13

THE SPLINTERING OF THE HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE BEGAN WHEN THE WBC stripped Leon of his belt in 1978, and it hadn’t let up since. Cynics suspected payoffs. Fans blamed the promoters, particularly Don King, the cunning matchmaker with the gravity-defying hairdo, who seemed to double his fortune—legitimately or not—every time a title bout was signed. When Michael beat Holmes in September 1985, boxing had three champions: one each for the WBC, WBA, and IBF. Writing in the New York Times, Dave Anderson lamented, “The heavyweight division crumbled like crackers into alphabet soup.”

Anderson now says, “That’s the beauty and the disgrace of boxing—you had three champions. The public may favor one of them, but the other two guys can say, ‘Well, but I’m the champion.’ Of course, they’re not. There should be only one champion. That’s what boxing was for years, going back to Jack Johnson and John L. Sullivan. But all of these alphabet organizations emerged because of television. There were three or four networks and each one could claim they had a championship fight.”

In the eyes of the public, Michael was the legitimate titleholder—he’d beaten the lineal and most established champion, Larry Holmes. Plus, it was nearly impossible to follow the paths of the other belts.

Here’s a recap.

The WBC belt: After the WBC stripped Leon for fighting Ali, the championship went to Norton. In his first defense Norton lost it in a barnburner to Holmes. Holmes then defended the belt sixteen times before dumping it and accepting recognition by the newly formed IBF. (He became the IBF’s first heavyweight champion and defended that belt three times before losing it to Michael.) Tim Witherspoon beat Greg Page for Holmes’s vacated WBC championship, but promptly lost it to Pinklon Thomas.

The WBA belt: Ali had retired and vacated the title after taking it from Leon in New Orleans. John Tate won the vacated belt by beating Gerrie Coetzee but lost it in his first defense to Mike Weaver, who lost it in his third defense to Michael Dokes, who lost it in his second defense to Gerrie Coetzee, who lost it in his first defense to Greg Page, who lost it in his first defense to Tony Tubbs. Few people realized it—how could they?—but in October 1985, Tony Tubbs was the WBA heavyweight champion.

So it stands to reason that when Don King showed up at Seth Abraham’s Greenwich Village apartment that October to peddle a Pinklon Thomas–Trevor Berbick WBC title fight, the HBO Sports president had zero interest.

But King and Abraham had aired many fights together, and King wasn’t about to give up. He returned to Abraham’s apartment the following night to pitch the same fight. This time instead of dismissing the bout, Abraham used it as a springboard to a bigger idea.

“[Don and I] were watching the World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City Royals,” Abraham recalls. “I said to Don, ‘So, let me ask you a question. Seven games, World Series, undisputed baseball champion. Could we use this Thomas-Berbick fight as the first bout in a heavyweight world series?’

“Don stayed until about 2:30 in the morning; the game was long over. We sketched out the seven fights we’d need to unify the three different titles. I said to Don, ‘Come back and tell me the matchups and the license fees.’ If Don came back and said seven fights at $250 million, obviously it’s a nonstarter. But Don came back about a month later and the number wasn’t on Mars. It was on Earth. It was high, but it wasn’t out of the galaxy.”

The number was $20 million. And the schedule was relatively straightforward. The tournament would start with three title fights, one each for the WBC, the IBF, and the WBA. After that the WBC and the IBF champions would fight mandatory title defenses. Then the WBA champ would fight the WBC champ, and the winner of that bout would fight the IBF champ.

Negotiations between the fighters and their promoters began on December 24, 1985, at HBO’s offices in New York and wrapped up in mid-January in Atlanta. The talks may have gone more quickly if Butch Lewis had been sold on the idea that the tournament was in Michael’s best interest. But since Lewis represented the fighter generally considered the “true” champion, he’d had the luxury of waiting until he was all but certain Michael would be the last man standing.

The series kicked off on March 22, 1986, at the Riviera in Las Vegas. In the opener Trevor Berbick took the WBC title from Pinklon Thomas in a twelve-round unanimous decision.

