As I sat close to Holyfield–Bowe, Act III, on a chilly early November evening in the arena behind Caesars Palace, I wondered: is boxing a metaphor for life? Do those fervid minutes under the glare of the lights over the squared ‘ring’ represent the deepest efforts of human beings to impose their will in their lifelong battle of win or lose, life or death? Their first two fights had been close and exciting, and both a trusting public and a cynical press had been caught up in the excitement of the rubber match, with a touch of the anticipation surrounding other notable heavyweight trilogies, the legendary Ali–Fraziers, the bitterly contesting Ali–Nortons, and the rivalries of Jersey Joe Walcott and Ezzard Charles, and Marciano’s dogged doubles against Walcott and Charles.
In fighters’ careers I see Shakespeare’s Seven Ages of Man, with Evander doing his inspired turn as Everyman struggling up out of the cradle, leaving his mark on the world in the fullness of his maturity, and then surrendering to the inevitable weaknesses of mortal flesh as his power deserts him, when he can no longer deliver stiff jabs and follow with straight right hands against his final opponent, still undefeated, the Undertaker.
The heavyweight muddle or mess, with five sanctioning bodies marching off in five different directions, contributed to the growing support for Holyfield–Bowe. Neither man held one of the gaudy but essentially meaningless belts, and yet they were by consensus the two best heavyweights atop the sorry list that passes for champions and designated challengers. In that disorganised and dispirited atmosphere, we accepted Holyfield–Bowe as a legitimate contest for bragging rights as Best Heavyweight, Vintage ’95.
And if the promotion needed an extra shot of adrenalin, it came from the somewhat rusted Iron Mike Tyson, scheduled to meet Buster Mathis, Jr, the very night of the Holyfield–Bowe festivities. Apparently (some thought, conveniently), on the Monday before the fight, Mike broke his thumb in training. Curiously, he held his first public sparring session on Tuesday, calling it quits in the third round and holding up the wounded digit as proof positive. So our poor little rich boy was out of fighting and into shopping. On the Saturday afternoon of Holyfield–Bowe, he was sighted in an expensive shop in Caesars, which was closed off to would-be customers so Mike could spend $75,000 on badly needed items for his growing and glowing circle of intimate friends. In Las Vegas, Tyson ‘sightings’ had replaced ‘O.J. and Elvis sightings’.
The only place somebody’s ‘No. 1 Contender’ would not be sighted was in the ring at the MGM Grand, where Showtime and King Vision were holding a wake while across the street, rival HBO–TVKO and Caesars were celebrating what was now being hailed, with good reason, as the ‘People’s Championship’. The heavyweight belts had finally fallen with a sickening splash into the multi-boxing commissions’ alphabet soup.
Bowe had won the first one because he had talent and strength and had worked hard enough to get down to two hundred and thirty-five. He had blown the second because he’d ballooned to 246 at the weigh-in and looked over 250 in the ring that night, trying to pull his sail-sized trunks up to hide a Santa Claus belly. Evander was his usual gym-dandy-body muscular, blue-collar worker, obediently giving his all. Old-fashioned virtue had won. Hard work and a little skill over superior skills laced with laziness.
This time, round one gave us a sense of the old, reliable Holyfield, jabbing, throwing combinations, taking a punch from a lumbering Bowe but fighting back when hit, as we’ll always remember him.
Bowe took command in the next few rounds, using his jab and his strength and scoring inside with short uppercuts. He was also scoring with body blows, some of which were obviously low but for which Bowe was warned but not penalised. There were furious exchanges, punctuated by holding and pushing, and we were close enough to hear both men already breathing hard as they went back to their corners.
Bowe was back to his good-bad habits in the fifth, outjabbing Evander – who was growing older by the minute – and missing with looping right hands that left him wide open. A younger, better Holyfield might have seized the advantage, but Bowe landed another hard right hand and then a punishing blow so low that finally referee Cortez signalled a point penalised, and gave Evander a breathing respite. We watched his face, pained and tired. Hurt and game. The many times he had stood toe to toe, eschewing self-defence, were writing the same old boxing story on his face.
