living. M-I-L-L-E-T-T-E,” he said, spelling his wife’s name for me. “Just like Gillette, only with an M.”

Bones also has a daughter, Alexa, by a previous marriage. She’s a cheerleader at Tell City High back in Indiana, but she’s here to watch her dad fight because she was too young to appreciate what he accomplished the first time around. Bones’ daughter told me she mostly likes boxing, except when her dad gets punched in the face.

That’s an occupational hazard of the sport that would send a lot of guys into the real estate or door-to-door magazine selling business.

But Adams said it was the first fight against Ayala, or at least the judges’ decision, that robbed him of his will to go on. “I know I won the fight, but they gave it to him, and mentally that messed me up,” he said.

Instead of training to make weight, he began to take water pills.

Instead of sparring as if his life depended on it, he merely went through the motions. Instead of dreaming of another title shot, he wondered how much money a guy could make by selling magazines.

Boxing? For 3 1/2 years, there was no Bones about it.

But now he’s back, fighting for himself and fighting for his kids, but mostly, fighting for his fans. They’re the ones who brought him back, he says.

And if it turns out he doesn’t bring ESPN2 along for a bigger fight against a bigger opponent for bigger money, that’s all right, too. Bones says he has been talking to some people about setting up a gym in Malibu where he would train celebrities whose checks don’t bounce.

That’s the backup plan, anyway.