Rhode Island- Vinny Paz struts into the charity fundraiser for the special olympics at the Rhode Island Convention Center in a slick, gray pinstripe suit, with gold hoop earrings in his ears. He wears a big silver cross around his neck and an outrageously oversize watch on his arm. Fans greet him immediately, forming a circle, asking for autographs and a photo with Rhode Island's own, the skinny kid from Cranston who became a five-time world-boxing champion.

Paz flashes a big grin and begins signing. It seems like the old days, when he was the first prince of Providence, before Buddy Cianci beautified the capital and before Peter Manfredo Jr. became the toast of the town. Paz was the drawing card of the nation's smallest state, the center of attention far and wide.

It's been nearly two years since Paz, now 42, won his fifth and last fight, and while the adulation endures, it masks a bout with perhaps his greatest foe: himself. Last fall, Paz declared personal bankruptcy, citing $2.2 million in debts. The creditors include the federal government, the State of Rhode Island, credit-card companies, two Las Vegas casinos, and some of his closest friends.

Paz says he has no regrets.

"What can you do?" he says. "That was then, this is now - you know what I mean? I don't cry about shit. You can't. Life goes on, no matter what."

The Chapter 7-bankruptcy papers show Paz's assets totaling $383,000, most of it the value of his ranch house in Warwick. His earnings for the year to that point were $12,000. "That's one of my biggest problems," he says. "I don't give a fuck about money."

For 21 years the Pazmanian Devil boxed, and he got rich from it. He grossed about $6 million (about 40 percent went to his promoter and trainer). It was money that came in such magnificent bunches it seemed almost unreal. And he spent it in epic fashion, on girls, booze, casino gambling, and cherished friends whom he took along for the ride.

It's nothing novel, the rise and fall of boxers - whether consumed by their own success and excess, or victimized by others who crash the party and leave. But Paz seemed to recognize all along that he was on one super-size ride, and it didn't matter too much how it ended. "If I could've taken every penny he earned," says his long-time promoter, Jimmy Burchfield Sr., "he would never have to work another day in his life. You know, he lived to have a good time, and to make his friends happy. It was reckless. It was just as reckless as he fought in the ring."

Vincent Edward Pazienza first put on gloves at age six. At 14, he saw the movie Rocky and decided that boxing would be his ambition. He was a bull in the ring, getting bloodied but remaining unbowed. The 5' 8" Paz amassed a 50-10 record and won titles in three weight classes, from 135 to 168 pounds. He fought some of the best boxers of the day, including Roberto Duran, Joe Frazier Jr., Hector Camacho, and Roy Jones Jr.

Greg Vartanian was 20 - six years older than Paz - when he became Paz's first sparring partner, but he remembers how the "skinny little kid" would persevere. Within a few years, Paz was a big local draw. "He was like a superstar. Nobody could touch him," recalls Vartanian. The young right-handed pug quickly rose through the ranks, winning the national amateurs in 1981, going pro in 1983, and bagging his first title four years later. The stout-hearted slugger who refused to lose went on to fight in Atlantic City, Vegas, Puerto Rico, London, and Milan, endearing himself to the masses.

At Paz's peak, from the late 1980s through the early 1990s, he was like a sports franchise in a state that had no professional teams. "He was probably the hottest person in Rhode Island," says Burchfield.

Out of the ring, Paz haunted the casinos and the strip clubs, soaking up the booze and the broads.

Tyler Faith is a porn star in Los Angeles who dated Paz for three years. She met him in 1996, when she was a 21-year-old dancer at the Paradise Club, in Vegas, and she was persuaded by his persistence to go on a date. Faith says she and Paz found that they had much in common, including a fiendish passion for sex. "I totally grew up with him," says Faith, who was briefly engaged to Paz. "He totally opened my eyes to so many things. He took me to London. He totally showed me so many things."

The relationship ended, Faith says, because Paz was seeing a lot of other women, and she couldn't handle it, even though she had approved the liberal arrangement from the beginning. She also had problems with Paz's gambling. As Paz racked up the wins and the purses, the Vegas casinos would fly them out on weekends and put them in five-star hotels. It was all on the house, of course.

And Paz would repay the favor in a way, playing blackjack for hours. The card playing went on so long, Faith says, that sometimes she'd fall asleep at the table. Paz would bring her a pillow. It was like riding a roller coaster. "I'd see him lose $200,000 in an hour - that would make me physically ill," she says. "He did win a lot. I understand the rush. You know you can win."

Every now and then when he was losing, Faith would intervene: "I would try to talk to him, like in political ways - 'Vinny, maybe you should slow down, take a break, take a rest for a while,' " she recalls. "He never listened to me that much."

Paz remembers his first big score, his introduction to the flashy temptation of the casino. It was in June 1987, and he had just beaten Greg Haugen in a 15-round decision for his first world title. At the Golden Nugget, in Atlantic City, he put the girl he was with to bed at around midnight, and with $500 in his pocket he went downstairs to the blackjack table.

"I hit for $65,000," Paz recalls. "That ruined me. That was it."

Paz did not deal in small numbers. He bet big, routinely $10,000 a hand. In 2002 he was in the high rollers' room at Foxwoods with former Miami Dolphins quarterback Dan Marino. Marino, a very rich man, was excitedly playing with $25 chips.

"And I'm looking at him, and I'm thinking, 'What the fuck is wrong with this picture?' " Paz says. "I swear to God, that's all I thought to myself: 'What the fuck is the matter with me?' "

Of Paz's debts, $290,171 is to the Mirage Casino Hotel and MGM Grand, in Las Vegas. He also owes $463,179 in federal income taxes, $145,264 in state income taxes, and $145,053 in personal loans, including to Burchfield, his trainer, and the father of his current girlfriend, 22-year-old Holly Dolly Lopes. The rest is an assortment of bills and other debts.

