This Gator Needs No Aid -- Loss Of Foot Can't Kill Boxer's Spirit

The Gator is not a graceful, stealthy creature. Nor is the Gator sure-footed on land. What the Gator is, is relentless, single-minded in his drive. If you want to stop the Gator, you'll have to do more than hurt him.

Craig Bodzianowski picked up the nickname ``Gator'' in high school when he had a green Izod-looking alligator tattooed on the left side of his chest. But he is more than the Gator by appellation. If you didn't know better, you would think the Gator on his chest has sunk straight through into his heart.

Thursday night in the Kingdome, six years after he was maimed in a motorcycle accident, he will fight Robert Daniels for the WBA cruiserweight championship.

Not much can stop the Gator. Cutting off his right foot didn't.

If Bodzianowski had sold the motorcycle as he had intended, the accident might never have happened. But as he said, if it had to happen to somebody, better it be him because he could handle it. Bodzianowski didn't expect the driver in front of him to make a U-turn. The next second, he was lying in the street with four compound fractures below his right knee. His foot was crushed beyond repair.

The Gator had suffered more significant losses before. When he was 18, his brother Billy died at home when a gun in the family's collection accidentally went off. At age 21, his first manager, Bill O'Connor, the man who taught Bodzianowski how to fight, committed suicide, shooting himself at his home. The motorcycle accident, which happened when he was 23, did not seem nearly as devastating to Bodzianowski.

The doctors told Bodzianowski they might be able to save his foot, but that treatment would involve three years of operations and hospital stays, and that still the foot would probably have to be amputated.

The choice, as Bodzianowski saw it, was to amputate now or amputate later.

``Adios,'' he told his doctors. ``Take it off.''

Bodzianowski, 29, never doubted he would box again. He grew up boxing on the south side of Chicago, first against his brothers in the family's dining room, later in the Golden Gloves. He was 49-5 as an amateur, and turned pro in '82. In May of '84, the same month of the accident, he won a 10-round decision over Francis Sargent.

``If they left the foot on, they told him at best he would have to walk with an aid,'' his manager, Jerry Lenza, said. ``It would have been a dead piece of meat. If they amputated, he would have 70 percent use of it, but in their own words, boxing seemed to be out of the question. Craig never believed that.''

Gator didn't stay still very long. He was doing pull-ups in his hospital bed the first day Lenza visited him. Three weeks after the accident he was out of bed, running two miles a day on crutches, and swimming three miles a day with the Tinley Park High School swim team.

Three months after getting out of the hospital he got his first prosthesis. His doctors told him to walk on it for no longer than 30 minutes a day. Bodzianowski felt so good he decided to play a 45-minute racquetball match. He wore his stump to the bone. The mishap set Bodzianowski's recovery back about six months.

``He learned to listen to the doctors,'' Lenza said.

Bodzianowski, 24-3-1 as a pro, has received more than his share of attention as a fighter with a prosthesis. One promoter went so far as to call Bodzianowski the ``Amputee from Chicago'' on a billboard.

Last year, the sports writers of Philadelphia honored Bodzianowski and California Angels pitcher Jim Abbott (who was born without a hand) as the ``most courageous athletes'' in the country.

His particular handicap has been the subject of articles in the National Enquirer and Sports Illustrated. Although it has probably helped his visibility in the business, Bodzianowski is growing a bit tired of being the one-footed-fighter story.

``It's OK with me, I guess,'' Bodzianowski said. ``I can use the attention to help others.''

What Bodzianowski loves to be is an example for others, not just those who have lost limbs, but anybody. When he's not training, he teaches kids to box at his health club on the south side, called Gator Gym. His lesson: ``I work harder than you, so you should work even harder.'' He's met several other people who have lost limbs.

``I tell them, `If you think about what if or why me or feel sorry for yourself, it's not going to make things better,' '' Bodzianowski said. ``The only thing you can do is kick ass and work.''

Bodzianowski still hikes through the woods with his dogs on hunting trips, raises labs and retrievers at his kennel and flies his Cessna 140. He still rides his motorcycle, although he said his parents don't know about it.

The tattoo that bore his nickname was Bodzianowski's way of mimicking ``the rich kids'' he went to school with. They wore LaCoste shirts; Bodzianowski had the tattoo, and cut holes in his shirts. His father Pat Bodzianowski, a tattoo artist, did all his son's tattoos, which also include a python on his right forearm, an eagle on his left forearm and the inscription BAD TO THE BONE on the inside of his lower lip.

The Gator obviously feels little pain.

Thursday night, Bodzianowski will have his first chance at a world title, a chance his manager feels he deserves even though he lost to the only ranked opponent he fought, former cruiserweight champ Alonzo Ratliff. Daniels (16-1) defeated Dwight Muhammad Qawi last November in France for the title. Both Bodzianowski and Daniels knocked out Bruce Johnson, their only common opponent, in the second round.

Bodzianowski's right foot is rooted in Seattle. A local company, Model And Instrument Development, made his latest prosthesis, aptly called the Seattle Foot.

Bodzianowski admits he has never been much of a dancer or mover in the ring, before or after the accident. He calls himself a plodder. Lenza calls him a ``digging-the-ditch kind of guy.''

``I always come to fight,'' Bodzianowski said. ``I have no idea how (Daniels) fights. He's going to get beat, though.''