By Brent Matteo Alderson

Evander Holyfield looked good a couple of weeks ago.  He was bouncing on his toes, throwing combinations, and landing with accuracy.  It looked as though Evander turned back the clock to 2002 when he beat Hasim Rahman.  Don’t be fooled because looks can be deceiving and even though I would have liked to be deceived I wasn’t.  You have to look at Holyfield’s knock out over Jeremy Bates with in a historical and rational context.  First of all Evander is one of the ten greatest heavyweights of all time. 

From 1989 until 2000 he was one of the top three or four heavyweights in the world and always rose to the occasion to give his best performances in fights when he was supposed to be beaten or at least severely challenged. This happened with Qawi, Douglas, Tyson, Bowe in their second fight, and in the rematch with Lewis.  The Real Deal kept coming and his enormous ego and desire to win enabled him to conquer fistic mountains. 

Emanuel Steward who was in Evander’s corner for the rematch with Bowe in November of 1993 commented, “People don’t realize that Evander has a big ego.  He’s got a huge ego and that’s enabled him to be successful because he truly believes that he’s better than the guy across the ring from him.”  It’s his ego that has perpetuated his belief that he can win the title again at the age of 43, but the people around him and boxing guys that have worked with him such as his former advisor Jim Thomas, Lou Duva, and Don Turner have publicly stated that they think Evander should hang them up.   

The New York State Athletic Commission suspended Holyfield after his last fight with Larry Donald in order to save the Real Deal from further embarrassment and possible harm. Even though the commission doesn’t have the constitutional right to stop an athlete from making money for applying their trade, their jester was a noble one because they did it out of compassion and respect because it’s members didn’t want to continue to see a heavyweight legend with a heart the size of Britney Spear’s legs get humiliated in the ring. 

Evander is stubborn and his people realize that he’s no longer a world class fighter so they set him up to fight Bates because they knew he would look impressive and that the performance would conjure up a lot of hype and influence some people in the game to believe that Evander is still a top ten heavyweight.

Don’t be fooled.  Jeremy Bates is a club fighter.  He had been knocked out in two rounds by Ray Austin and stopped in four by the light hitting Leo Nolan.  Bates is the type of opponent that Butterbean used to knock out in the first round when he was in his prime in the late nineties.  Give me a break.  It’s almost pathetic to even think that we were impressed by the fact that Evander can still knockout an amateur heavyweight.  This is Evander the Real Deal Holyfield, one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.  A man whose name you can respectfully echo with the greats of the past. 

A heavyweight legend should be able to knock out a designated stiff, even at an advanced age.  Look at Ali.  In his last fight he weighed in at a blubbery 236 pounds and was already suffering from Parkinson’s and still gave Trevor Berbick, who eight months before had become the first man to take Larry Holmes the distance in a title defense, a competitive ten round bout.  Hell, Ali even landed some decent right hands and kept the fight from being the one sided blow out that Ali-Holmes was.

The point I’m trying to make is that an over weight 39-year-old Ali suffering from Parkinson’s syndrome was still able to compete with a world class heavyweight.   You don’t think that pathetic version of Ali would have stopped Bates?  Of course he would have and Ali was really in bad shape.  Look at Jack Dempsey.  When Dempsey was in his forties, a pro wrestler challenged him to a real boxing match because he didn’t like the way the Manassa Mauler refereed one of his bouts and wanted to capitalize on the Dempsey name, but it didn’t work out that way for the theatrical grappler. Dempsey walked to the center of the ring and immediately began to beat the stuffing out of the young buffed out wrestler.  It took less than thirty seconds. 

The same thing goes for Jack Johnson who used to beat up on young inexperienced boxers well into his fifties.  We shouldn’t be impressed by Evander’s performance because Bates was the weakest opponent that he has faced as a professional.  If you don’t believe me, look at his career record. 

Still I’m glad that Evander is in the process of creating the illusion that he is still a world class fighter because the Heavyweight division needs his name in order to restore some of it’s legitimacy and market value.  Although it looks like it’s not going to happen anytime soon I really believe that HBO will try to unify the Heavyweight title and even though I think Wladimir Klitschko has a suspect chin and questionable stamina and will eventually be surprisingly knocked out in the near future I still think he’ll be able to unify the title.  And if Evander wins three or four fights against opponents similar to Jeremy Bates in front of huge audiences on national television, he will develope his reputation to the point to where the public will view him as a suitable challenger. 

 And let’s say that Wladimir is the undisputed champ alphabet champ a year from now, a vicious knock out over Evander would cement his status with the general public and legitimize his status as the premiere heavyweight and bring back the days when Heavyweight title fights did over a million pay-per-view buys. 

It doesn’t look like old Evander is going to follow that plan.  He doesn’t want to knockout a few stiffs and earn a big payday and a title fight.  According to a recent press conference , he’s going to meet Fres Oquendo in the main event of a November 10 pay-per-view in the Alamodome. 

This guy’s belief in him self borders on insanity because Holyfield doesn’t have a prayer against Oquendo.  Oquendo has fast hands, a good jab, and would pummel Holyfield from the outside. Evander beat a Mickey Mouse, a Donald Duck, just like every other heavyweight great could have done up to the point of being in a rocking chair, so if Holyfield is in this game for anything more than one more fat paycheck and some adulation, he better just forget about it. 

Notes:

I thought Samuel Peter showed that he has improved tremendously since the Klitschko fight.  He went to the body, threw more punches, and used his jab more.  I just wish he would have been in better shape.  He weighed in at a career high 257 pounds and might have knocked Toney out if he had been a little lighter.  Why does it seem as though Duva Boxing promoted heavyweights always come in overweight.  Remember when Kirk Johnson came in at 260 against Vitali?  The Duvas need to hire Mackie Shilstone.

Jack Dempsey is probably my favorite heavyweight of all time, but I still think Ali and Louis are the best.  I like to rank them as IA and IB.

This is the first column that I’ve written since I got back from covering the Edwin Valero-Vicente Mosquera title fight for Ring Magazine in Panama.  I had a blast down there. They put me on national radio and I got to hang out with Valero and his team in the dressing room right after the fight.  The fight may not have been fight of the year, but it definitely deserves to be nominated come December.  I spoke to boxing writer Doug Fischer at the Toney-Peter fight and we both concurred that Edwin Valero would knock Pac-man out.

Valero is for real and his power is surreal.  Let’s just say he hits harder than Acelino Freitas, but not as hard as Julian Jackson who is the hardest puncher I’ve ever seen.

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