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Holyfield is now THE man
Finally, after all these years, after being a world champion four different times, at age 35 and what should be near the end, there is an aura about Holyfield. A place long overdue.
He always has been the other guy, no matter when he won, no matter how. He always has been the heavyweight who was too small, who couldn't punch, who didn't capture our imagination, didn't speak in rhyme, didn't fit our expectations.
Until now, until two fights with Mike Tyson changed everything.
Tonight, Evander Holyfield will walk into a boxing ring at the Thomas and Mack Centre to defend his heavyweight championship, not feeling any differently about himself, but with a world feeling differently about him. Finally, he is the man, the largest figure in his game: He has been the heavyweight champion twice previously, but until Tyson, he never has enjoyed this very place.
"It's different," Holyfield said in an early morning conversation after a prayer session with his entourage. "You can see it in how people treat you, how they talk to you. More people stare at me than ever before. It's funny, I haven't changed, they have."
When he fought Riddick Bowe three times, even when he won, he was the other guy. The fact that Bowe never was the same again didn't seem to matter. Holyfield was still the other guy.
When he beat up on George Foreman, he was the other guy, who couldn't punch hard enough to knock out the old man.
Even when he fought an aging Larry Holmes, Holyfield was still the other guy.
Then came the Tyson fights. It was then his world changed.
"It was always about Mike Tyson, no matter what Evander did," his trainer Don Turner said. "Everything was judged on this Tyson scale. The world was obsessed with Mike Tyson and Evander changed all that."
He did and he didn't. That much is evident now. As Holyfield readies to fight Michael Moorer, so much of the talk remains about Tyson. Will he fight again? Will Holyfield fight him again? Can he ever feel in the ring what he felt on those two most unique boxing evenings?
"For so many years, Mike Tyson was the story," Holyfield said. "You guys (the press) weren't interested in me. What were you going to write about me? There wasn't any bad news. Only time you were interested in me is when you thought my heart was bad. Otherwise, you weren't interested.
"Tyson was bad news. He was always in some kind of trouble. What were you going to write about Evander Holyfield?''
We could write that he lives in a $20-million mansion outside of Atlanta, a fully paid for home with a bowling alley and a pool, not Olympic-sized but almost large enough to stage an entire Olympic Games.
We could write that he is a family man, that he is remarried, that even in divorce he built a home for his ex-wife, that his entire life revolves around his spirituality and his deep belief in God.
"But who," asked Holyfield, "would want to read about all that?"
It wasn't until he knocked out Tyson and then had his ears used as appetizer and main course in the second fight that interest in Holyfield began to grow. He hasn't really talked to Tyson since that strange Las Vegas night. He still wants to.
"I think Tyson and I will come together at some point in our lives," Holyfield said. "We haven't been successful so far.
"He tried and I tried, but it is best to just let some time pass and we will get together and talk."
As for a third fight with Tyson?
"I'm not going to give it to him," Holyfield said. "I don't see myself fighting him again.''
What he sees and what he is doing now is trying to clean up the sport that has provided him with so much. He wants there to be just one heavyweight champion -- him. He has a belt, Moorer has a belt, Lennox Lewis has a belt, heck some nobody named Herbie Hide has a belt.
"That's what this fight is all about," Holyfield said. In the public's mind and for the very first time, he is the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. And now, he has to make that happen.
"I have to do what is necessary to be done," Evander Holyfield said. "Whatever it takes, I'll do it. I didn't come this far to let it get away now. I want to be the undisputed heavyweight champion."