But what separates champions from couldabins? The unique ability to reach down when the body and the mind seem too weary to fight on. Evander came out for the sixth and reached with a lightning left hook. ‘Big Daddy’ Bowe was down, for the first time in his life, and not only down but looking glazed, three ticks from coldcocked. The end of the Riddick Bowe Show . . .?
Somehow he was on his feet, but barely, still out of it, his mind no longer interested in defensive tactics. There for the taking. Then came the inexplicable, the mystery that will make the moment one to remember. What did competitive Evander do? Nada. Absolutely nothing. He looked at his helpless foe, almost without interest, and pawed listless left jabs at him. With more than two minutes to go!
One punch away from his third championship of the world, something had stopped in Holyfield. Something had died. The punch never came. In the Seven Ages of Fighters, ironically in round six, Evander had reached his Sixth. When he went back to his corner, with a ten to eight round and a one-point lead, the golden moment had slipped away.
Character carried him through the seventh, with Bowe recovering and the ageing Evander still trying, and in the eighth there was even a last, desperate Holyfield flurry, and Bowe still a target to be hit. But as a slowed-up and maybe ill Holyfield moved in, almost accommodatingly, he offered his chin to Bowe’s chopping right hand, and down he went, so hard it was frightening to those who knew his courage. Somehow he was back on his feet, in the Seventh Age now, a very old man as fighters go. Joe Cortez should have helped him to his corner, to regain his consciousness and consider the blessings of retirement. Instead the brave Cortez seemed to shove dazed Evander back for the coup de grâce. He allowed the luckily triumphant Bowe to land an unnecessary right-hand crusher that could have moved bravehearted but sometimes dim-witted Evander from the Seventh Age to that undefeated Undertaker that awaits us all.
As for Tyson v. Bruno, come 15 March 1996, and maybe People’s Champ Bowe against the softest money touch Rock Newman can find (Andrew Golota, etc.?), stay tuned. Big George needs money. He’s made only half as much as Holyfield’s 100 mil and counting. He’s only 47. And, hey, Ron Lyle won in Denver the other day. He’s 53, but commission doctors and the Mayo Clinic tell me he’s in even better shape than Evander Holyfield.
Take care, Evander. Three seconds away! You gave us a lot of good, honest years in a sport that could use more of them.
[1996]
Outsiders see boxing as two brawlers swinging on each other until the weaker falls.
But we keep describing boxing as a chess game with blood: was this ever more apparent than in Real Deal Evander Holyfield’s unreal defusing of Mike Tyson in the most astonishing comeback of a heavyweight champion in the history of the division?
Anyone who had seen Holyfield’s clock seem to stop in the last Riddick Bowe fight would tell you that the old warrior from Atlanta should be retired to his rolling green pastures. And if there was any doubt, there was his sorry showing in a sloppy win over the blown-up light heavy Bobby Czyz, who took a brief sabbatical from his articulations for Showtime fights.
Match the brave but used-up Evander with merciless Mike Tyson, whose iron fists had terrified giants like Frank Bruno and Bruce Seldon? Opening at 25 to 1, the only question was whether poor old Evander would suffer serious injury.
‘I hope they stop it fast,’ was the prevailing opinion going in. ‘Evander’s a decent man. A true Christian. A good father. Always gave his best. Even when he lost to Moorer and Bowe. An A for work ethic. A credit to boxing. But put this washed-up 34 year old in there with angry Mike Tyson? Puh-leeze!’
‘You really want to fly across the continent to see another three minute massacre?’ people kept asking me.
