U.S. Boxer Looks for Pot of Gold : Bent Figures He Must Make His Own Breaks

INDIANAPOLIS — Michael Bent was in the basement of his family’s home in Queens, N.Y., one night in June of 1986, watching a film of his favorite fighter, Muhammad Ali, when he heard a commotion upstairs.

“I thought my father had a heart attack,” Bent said.

His father’s number was up, all right.

It was on the television screen, letting George Bent, a New York subway repairman, know that he had a winning $2-million lottery ticket in his back pocket.

Most people would get excited about something like that.

George Bent did.

“He’s a real down-to-earth person,” Michael said. “But he went crazy. So did the rest of the family and the neighbors. That night was hectic. Everything was going 1,000 m.p.h.”

Only Michael remained calm.

“I didn’t run up and down the block in my undershorts,” he said.

What he did was go back downstairs and finish watching the film of Ali. Michael had a Golden Gloves fight two nights later and wanted to make sure he did everything he could to prepare.

Fourteen months later, Bent, fighting as a heavyweight for the U.S. team in the Pan American Games this week, said the money hasn’t changed him.

“I’m still Michael Bent, amateur fighter, part-time Time magazine employee and a reserve in the Army,” he said. “I still have to take out the garbage at home.”

Bent still has to take some garbage from his teammates, too.

They named him the team captain for the Pan American Games, which means, for one thing, that he has to lead them through the streets of Indianapolis on their daily training runs.

On the first day here, he got them lost.

They haven’t let him hear the end of it, this New Yorker who gets lost in Indianapolis. That’s like a surgeon who can’t slice bologna.

“I’m the team captain,” he said, “not a navigator.”

By all accounts, Bent, 21, knows his way around the ring. He has been fighting internationally since 1984. He won bronze medals last year in the World Championships and the Goodwill Games and won the U.S. amateur championship this year.

Bent was born in London, where his father, a former amateur fighter in Jamaica, got him interested in boxing.

“I can remember when I was 4 or 5 years old in England, sitting on my father’s knee and watching Muhammad Ali and Henry Clay on television,” he said.

When Bent was 6, his family moved to New Jersey, then six months later to Cambria Heights in Queens.

“They were looking for a better life,” he said of his parents’ move to the United States.

They obviously found it.

“They won $2 million in lottery money,” he said. “Isn’t that a better life?”

Actually, Bent said, he hasn’t noticed much difference in his family.

His father bought Cadillacs for himself and his wife. But Bent said that he probably would have done that with or without the $2 million. His father has always driven Cadillacs.

One difference is that his father now has the money to dabble in one of his longtime interests, real estate, although he has not bought a new house for the family.

Let’s see, what else?

“One time, when I came home, my father was wearing more gold than I was,” Bent said.

But he said that George and his wife, a nurse, still go to work five days a week. Before he goes home, George still stops at one of the newsstands in the subway and buys a lottery ticket.

“My dad didn’t make a big deal out of the money,” Bent said. “He believes that when you work hard all your life, somebody will reward you, whether it’s God or Howard Hughes.”

Or the New York lottery.

Bent said he doesn’t expect a free ride because of his father’s money. The $2 million was George’s reward, not Michael’s.

“My dad raised my two brothers, my sisters and me to believe that each man has to make his own destiny, each man has to find his own way,” he said.

“That’s what I like about boxing. You make your own destiny in this sport. When the alarm goes off at 5 o’clock in the morning and it’s 10 degrees outside, it’s easy to say you’re not going to run that morning. But if you get up, run your miles and go to the gym, you’re a true champion.”

Bent said he also appreciates boxing for the places it has taken him.

“How many other middle-class black men like myself get to go to Moscow, get to see the Kremlin and the changing of the guard,” he asked. “How many other average Americans, period, get to do that?”

As part of a U.S. team in 1985, he also returned to England, where he said officials tried to talk him into fighting internationally for Great Britain. Having been born there, he would have been allowed to do it under International Olympic Committee rules. He also could fight for Jamaica, where both of his parents were born.

But he prefers to fight for the United States.

“This is home,” he said.

He even joined the Army reserve and recently completed eight weeks of basic training at Ft. Jackson, S.C.

“The hardest thing was running out there with a live grenade, getting in position to throw it and then having to get rid of it in four or five seconds,” he said.

Someone asked how his arm was.

“John Elway I’m not,” he said. “But I got rid of that grenade.”