Michael was up next. He’d be defending the IBF title on April 19. The bout? A rematch with the ex-champion who’d retired from the sport seven months earlier with his head held high and his foot planted defiantly in his mouth.

Larry Holmes had held the title from 1978 to 1985, but he’d never captured the public’s imagination in the same way that Muhammad Ali or Joe Louis had.

According to Carlo Rotella, author of Cut Time: An Education at the Fights, “Holmes fought his way up through the deepest, most dangerous heavyweight division of all time. He stood for pretty much every virtue that mattered to the working class in the first half of the twentieth century: craft, will, resilience, ability to perform at a high technical level for a long time, to endure suffering, to beat the best. The money was good; the adulation was good. But there was always, ‘You’re not Muhammad Ali.’ He was always second fiddle.”

Perhaps that’s why Holmes had lashed out at the fighter whose win streak he had chased and missed. Whatever the reason, his diatribe against Marciano and Marciano’s family didn’t help his cause. He’d sounded petty, angry, and bitter, and although he had tried his best to undo the damage, his apology didn’t sway the court of public opinion.

New York Times sportswriter Dave Anderson says, “I always found Larry Holmes to be a terrific guy in a quiet setting. But when you gave him a microphone in a press conference, you never knew what he was going to say. He realized he said the wrong thing about Marciano the next day, but it was too late. And it’s a shame because it tarnished him at the time.”

Holmes issued an apology in his 1998 autobiography, Larry Holmes: Against the Odds. “[I said things] to Peter Marciano and Rocky’s kids that were uncalled for and simply wrong. Somewhere in there I must have realized I’d gone too far because in my fashion I tried to apologize. I said, ‘Rocky was one of the greatest fighters of all time. For anybody to accomplish forty-nine victories, even if they were all bums, is some kind of record. If I didn’t think he was a great fighter, his pictures wouldn’t be on the walls of my motel near Easton.’ But, of course, it was too little, too late. As they say, ‘The insult is halfway around the world before the apology gets its boots on.’”

The Spinks-Holmes rematch was scheduled to take place in Las Vegas, and Holmes had few allies left. He sent a letter to Bob Lee, president of the IBF, appealing to Lee’s sense of fair play. In the note he listed the judges that he felt were off-limits. According to Holmes, Lee sent back a reply that said Holmes had been treated fairly the first time around and would be treated the same way again.

That wasn’t enough for the fuming ex-champion. A week before the fight, Holmes lifted his moratorium on interviews and targeted the very officials who held his future in their scorecard-wielding hands. He told the press he didn’t trust the Nevada judges, that they were “incompetent” and “must have been drunk” when they scored the first Spinks fight.

Just when Holmes had been trying to endear himself to the press and the public, he dug himself a bigger hole than the one he’d put himself in earlier.

April 19, 1986. When ring announcer Chuck Hull introduced Larry Holmes to the full house at the Hilton, the ex-champion was hit with boos and catcalls. Judging by the steely look in his eye, Holmes was focusing on settling his scores with Michael, the Vegas judges, and a legion of sportswriters he felt had never warmed up to him.

Following tradition, the champion, Michael Spinks, was introduced last.

“And in the blue corner,” Hull proclaimed, “now fighting out of Wilmington, Delaware, weighing 205 pounds, he is undefeated in his professional career, twenty-eight wins, no defeats, nineteen knockouts. He is a former undisputed light-heavyweight champion of the world, the current IBF champion of the world: Michael Spinks.”

The crowd of 8,300 cheered as Michael raised his gloves in response. It was no accident that Michael’s sculpted body seemed as solid as the ring posts; Mackie Shilstone had put him on a training regimen even more intense than the one he’d designed for the first Holmes fight. This time around Michael had trained in bursts. He’d broken up 440-, 880-, and 1,320-meter runs with one-minute breaks to simulate the pattern of a fifteen-round fight. He worked out with weighted gloves to replicate late-round fatigue. And he leapt sideways on and off plyometric boxes to strengthen his legs (while simulating his signature lateral boxing style).