One-sided or not, it’s another page in the Mike Tyson Saga, I tried to explain. And anyway, I didn’t think it would be another one-round fiasco. Drawing on my three score years as a boxing maven, I assured my friends that Evander was no rollover, beaten before he climbed through the ropes like the gutless wonders who preceded him. My crystal ball showed a determined Evander standing his ground in round one, caught and stung in round two, then courageously and ever so reluctantly giving way in round three.
At that, I gave Holyfield one more round than did fellow boxing writers I respect: Dave Anderson of the New York Times, knowledgeable Jerry Izenberg in Jersey, Colan Hart of the London Star. Wallace Mathews, one of the best, couldn’t see the old man making it through round one. And the ‘Fight Doctor’ Ferdie Pacheco, the silver-tongued Showtime analyst, also gave it one round, concerned that Evander’s characteristic stoutness of heart would expose him to danger if the referee was not merciful and prompt.
But arriving at the MGM Grand I call the green monster, I fell in step with Emanuel Steward, the maestro of the famous Kronk Gym in Detroit, mentor of Tommy Hearns and other champions, including Holyfield for a time. Emanuel’s take on the fight was an interesting antidote to us well-meaning doubters.
‘You know why I give Evander a real shot in this fight? You know what Cus [D’Amato] used to say – boxing’s a battle of wills. It’s the power of the mind that wins the fight. The mental discipline you bring with you to the ring. I expect Evander to come in with the real confidence. He’s not afraid of Mike. He’s a far more intelligent fighter than Mike. He won’t be unfocused as he was for Czyz. He’s been wanting this challenge for five years. I wouldn’t sell him short.’
The tension building to fight time is almost unbearable. All serious heavyweight championship fights are Super Bowls-cum-World Series, intensified by the terrible possibilities of one on one. The live audience of almost 17,000 has made Evander their underdog hero. You can almost feel their neck cords tighten and the belly butterflies flutter as the crowd gives off something between a roar and a howl at the opening bell. Tyson bolts from his corner like a fighting bull from the chute, throwing fierce but wild hooks. Evander catches a few but keeps his cool. He introduces himself to Tyson with a nice one-two, and then, smothering more wild swings from the headlong attacker, scores again and again. It’s more than just a very good round for Holyfield. Just as Emanuel Steward had suggested, mind is asserting itself over matter.
When the pattern continues into the second round, with Tyson punching ponderously and often aimlessly, and the clearly unintimidated Holyfield boxing with serenity and an unmistakable sense of purpose, we know we are watching a totally different fight from the one- or two-rounder we had dreaded but had to see. When Tyson lands, Evander doesn’t swoon like Mike’s sacrificial lambs. He shakes off hard shots to body and head, actually outstrengths and pushes Mike off in the clinches. He is the thinker and the doer out there, and the erstwhile, invincible Mike Tyson is manifestly vincible, floundering and confused. Through 17,000 mouths the great beast in the arena is chanting ‘HOLEE-FIELD! HOLEE-FIELD!’ and the old battler is responding with the performance of a lifetime, a kind of anthology of the Best of Holyfield.
Already trailing on the scorecards, Tyson comes on in the fifth, with one-punch-at-a-time desperation. For a moment there’s a hush in the Holyfield crowd as their man seems to back off for the first time and Tyson puts some of the pain on him that Mike’s oafish corner had promised in the pre-fight hype. Well, we console ourselves, if this is as far as it goes, Evander’s imposed his will on Mike for almost half the way, and whatever happens now, we’ve got a heavyweight championship fight worthy of the name.
But wait, miraculously fresher and more self-contained than his younger nemesis, Evander absorbs Tyson’s aggression, regroups, advances in style, beats on Mike with speed of hand and as in a slow-motion scene in a Hollywood fight movie (The Harder They Fall), Tyson is down, dazed, bewildered and diminished. Never again the Baddest Man on the Planet he thought he was for the 15 months of the McNeeley-to-Seldon show, he struggles to his feet, an ordinary fighter now. An energised Evander moves in for the kill.
