
Strauss will take any fight, anywhere, at any weight. Strauss got $500 more than the scheduled bum was supposed to receive and, under another of his aliases, got knocked out in the third round. "You? You just got knocked out!" said the promoter. "I can change my trunks and fight as somebody else." He has been KO'd by punches to the liver and the solar plexus, and has been pounded in the kidneys to the point of urinating blood. He has also had his jaw broken once, ribs three times and his eardrums "numerous" times. Strauss has never broken his nose-but on nine or 10 occasions someone else has done it for him. "I deserve to get knocked out for all the fun I've had," he says. From that moment on, Strauss knew he could do what he loved to do-box-and not be the least bit talented at it. When he came to, he realized he had only a slight headache and-eureka!-his life's work was decided. At 16, he was hit in the head with a shot put. "I was born to be an opponent," says Strauss, and he might be right. He has spent his whole life trying to become, in his proud words, "the greatest opponent in boxing history." He has been tucked in for the night by the best: Harry Arroyo, Bobby Czyz, Mike McCallum and Marlon Starling. He's the one opponent who doesn't live the lie. Who knows more than an opponent about what it's like to sell your body? For a time, two Manhattan prostitutes took him in, and Cowans has had an affinity for prostitutes ever since. By the time he was 14, he was using PCP and shoplifting at grocery stores, stuffing hams and cheeses in the torn lining of his oversized coat. And the guy would look in your eye and know you was serious," Cowans says. "You'd stick the barrel in the guy's side. He made the most of his chances with the gang's one handgun, robbing people in New Brunswick's lunchtime crowds. "You jab a guy and he doesn't even know his face has been sliced." The straight razor is a clever instrument, Cowans says. As a gang member in New Brunswick, N.J., he began carrying a straight razor in his fist between his thumb and forefinger. "I did that on numerous occasions-because there's nothing like having some money."īut even the money wasn't enough. Cowans would receive his purse and Johnson the extras. "And I would think to myself, Why not? Hell, if I beat the guy they ain't gonna give me the fight anyway." It is true that Cowans once went 30 decisions without winning. I'm facing reality here.' It depressed me." I said to myself, 'Man, I got to pay rent, keep the lights on.
MATT FARRAGO CRACK
This was especially true during a time when Cowans was addicted to crack and going through money faster than he could earn it. Cowans turned that one down, but he has had dozens of paydays for fights that neither he nor anyone else involved in the matchmaking ever expected him to win. "The more fights I lost, the more fights I got," he says.Ī promoter, he says, once offered him $1,000 to fight a guy and another $1,500 not to beat him. Since Wickwar's daunting achievement is Cowans's primary goal, he has counted only the fights themselves, not wins and losses. He says he fought 46 times in 1986 and almost that many times over the next two years. Cowans just turned 26, and he figures he already has 144 fights. Len Wickwar, who fought from 1928 to '47, is credited with 463 fights.
MATT FARRAGO PRO
Cowans wants "to have more fights than any pro fighter in the history of boxing," though he has a long way to go.