Despite Michael’s conditioning and his championship status, he was still the underdog against Holmes—just as Leon had been when defending his title against Ali in New Orleans.

Before the fight HBO commentators Barry Tompkins, Larry Merchant, and Sugar Ray Leonard put the onus of the match on the big man, wondering whether he’d finally pull the trigger on his powerful right hand.

Tompkins said, “So, we’ll watch the right hand of Larry Holmes. He didn’t throw it in the first round of the last fight.”

“What we have to see here is if Larry Holmes is going to be the aggressive fighter he says he’s going to be and sustain the pace that that requires,” Merchant added.

Leonard predicted, “I would be surprised if Larry doesn’t jump on Michael right in the first round.”

As Leonard forecast, Holmes went right at Michael as soon as the bell clanged. He punched, bullied, and manhandled the smaller man. Then, shortly into the round, he threw Michael to the canvas.

“Get up,” Holmes snarled.

Michael got to his feet. To Mills Lane he said, “It’s OK, ref. It’s OK.”

Holmes’s thuggish behavior set the tone for the first four rounds, and Michael spent those twelve minutes ducking, dodging, and dancing out of harm’s way. He turned and twisted his body back and forth, holding up his hands to protect his head, and rarely threw a punch. His awkward defensive antics seemed to anger Holmes all the more. The big man swung hard and often—clearly looking for a knockout. He landed a number of solid shots but missed with just as many. Michael withstood the tidal wave of anger and adrenaline gushing out of the ex-champ, but there was no doubt that Holmes won those rounds big.

The pattern began to shift in the fifth. Holmes had said before the fight that he was going to take punches and wear Michael down. But Michael’s strategy of staying away started to pay off, and Holmes was the one wearing down. Michael began unleashing stinging punches. Jab, jab, right hand. The crowd broke out into chants of “Mi-chael! Mi-chael!” as their fighter came alive. Jab, jab, right hand. Holmes took the punches without retreating, but he lacked the adrenaline of youth.

Tompkins told the HBO audience in the sixth, “Very, very slowly, you have the feeling that the momentum of this fight is switching to the champion. Almost imperceptibly.”

As Holmes’s energy continued to wane, Michael began showing the confidence of a fighter who knows his opponent can’t hurt him. Jab, jab, right-left-right-left. It wasn’t pretty, it was tactical, but Michael was putting points in his column.

Judges Frank Brunette and Jerry Roth gave Michael the fifth and sixth rounds. They also awarded him every round from the eighth through the thirteenth. Joe Cortez agreed on all rounds except the fifth and the ninth, both of which he gave to Holmes. After the thirteenth Michael had a slight edge on two of the three official scorecards, but the bout was still up for grabs and neither fighter had much juice left. The early rounds had worn Holmes down, and thirteen rounds of running, dodging, and counterpunching had sucked the energy out of Michael. The remainder of the fight would be fought between two depleted and desperate champions.

Richie Giachetti told Holmes after the thirteenth, “Ya gotta keep throwing punches. Look at him. Look at him over there. Look at the ice and everything on him. Let’s go, dammit. Ya gotta want it. You gotta go get it, baby.”

Michael kicked off the fourteenth with a flurry of pinpoint blows and took control of the ring for the first two minutes of the round. But just as his fans were figuring he could cruise to the bell, Holmes pounded him with a right that sent his knees to within an inch of the canvas. Remarkably, he sprung back up (he would later give credit to the plyometric boxes), but he spent the final sixty seconds of the round on Queer Street. One more punch from Holmes would surely finish him, but, inexplicably, that shot never came.

HBO’s Barry Tompkins: “Larry Holmes himself said, ‘I don’t want to leave this to the judges,’ and now he’s got a chance and he’s not pouncing on Michael Spinks.”

Michael stumbled away from Holmes, threw a couple of lackluster punches, and walked sideways with a facial expression that said he was no more certain he was battling for a championship than walking home from a grocery store. When the big man finally advanced, Michael let loose with a hail of blows that kept Holmes from landing another one of his right-fisted hammers.