It doesn’t come in the seventh when the bloodied and tiring Tyson is unable to avoid the indignities being imposed on him, or in the eighth or ninth when a superbly disciplined Holyfield is hitting Mike with every punch in the repertoire. But by the end of the tenth Mike isn’t down, quite, but the Fat Lady is warming up her larynx. A battered Tyson barely makes it back to his corner, and in a 100 to 1 turn of events it is the mindless Mike who must be saved from serious injury as referee Mitch Halpern signals an end to his misery a few ticks into round 11.
The Tyson Express has hurtled off the tracks. In a reasonable world, Don King’s stranglehold on the heavyweights would be broken. Evander’s promoters, Don’s bitter rivals, Lou and Dino Duva, would be calling the shots. But this is the fight game. Just as our Teflon Don walked in with Frazier and walked out with his conqueror Foreman when George took Joe’s title in Jamaica, so Don came in with Tyson and somehow walked out with promotion rights to future Holyfield title defences. To the winner belongs – Don King.
At the press conference a chastened Mike Tyson, now a gracious loser, perhaps mellowed out in unexpected defeat, reaches out for the hand of his conqueror, giving praise where praise is due. With dollar signs dancing in his head, unsinkable Don King is already hyping the rematch he will now co-promote. Not exactly a tough sell. As a morality play, it’s a little over the top. Tyson, the prince of darkness vanquished by Holyfield, the prince of light. Who said ‘Nice guys finish last’? Some of the good guys are back in business, with a say on who runs the bigs. A breath of fresh air after the Seldons, Brunos, McCalls and trash-talking Team Tysons. The King is dead. Long live Evander.
This may be the best thing that’s happened to the game since Joe Louis sent the battered Max Schmeling back to Nazi Germany, or maybe since the Supreme Court exonerated Muhammad Ali and restored his right to practise his profession. In an age of cynicism, the Holyfield miracle gives hope to the lost and last. People poured out of the arena exhilarated, refreshed in spirit, bathed in optimism.
If Holyfield could come back from the fistic graveyard to dominate the dominator, we were in Dr Pangloss’s best of all possible worlds. A cripple could throw away his crutches and climb Mt Everest. Ray Charles could read Proust without using his fingers.
Evander Holyfield is the only fighter I’ve ever seen who went into the ring with a biblical inscription on his robe, ‘Philippians 4:13’, directing us to the lines: ‘I can do all things through Him, which strengthens me.’ Throughout his press conference he spoke not of left hooks and uppercuts but of the power of his Lord Jesus to inspire him in battle. ‘I prayed in training, I prayed in the dressing-room, I prayed in my corner and I even prayed during the fight,’ Evander preached. He may have done more for the Christian faith in 11 rounds than Billy Graham in 11 months of Sundays.
It was a big night for him and a big night for Him. And, at least for the moment, God seems to have replaced Don King as the Supreme Ruler of pugilistica. To Philippians 4:13, add TKO-11.
[1997]
After a series of commedia dell’arte PPV frauds contrived to devaluate the mythological power of what once had been the most coveted title of all sports – Heavyweight Champion of the World – Holyfield and Moorer finally gave back something to reassure us that all was not rotten in the shaky state of the heavies, at the end of the twentieth century.
From Sullivan and Jeffries to Dempsey and Tunney, from Louis and Marciano to Ali and Larry Holmes, the undisputed heavyweight champion walked in seven-league boots, a ruler of the universe. Presidents and kings wanted photo-ops. He played Pied Piper to children in the streets. A figure of awe, in retirement Dempsey had only to sit at the window of his Broadway restaurant to draw the tourists. Forty years into retirement, Joe Louis was still a magnet to a new generation moved to touch the flesh of a legend. And Ali? He seems to travel the globe as the adored Pope of Fistiana.
