Juckett: At the St. Regis, we walked down into the lobby and there were some really high-end boutiques in that hotel. It’s right on Lexington in Midtown. He probably picked out a couple thousand dollars, considering the price points of the clothes that were in this place, couple thousand dollars worth of items. And he had had a clerk helping him for a good 30 minutes, and I’m just kinda standing by, watching him shop. And finally it gets to the point where we get to the counter, it’s time to check out, and there’s quiet for a second, and Ike turns to me and he says, “Pay for this.” And I said, “Well, Ike, frankly I don’t have enough money to pay for this right now.” And he said, “Well, call Cedric.” So here I am at this boutique with Ike and the clerk and I’m on a cell phone and I’m telling this to Cedric and Cedric was like, “Are you nuts? Tell him to spend his own money on it.” But long story short is we wasted this poor clerk’s time and, I guess, everybody’s time, because we ended up just leaving the place empty-handed. It was kind of an awkward, embarrassing situation.

Around this same time, Ibeabuchi had a memorably uncomfortable appearance as a guest in the ESPN2 Friday Night Fights studio, and Juckett told me that, in what seems to have been typical Ibeabuchi fashion, Ike tried to back out of his trip to Bristol, Connecticut at the last minute, only to have Juckett calmly talk him into getting into the car and honoring his commitment. But those stories don’t compare to this one from HBO executive Lou DiBella.

DiBella: I had a very famous — well, sorta famous in the industry, among insiders and people who knew, but I had a sorta famous lunch with Ike and Cedric and other employees of Cedric, and we were at a restaurant in Manhattan. And I got along well with Ike back then. But he was a very untrusting kind of cat. He was very paranoid. We’re having a lunch, and we’re talking about his future. Da-da-da-da, and it’s going pretty well. You know, he’s a little bit sort of sullen. But he’s conversing, and it’s going really well. And then we start asking, talking about, we get off topic on boxing and more topic on life. So I’m asking him, “What it was like when you were growing up?” normal questions. And the answers were not, like, effusive, you know what I mean? They were sort of short. And then I said, “Well, where are you living now?” And then he picks up a steak knife, like literally, into his hand, like you might thrust it into someone. And he plunges it into the table. And the knife is sticking out of the table. And he, like, looks me in the eye and he goes, “Why do you want to know where I live?” And I’m like, “Dude, Ike, I don’t give a fuck where you live. I’m not asking for your address. I was just making conversation. The same way you might ask me where I live. And then I would tell you the town I live in. I was just sort of curious where you were taking up residence these days. But I don’t need to know.” And I was like, “And please do me a favor: If you have to emphasize anything, don’t pick up a knife again in my presence. Don’t do that, please.” The damn knife was sticking out of the table. And Cedric just continued eating into his food like this was a normal occurrence.

What happened on June 12, 1999, was definitely not a normal occurrence, by anyone’s standards. Ibeabuchi’s first arrest of the year was initially swept under the rug, but I did some digging 18 years ago and found out about an incident at Dallas-Ft. Worth Airport that saw Ibeabuchi charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, and criminal mischief. I saw a copy of the report filed by the DFW Airport Department of Public Safety, and it explained that Ibeabuchi was denied boarding onto an overbooked plane but insisted, “You know what, I am going on the airplane anyway. You will have to stop me.” When one of the two officers on the scene told Ibeabuchi he was under arrest for disorderly conduct, he ran down the jet-way, pushing passengers aside. More officers were called in, and pepper spray was used to finally subdue him. Then when Ibeabuchi was thrown into a police car, the report stated that he “kicked out the door windshield.” But incidents like this didn’t see the light of day, at least not initially. There was money to be made on Ike Ibeabuchi. The problem was, after the Byrd win, he kept refusing to sign on the dotted line and make some of that money. Here’s Eric Bottjer on some summer 1999 negotiations.

Bottjer: Ike was offered a million dollars to fight Michael Grant at one point. And Grant, it’s funny, I was talking to Craig Hamilton, who was Grant’s manager, my friend, about this recently, Grant had actually accepted the fight. It’s funny, Craig, this week, told me, in hindsight, “I’m glad Ike went away because that wouldn’t have been a good fight for us.” Ike was offered a million dollars, of course we were thrilled, because we thought he was going to win the fight and that’s a lot of money. And Ike demanded 10 million.

Around the same time, Ibeabuchi had a reported $700,000 offer for what would have been an easy win on HBO over chinny Jeremy Williams, but he wasn’t interested. Kushner turned to a variety of people to intercede, including HBO’s Larry Merchant.

Merchant: I got a call from Cedric Kushner, asking me if I would talk to him, as a neutral party who had extolled him in his appearances against Tua and Byrd. And I did speak to him. And I tried to explain to him what this could do for his career. And he went into a kind of a semi-rant that he had already proven he was the best heavyweight in the world, and that they should give him the titles, and that this was some kind of scheme in that he wasn’t getting what he should have gotten. That’s the sense of what he said to me. And it was at that point that I realized that in addition to whatever other issues he had outside the ring, that he didn’t understand how the system worked.

Here’s Lou DiBella on the struggle to get Ibeabuchi back in the ring and back on the air at HBO to build on his momentum.

DiBella: He was already sort of like, “I am the champ, I’m the king.” His ego was getting the better of him, and he didn’t want to hear of any intermediate steps, he wanted to hear about, “When am I going to make the big money? When am I fighting for the title?” Basically, he was on the cusp, but he was sort of one fight away. And he elected not to fight at all, and frankly, if I recall, that’s where his troubles started. But that was also not very rational and it was a poor decision. People weren’t, like, guys with titles back then, or the champions, no one was running and saying, “I want Ike Ibeabuchi.” Who the fuck wanted that? No one wanted that fuckin’ guy. It was like, “I don’t want Ike Ibeabuchi! This guy’s a fuckin’ animal. What do I need him for?” You had to build it to where Ike Ibeabuchi against someone was going to be a big-money fight. And that was sort of like, we thought, the last step, the last moment, let’s get one more nationally televised big win, let’s continue to build the big myth of Ike Ibeabuchi. And at that point, he only wanted to hear about big money, he was having issues with Cedric at the time over money. He thumbed his nose at that particular show. And then it wasn’t too long after that that he was in trouble.