Rich Hofmann: Don't count Saad Muhammad out

HE STANDS OUTSIDE the Ridge Center, the largest homeless shelter in Philadelphia, and Matthew Saad Muhammad talks about what it is like inside, about how some of the residents recognize him, about the incessant greeting he hears: "How you doing, champ? How you doing, champ?"

"I just kind of put my head down sometimes," he said. "It's almost like I don't want people to see me. There are times when I can't believe I'm here."

For about 2 months, the Ridge Center has been Saad Muhammad's home. The WBC light-heavyweight champion from 1979-81, a beloved brawler in the Philadelphia tradition, has lost everything. He said he left the game with millions and now has nothing, the money given away, or swindled out of him, or spent on an entourage that once numbered 39 people.

Abandoned on the streets as a young child, taken in by Catholic nuns who named him Matt Franklin - for St. Matthew and for the street where they found him, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway - Saad Muhammad always believed his rise to the top of his sport would have made a great movie. Now, this.

At age 56, he insists it is not the final scene.

"I was never evicted from my place - I just got out," he said. "I went over to some friend's house and laid around and I said, 'You know what? I can't do this. I can't do this.' Then somebody said, 'Go out and fight again.' I said, 'No, man. I don't want to get messed up, my brains scattered around.' So I started thinking.

"It was very hard. My name is Matthew Saad Muhammad. I've been a big celebrity. But I needed some support. I didn't want to sleep on the streets, and I wasn't going to sleep on the streets. So this is what I did. And now I want to try to make a change for everyone around me. I want to tell people that once you fall down, you can get back up. I've done it so many times."

The Ridge Center is run and funded by Resources for Human Development, a Philadelphia-based nonprofit organization. Its monthly newspaper, "One Step Away," first told Saad Muhammad's story in a piece written by Jose Espinosa, another resident of the center.

Saad Muhammad, meeting me for the first time in a quarter-century, was dressed in a suit and a white shirt. Friends, some from his boxing days, have provided him with some pocket money. Walking into a restaurant on Broad Street, he still looks like himself - still the quick smile, the strong handshake and the abrasions on his knuckles.