After three consecutive heavyweight title fights lost by DQ (McCall, Akinwande and the eerie Mike Tyson), fight fans bought into Holyfield–Moorer II with a sense of unease. From 1992 to 1996 Evander had lost three out of four to Bowe and Moorer, and in surrendering his title to the phlegmatic Moorer three years ago, he had fought like an old man, with a sore shoulder and a troubled heart. A lacklustre performance against the semi-retired Showtime commentator Bobby Czyz made those who admired him for his character and his piety wish he’d retire to his pastoral estate and his ministerial calling before he caught the old boxers’ disease of thickening speech and stumbling step. But Evander had risen like Lazarus to intimidate the intimidator in destroying the 20 to 1 favoured Mike Tyson.
If I remember my scriptures (and Evander is certainly doing his part in calling us back to the Book), Jesus gave brother Lazarus only one shot at rising from the grave. But Evander is beginning to make a habit of it. Behaving unlike any other heavyweight champion I’ve ever followed, just 48 hours to fight time he was holding a passionate revival meeting for some 15,000 disciples in an outdoor ballpark and giving alms to the homeless. The next night he was at Bally’s Casino watching his trainer’s young heavyweight Michael Grant quickly dismantle the falling tower of pizza, Jorge Gonzalez. And on his way to the ring the following night, it was not to the usual hard rock or rap but to Evander’s favourite gospel song – and singing it all the way down the aisle. He may lack the charisma of Ali or the gutter appeal of Tyson, but anyone who can preach the mercies of his Lord Jesus one night and live up to the ‘Warrior’ inscription on his trunks the next is his own kind of original.
In his fight with the younger ‘other champion’, Evander’s first round was cautious and thoughtful, Moorer winning it with an unsettling right to Evander’s always solid chin. Moorer had an edge in round two as well, but without establishing the nasty right jab he had going for him in their previous encounter. Still, he was winning round five, until Lazarus struck again. Right hands from Holyfield executed with destructive and serious intention sent Moorer in a backward jitter step to the canvas. He was up at nine, game, but the bell was tolling and defeat was in his eyes.
To his credit he made a fight of it, but Evander was growing stronger, with the mass chant of HOLY-FIELD, HOLY-FIELD urging him on, varying the overhead rights with spirited uppercuts that put the vulnerable southpaw down, and then down again. It was simply a question of time now, and the only surprise was that in defeat Michael Moorer was winning first-time friends with what our early nineteenth-century mentor Pierce Egan called ‘Bottom’ and sometimes ‘gluttony’. Never before identified as a fighter of great heart, Moorer lived up to the cruel, sometimes enobling demands of the sport by getting up, even at the end of the eighth when he was dazed and foggy-eyed but willing to continue an engagement that was over in the view of the ring doctor who signalled ‘Enough!’
After twenty-four minutes of spirited but increasingly one-sided action, Holyfield was two-thirds of a heavyweight champion for the second time. Now the final prize, Undisputed Champion of the World – as he had been in the early ’90s – is within his reach.
The logical move pits him against WBC Champion Lennox Lewis for all the heavyweight marbles. Bigger and younger than Evander, Lewis looked overpowering against Andrew Golota, and he seems to have a new attitude to go along with his reachy jab and big right hands. At ringside he was belittling Holyfield’s winning effort and assuring everyone within earshot that he’d take out Evander in three rounds or less. Restricting his pugnacity to the ring, Holyfield spoke with trademark dignity: ‘I’m looking forward to matching skills with Lennox.’
If logic prevails, a match in the spring of ’98 should produce an undisputed champion for the first time in half a dozen years.
But Evander’s Lord could be back for the Second Coming before logic comes to the fight game. In the fractured world of professional boxing, Don King has one more promotional shot with Holyfield, while the Duvas and Main Event are Lewis’s promoters. Lewis is a Time/Warner–HBO property while of course King is Showtime/King Vision and all that other jazz. Then there are the rival commissions with their sweet sanctioning fees to worry about. And, finally, that always sticky wicket – how much will Holyfield and Lewis, or their team of lawyers/negotiators demand? Will their overweening demands ‘ice’ the one heavyweight championship fight the fans really want to see?
