By Patrick Kehoe
Time defiles every mortal effort to sustain athletic excellence eventually leaving sports fans only the recourse of memory as a final consolation.
Marco Antonio Barrera acted out the role of the wily veteran, calculating and posing more often than his younger self would ever have allowed for, instead of punching it out with Manny Pacquiao, during their Mandalay Bay rubber match for super-featherweight supremacy. His best, at 33, was good enough to stave off a knockout loss but not sufficient to garner victory. Youth, ambition and desire had made him a featherweight legend. Not even the fists of Junior Jones or Erik Morales, defeat and brain surgery in 1997 could dissuade Barrera from his objective to be a great fighter. He often pointed out that boxing was a dangerous sport, like many sports, and that taking risks, competing at the threshold of tragedy was endemic to a fighter’s life. But training to acquire the skills for performance and protection was also the rigorous route to competence and, perhaps, excellence.
Even in believing he did as much as Pacquiao, he’s willing to live with defeat, an admission unthinkable just a year ago for the Mexican boxing icon. We take him at his word that he’s had enough of the business of boxing, at least inside the ring where punches are not metaphors. He’ll try his hand at promoting and managing the next generation of Mexican champions; “god willing,” he says.
Sometimes the end of a fighter’s career comes in a rash of numbing punches, black lights exploding as star-bursts, congealing faces mouthing silence; gulps of air dry are dust, until everything happening seems to evade time. For twelve rounds, Barrera’s fit body constantly reset itself to search out clean avenues to unload his best punches. Patience, for old boxing champions, becomes an all too necessary virtue. It was painfully evident just how difficult it was for Barrera to do his very best, so desperate to keep almost even during his better rounds. Then it occurred to those watching Barrera fight Pacquiao: where was his trademark arsenal of punches? Where were the flourishes? When would the all or nothing disdain fill his heart, igniting his punching tirades honing in on an astonished opponent, Pacquiao?
The figuration of Joe Louis never quite finding Rocky Marciano with his ‘Sunday’ punch remains an illuminating reminder, for boxing exists within syncopated timing, and the dimension of time in the boxing ring a fallacy of eternal prowess.
And we were reminded watching Evander Holyfield shuffle in an out of feinting traps, at times remembering to punish with his jab, in his quest to win the WBO heavyweight championship in Russia, that old fighters are busy anticipating, while younger fighters are busy letting their fists fly. The man who crawled off the floor against Bert Cooper, nearly pole-axed in an Atlanta homecoming title defence, November, 1991, just flicked the switch and every sinew fired, fists furiously showered down on Cooper, eventually beating him into defeat and career oblivion. That was Holyfield at his physical peak, a man capable of torrential punching, a strident jab, a knockout rendering right cross, the rest of the time he just drubbed the body. Against WBO champion Sultan Ibragimov, Holyfield created distances, looking for angles to hit at the belt holder with something on his punches; maybe he’d get lucky. Thirty-six minutes of championship boxing was not enough for Holyfield to land anything decisive against Ibragimov.
Evander Holyfield, 45, has steadfastly – for this entire decade – kept his faith in God, the unflinching spirit of his wilful professionalism and the advances in sports medicine, even as defeats to James Toney, Chris Byrd, John Ruiz and ignominiously Larry Donald were painted by public relation ethics as balanced against wins over Hasim Rahman, Fres Oquendo and, yes, John Ruiz. Against Ibragimov, the “Real Deal” Holyfield of 2007 never seemed to have a chance at victory. Almost all the rounds were for Holyfield stuttered futility, though not one round, the final judging nor the fact of the result did enough to convince the ‘four time world champion’ he’s had enough. It does not occur to the former undisputed world champion – conqueror of Mike Tyson and Riddick Bowe – that he can neither improve upon his tactical readiness nor his in the ring capability. Evander Holyfield can only fight like an old fighter who was once great, competently. Only further erosion of his effectiveness spelling decline awaits him as a professional prize fighter.