Tompkins: “Spinks just trying to brawl Holmes to keep him off of him.”

Leonard: “[Holmes] had [Michael] out on his feet. And now Spinks showing the heart he has as a champion and he’s trying to come back.”

When the bell rang to close the round, Michael thrust his gloves above his head. That he was still on his feet no doubt gave him a sense of victory. He might have felt differently had he known that HBO’s unofficial judge, Harold Lederman, and the network commentators had Holmes winning the fight by four points. (Michael was still narrowly ahead on two of the three official judges’ cards.)

The fourteenth round had been the most aggressive of the twenty-nine fought between the two men, and the fifteenth topped it. Both swung heavy punches. A small contingency of Holmes fans chanted “Lar-ry! Lar-ry!” but the rest of the house overpowered them with shouts of “Mi-chael! Mi-chael!” Both sides felt their man was getting the better of the other, and both could make a case for their position. As the clock ran out, Holmes and Michael emptied their war chests, and as the bell rang, Michael landed a solid right cross. The fight was over and destiny was exactly where Holmes didn’t want it: in the hands of three Nevada judges.

Tompkins on-air to Sugar Ray Leonard: “So this one has come to an end…. You have to think Larry Holmes is the winner of this fight. That’s what Larry Merchant had on his card, that’s what Harold Lederman had on his card. You and I saw the fight that way. But again, I harken back to many fights that you and I have done here in Las Vegas, Ray, and I’ve seen some awfully strange decisions.”

Sugar Ray Leonard: “That’s true, Barry, but judging by the way Larry approached this fight, Larry was the aggressor from round one. I think you have to look at that as your criteria, the fact that Larry was very effective, he was able to land some sharp right hands that stunned Michael Spinks.”

Holmes went to his corner and huddled with his handlers. Michael stood in the center of the ring; Leon, wearing a do-rag that hung out from under his black-and-gold cap, hugged him and yelled into his ear, “I love you.” Michael patted him with his gloved hand and walked back to his corner, where Butch Lewis was waiting.

Chuck Hull grabbed the overhead microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, here is the decision of the judges. Judge Frank Brunette scores 144 Spinks, 141 Holmes.”

The crowd cheered for Michael but quickly became silent. This was going to be a split decision.

“Judge Joe Cortez scores 144 Holmes, 141 Spinks.”

Now the crowd booed, fearing that their new whipping boy, Holmes, might have won back his title.

“Judge Jerry Roth scores 144–142 for the winner by a split decision, and still the IBF heavyweight champion, Michael Spinks.”

The crowd erupted into a single, joyous roar. Michael shot both arms into the air and his handlers danced wildly around him. Holmes said nothing; he shook his head. His facial expression was one of disgust. He’d just earned $1.125 million (Michael’s take was two million dollars), but for him, this was about much more than money. Michael went over to Holmes in a conciliatory manner, but Holmes rebuffed him. The big man turned away and slipped into his robe.

Michael went back to his cornermen and yelled for his daughter. “Where’s my baby?” he shouted. “Where’s my baby?”

Someone brought Michelle over to Michael. The toddler, oblivious to what her father had just been through, reached over and wiped the sweat from his arms and his face while watching him give an interview to Larry Merchant.

“I knew from twelve on it had to be my fight,” Michael said.

Then, when asked about the fourteenth round, he added, “I think the big right hand he caught me with, I didn’t know what happened, but I knew I was hit. All I knew was that I was stationary and sort of in limbo…. Right away my mind thought, ‘You’re here too long. I must be dazed, let me get the hell on outta here.’ So I dashed. And I recovered just like that.”

Standing next to Michael, Lewis steered the interview in the direction he wanted it to go, which was away from Holmes’s punishing right hand and toward the big punches that Michael had landed in the later rounds.

“You hurt him, too,” Lewis prompted Michael.

“Oh sure, I hurt him a few times. I know I rattled him,” Michael told Merchant.