It’s no secret that both the Lewis–Golota and Holyfield–Moorer were box office lemons. So whether HBO or Showtime wins the toss, it may all come down to what it always comes down to in our flawed and fascinating sport, MON-NEE . . .
Holyfield and Moorer put on a refreshing eight rounds of old-fashioned milling. But it’s going to take many more rounds of wheeling and dealing by a gaggle of crafty manipulators with egos even larger than the two willing and able combatants if we are to hear those golden words, ‘Winner and New Undisputed Champion of the World!’ ring out in ’98.
[1998]
Here’s what the Holyfield–Vaughn (Don’t Call Me Butter) Bean encounter in Atlanta reminded me of: they’re throwing a humongous welcome-home party for the big kid on the block who’s been out there in the world getting rich and famous. He’s passed the $100-million mark in purses, and he’s grabbed the headlines up north, out west, New York City, Las Vegas and now it’s Atlanta’s turn to show off its home-town boy and bask in his glory.
But once they bring out the party cake, big enough to satisfy the 41,000 celebrants in the Georgia Dome, and their favourite son, Master Holyfield, gets ready to blow out all those glittery candles, out of the blue an imposter – a roly-poly kid who somehow ootzed his way into the party – blows them out instead. And instead of getting mad, the record number of home-town fans who paid dearly to pay homage to the guest of honour go fickle on Evander and cheer the 10 to 1 underdog: ‘Way to go, Vaughn!’
Expected to last three or four rounds at most, Bean ignored all the dire press predictions of his early demise, actually took the fight to a suspiciously tiring champion in the middle rounds, and kept throwing looping right hands at Evander’s head. Even when Bean was knocked down, controversially, in round ten, being pushed into the ropes and not quite clear of them when Holyfield landed his chopping right, he proved the kind of determined survivor that fight fans admire – even the biased home-towners who sang, along with Evander, ‘Spirit of Jesus’ as he led the fanatical parade to the ring under the promotional banner, ‘The Champ Hits Home’. Except for the flawed knock-down, this was a contest wanting in passion, and Evander’s failure to deliver the fireworks set off in his Tyson fights swung his fellow Atlantans against him. When Bean had the audacity to press the action and win the 12th and final round, the 41,000 who had come to cheer the local hero had transferred their fickle loyalties to the outsider who had lost a unanimous decision but won their respect.
So the Holyfield Express hits a bump or two as it pauses at its local station on its way to its professed destination – the undisputed Heavyweight Championship of the World. A year ago, when Holyfield dispatched melted-Iron Mike Tyson a second time and fought like a true champion in dismantling the brave headcase Michael Moorer, boxing fans were ready for the logical shoot-out with Lennox Lewis to rescue the true championship from the WBA-WBC-IBF-WBO alphabet soup. It’s still the only meaningful contest in the confused and corrupted heavyweight division. It’s the fight Evander says he’s been seeking as a fitting farewell to his notable but curiously roller-coaster career. Disposing of one mandatory challenger in Bean, the WBA-IBF champion was to face another manipulated No. 1 in Henry Akinwande, the reluctant warrior who ‘fought’ Lewis like a frightened octopus.
In theory, giving the No. 1 contender the right to challenge for the title before the titleholder meets a lower-rated boxer seems the sporting thing to do. But given the cute little ways of the fight game, in practice it is cynically misused. Once a promoter-manager winks his boy up to No. 1, he’s in line for that million-dollar ‘mandatory’ paynight. No self-respecting fight fan wants an Akinwande in Holyfield’s path to the Lewis unification bout, just as no one took seriously a No. 1 IBF rating for Zeljko Mavrovic – a household name only in the Mavrovic household – without a single credible opponent on his dance card. So, instead of Lewis–Holyfield last autumn, we had Lewis-Mavrovic in a lacklustre defence of the black Brit’s gaudy belt matching Evander’s methodical but uninspired victory over the overweight but underestimated Bean.