For Holyfield, who will likely venture onward, the endgame of inability has almost swallowed him whole. Yet his former greatness, that made him a boxing mega-star, sustains him now as a useful relic, an exploitable, living shrine that many will continue to pilgrimage to see carry on in his Don Quixote quest, a dangerous illusion when it comes to boxing.
For old fighters nothing works as it should, the ease of training camp becomes confounded, the taste for engagement cloyed. Perfect opportunities taken vanish in the slipstream of random action, until everything becomes about maintaining defence readiness. Autonomic action becomes a forced sustaining of movement because it’s all about effort, as the corner screams out instructions to keep punching! The power for destructive purpose comes only from deep reserves for old fighters, as if stored for a final catastrophe. Memory under fire recalls unparalleled displays when limber limbs dictated body and desire be bound up in an absolute belief in performing. At the vital end, what were once displays of grace become missteps, fits and starts measured, held in self-conscious check, almost to infinity, the boxing ring is a final absurdity for abuse, showing no mercy upon the brave.
Stay at the business of boxing long enough and your world will be turned upside down, your resources laid to waste, your heath made a ruin. Fully understanding those fates, Marco Antonio Barrera and Evander Holyfield took up the cause of boxing to the final bell. Barrera for one last time, Holyfield until the next time.
No wonder when we debate the rights of the individual to exercise his and her personal freedoms and box on after youth has elapsed we most often end up wincing at figures like Evander Holyfield making a definitive test case for himself. Divined by god or not, tempting an unnecessary fate for the need of money or a reason to his live, or not, Holyfield knows only the competitive drive to persist. His worldly life seems to acknowledge no other purpose. Boxing has become a parallel to his sense of a higher purpose. The Evangelical faith he espouses calls one to rebirth in the perfecting glory of the creator; no wonder Holyfield has made such an obvious leap of faith and association of meaning to his life in boxing. If ever there were a man in love with the idea of absolutes, it’s Holyfield. How else to keep the faith in your own becoming, remaking yourself endlessly in the image of your own sense of the perpetual warrior, warrior spirit?
The man from Atlanta believes if the flesh is weak, the spirit will indeed provide. And no matter the sincerity of the man and how often it has taken him from despair back to cusp of championship entitlement, for an old fighter the Holyfield Mantra becomes a formula for disaster. Since the spirit makes everything in his life possible, there’s never any need to obey the dictates of the body. He shall overcome! The ironies here should frighten even the Holyfield faithful.
With so many children to feed, so much more money to secure, Holyfield’s acting upon his true faith should be read, by heart, like a signpost spelling: WARNING.
Barrera, the fledgling Golden Boy Promotions partner, has, it appears, heeded the warning of his aging body. Fans are free to review the video of his extraordinary feats , re-read the biographical snapshots of things past, in order to refresh remembrances of the brilliance of a true featherweight legend, Marco Antonio Barrera, and heavyweight great Evander Holyfield. At least one of these men understands that, as men, they have conquered and endured, and that they exist now in the past, their titles kept in records and highlight recordings, truly timeless.
When dignity began to define itself as mere survival for Barrera, it was time to give way to all the hungry kids beating at the door of opportunity. There is for all great fighters, all committed professionals, a quiet renunciation, a lonely sadness in giving way to the way of things, and more rigorous men.
Predictably, Holyfield didn’t seem defeated leaving the ring at the Khodynka Ice Palace in Moscow. He intends to try again and give it a better go next time. Next time, he’ll do more. He’ll come up big, if only he gets another chance to show what he’s still made of. No one doubts he means every word when he says, “my goals are still the same... I want to be undisputed heavyweight champion of the world.” The year could be 1991, 2001, 2007 or beyond. When it comes to Holyfield, the fighter, time doesn’t matter.
And we all thought, at the very end, even champions are left asking, “Can I make it to the last bell?”
Patrick Kehoe may be reached at pkehoe@telus.net