Shortly thereafter Holmes was in a somber mood, icing his right hand in his dressing room. (It would later be revealed that he had fractured his thumb in the third round.) He told Merchant he was leaving the game, that there was no sense in chasing ghosts, that he’d be “walking around punched out and punch drunk” if he didn’t hang up his gloves. Then, he added, “I can still be proud of what I accomplished, and I can say to the judges, the referees, and the promoters to kiss me where the sun don’t shine—and because we’re on HBO, that’s my big black behind.”

He’d done it again. The crotchety ex-champ was sticking to his guns. But was he right? Did the judges have it in for him? Had his fate been determined before the opening bell?

Dave Anderson wrote in the New York Times, “On my scorecard, Spinks was ahead, 144–142, earning eight of the last ten rounds after Holmes burned out. Holmes’s hesitation in throwing another right hand in the fourteenth round Saturday night was typical of an old fighter whose reflexes weren’t there anymore. It happened to Muhammad Ali and to Joe Louis. And Saturday night it happened to Holmes, but he has preferred to think there was a plot to make sure he didn’t regain the title.”

At the time, Jim Lampley was a commentator for ABC Sports. “My perception had been that Spinks’s two wins over Holmes had more to do with Holmes’s shot reflexes than with what Michael had done,” Lampley says, looking back. “But I didn’t give Michael enough credit for his calculated aggression and the way he measured distance—and how brilliantly he confused Holmes.”

Harold Lederman, HBO’s unofficial ringside scorer, has little doubt as to the winner. “There’s no question Larry won the second fight,” he maintains. “But [Larry] didn’t endear himself to anybody. Whoever was working the fight couldn’t have been too pleased with him. If that made any difference, I don’t know. But Michael was the benefactor of some very questionable judging.”

According to Richie Giachetti, “The judges, they said Holmes’s comments didn’t bother them, but in the back of your mind, you think about something and you react to it. He called the judges blind and crooked and it more or less turned people off.”

Tell that to Jerry Roth. “I was one of the judges and it didn’t affect me one way or the other,” he says now. “From a judging standpoint, it’s a three-minute round. I watch the round, I judge that round on the three minutes, and that’s it. I don’t care about [a fighter’s] comments—that doesn’t enter my mind at all. As a professional judge, you’ve got to eliminate those kinds of things from your mind.”

Author and boxing scholar Carlo Rotella says, “[Michael] won two unscorable, complicated, unsuccessful matchups with Holmes. I say ‘unsuccessful’ because those two guys never found a way to settle who was the better fighter. You couldn’t score those fights and say Holmes won, and you couldn’t score them and say Spinks won. These are exactly the kinds of fights you can’t score on TV because you don’t know how hard they’re hitting.”

Jerry Izenberg wrote in the Newark Star-Ledger, “You could have wound up scoring the fight with twenty different arithmetical combinations and who is to say you’d be wrong? You could have given it to either fighter or called it a draw and thrown your scorecard up in the air and suggested everybody start all over tomorrow.”

A month after the fight, Holmes began a short-lived crusade to clean up boxing, testifying for ninety minutes before the Assembly Independent and Regional Authorities Committee in Newark, New Jersey. According to UPI, he “painted a picture of corrupt boxing judges, lackadaisical physicians, exploitative promoters, and unsafe equipment.”

One of Holmes’s accusations targeted the competency, although not the integrity, of Frank Brunette and Jerry Roth, the two judges who’d been responsible for his second loss.

It should come as no surprise that in Holmes’s efforts to clean up the sport, he made no mention of Joe Cortez, the ref who scored in his favor. Nor did he take issue with any of the controversial decisions that had tipped his way throughout his seven-year reign as champion. Apparently, every corrupt official in boxing was targeting Holmes.

In the end the ex-champ’s crusade had virtually no effect on the sport, and even less on Michael.

The quiet, gangly boxer from Pruitt-Igoe was still unbeaten, still the lineal champion, and still wearing the IBF belt.

And the heavyweight division was waiting to be unified.