The good news is that these phoney mandatories may now be put aside and that Evander’s ready to sign a real deal for $20 million, even if it comes from HBO, the Lewis outlet, rather than from Showtime, for whom Evander’s been beating on people ever since Teflon Don King glaumed onto him via the Tyson fights.
Lewis–Holyfield – one world, one champion – can’t come soon enough for Evander fans who begin to wonder how long the Holyfield engine can keep chugging along. We’ve said goodbye to him too many times now. When he looked spent and sick in losing to Moorer four years ago. Then, a year later, when he had Riddick Bowe ready to go, stood there admiring his handiwork and a round or two later, went down so hard we thought he’d never get up. We said goodbye to Evander that night again. Thank you, Mr Holyfield, you’ve been a credit to the game, but now go home and enjoy those multimillion-dollar purses. Enjoy your life and take care of all those kids in and out of wedlock. The slow dance with Bobby Czyz in the Garden two years ago confirmed our conclusion that Evander should be put out to pasture.
But Evander the Bible student took a page from Lazarus when he shocked the world with his total domination of Tyson. And he still fought with disciplined passion in avenging his loss to Moorer. But in rising again, Lazarus didn’t have to take all that head-thumping Evander’s taken from Bert Cooper and George Foreman, from Bowe, Ray Mercer and Moorer.
A workhorse for conditioning, Evander has been able to surprise us in the sunset of a career that has tied him with the legendary Ali as the only heavyweight to win the title three times. But as we noted in our requiem for Roberto Duran, ‘Good Night Sweet Princes’, there comes the night in the life of every great fighter when he’s breathing hard after four rounds, when his timing is off and he’s sucking up punishment that will haunt him in later years.
Who wants to see that happen to Evander, who’s had his problems outside the ring but has been an exemplary practitioner of the cruel science inside the ropes?
As that feisty little referee in Las Vegas says, c’mon Evander, if you must face Lewis, before another year slips away, and time further erodes the engine, ‘Let’s get it on!’
[1999]
P.S. Well, they got it on, in Madison Square Garden, when the won’t-quit Evander was 37 in 1999. Lewis was the clear winner, but Evander was gifted with a sentimental draw. The rematch left no doubt as to Lewis’s superiority, and this time the judges had it right. Evander was ageing fast, but in his warped mirror he was still a fistic Dorian Grey. His jaws were singing the old blues, ‘Oh, Lawdy, you been a grand old wagon but baby now you done broke down.’ He was hitting 40 now, with enough money to live on as country squire on his expensive estate outside Atlanta. But the conqueror of Larry Holmes, George Foreman and Mike Tyson trudged on. After three lacklustre fights with the king of lacklustre, John Ruiz, he was outfoxed decisively by Chris Byrd, knocked out by old James Toney and lucky to get a draw with boring journeyman Larry Donald. The Real Deal of the ’80s and the ’90s, one of the last of the true heavyweight champions, keeps coming up with no cards to play but refuses to leave the table. When the New York State Athletic Commission withdraws his licence to box, for his own protection, the final humiliation in a sport he dominated 20 years ago, instead of departing in dignity to that long-overdue retirement, Holyfield contests the decision and insists he’ll go on fighting in other states. He’s tied Ali’s record as Champion of the World three times, but stubborn as ever in his fistic senility, he still dreams of a fourth. His speech is slurring, he’s forty-four years old and his last three fights have been painful embarassments. If only he had hung ’em up after destroying Mike Tyson, what a legend this gritty old man would be, instead of winding up like too many other roundheels. For the sake of the sport of boxing, and for the sake of the grand old warrior you were, old gander Evander, go home. For God’s sake, go home.
[2005]