The breaking point came last year, when he lost $900,000 in a bad stock deal.

Burchfield says Paz made mistakes, but adds that the boxer also spent thousands of dollars answering mail, sending autographed pictures, and visiting children in hospitals. "He tried to manage his money several times, and it just seems unfortunate where it's never worked out," Burchfield says. "It seems every time Vinny had to do that, it's backfired on him."

Many people run up heavy debts. There's a particular irony, though, in the almost ritualistic rise and fall of those boxers - like Leon Spinks, who knocked out Muhammad Ali in a stunner for the heavyweight crown in 1978 and who is now a janitor at a YMCA in Nebraska. These guys claw their way to success and then lose it all.

Paz has no intention of following in Spinks's footsteps, which appeared to be one reason he attended the fundraiser at the convention center. He stays long after other headliners have left, relaxing and happily chatting about his fighting days, women, playing high-school football, and anything else that comes up.

Invariably, people ask him what he'll do next. Most seem to know about the bankruptcy and are curious about what kind of comeback the champ has planned.

He tells them there's a movie in the works about his life - the script has been written, and Paz says it's in the hands of a producer of the NBC reality-boxing show The Contender. A book proposal, he says, is also being shopped around. He mentions the possibility of acting and a motivational-speaking tour.

"Where you doing this at?" asks Vartanian of the speaking gig.

"Well, I'm not doing that now," Paz answers.

"Christ, you should have done that right after your career ended. Then again, you had all those girls to take care of."

Paz thinks about that one. "The more girls you got, the more problems you got," he says with a devilish smile. "And I got a lot of problems."

With the charity event concluded, it's time to party. After all, it's Friday night and Paz isn't nattily dressed just for philanthropy's sake. The first stop is Houlihan's Tavern on the River, a waterfront watering hole in East Providence.

Tama Girard, a local musician who credits Paz with helping him score the production of a soundtrack for a movie that's being filmed locally, is buying the drinks. (Paz's money problems notwithstanding, he gets through his daily expenses through some product endorsements and by working as a TV sports commentator.) Girard knows what Paz wants: "Bacardi, Malibu [coconut-flavored rum], and Diet Coke," he says triumphantly, "and after three drinks, it's Bacardi and Malibu."

Paz talks more about his plans. He's excited, and he's convinced that things will work out just fine. He sees Mark Wahlberg in the lead role in his movie, or Colin Farrell - or maybe Joe Pesci, whom he met at a fundraiser at Mohegan Sun about six months ago.

How would it compare with other boxing classics, such as Raging Bull or the Rocky flicks? "I think mine's better than all of them put together," Paz says. He's being earnest, not cocky. "It's reality. It's the true story of a man's will to overcome humongous odds. And he didn't listen. He did what he wanted to do. And because of that, I ended up fighting again, and I won three more world titles."

The reference is to a November 1991 car accident, which took place when a car cut off a vehicle being driven by a friend of Paz's - Paz was in the passenger's seat - on Post Road in Warwick. Their car skidded across the road and was rammed by another vehicle. Paz suffered two broken vertebrae in his neck. Doctors told him he was lucky to still be able to walk. His fighting days, they said, were over.

Paz's trainer Tony Cipolla was in the room when the doctors delivered the news. Two tears ran down Paz's cheeks. "He says, 'Fuck you, doc. You don't know what kind of guy I am,' " Cipolla recalls. " 'I'll be back in the ring again.' "

A picture on Paz's Web site shows him training with a metal halo strapped to his head. Through determination and drive, Paz fought for nearly 12 more years and won 19 bouts, including three more titles.

If Paz can return from a broken neck, his friends say, he can certainly lick his financial woes. "You fall down, you get up, and you start walking again," Cipolla says. "That's the way he looks at life. Once he gets up, he'll be running again."

Paz's friends wonder: if he can make big money again, will he be able to hold on to it? "You think you can get the tables, because you've beaten the broken neck and you've beaten just about everything," says Paz's promoter Burchfield, a reformed gambler himself. He calls Paz's gambling habit "the biggest downfall in his entire life."

In December, Paz fulfilled the one-year suspension of his driver's license for refusing to take a breathalyzer test after getting pulled over by Warwick police on his birthday in 2004. It was the second time in five years that he had been stopped on suspicion of drunk driving. Tonight, at least, Girard is driving him around town.

The music is pulsing at Pearl, a trendy Providence nightclub with blue and white strobe lights. Paz is at the bar, buying a round for his friends and for a blonde with bulging breasts wholly disproportionate to her rail-thin frame. "Even if you file for bankruptcy, don't mean you're totally broke," he says with a gleam in his eye as he passes out the drinks.

Paz won't easily give up this scene, and he's confident he won't have to. For one, he says, he won't gamble as he used to. The bankruptcy has taught him a bit of a lesson: "I can't be as crazy as I was." Also, his lawyer says Paz is on the hook for only $9700 in federal income taxes, because he filed days before a stricter bankruptcy law went into effect.

Burchfield agrees that Paz has changed: "I think he's hit his high, he's hit his low, and I think he realizes he needs to stop. He needs to stop for Vinny Paz."

Paz refuses to consider the possibility that his plans may not pan out. And he can always talk - whether as a fight commentator or on the inspirational-speaking circuit. "I always make money, I'm always going to make money," he says. "Always. I always will."

Those who have followed Paz most closely are confident in his prediction.

"I know he's going to be all right, because that's what champions are made of," Cipolla says. "They always come back better than before."