SLAM! Sports
SLAM! Boxing
COLUMNS
CANADIAN PUNCH
UPPERCUTS
LOOKING BACK
GALLERIES
INTERACTIVE
ALSO ON SLAM!
Evander's secret weapon - his wife
In the camp of Iron Mike Tyson, who now marches on the path of Islam and opens every interview with a soft-spoken commitment to Allah, it is the bap-bap-bap, don't-gimmie-no-crap of Black America rap.
But when Evander Holyfield works, he toils to the pounding beat of Gospel - revival meeting stuff with the key-thumping fervor of backwoods church piano, long on inspirational chorus, heavy on the hallelujahs, and laced with the shouts of the preacher man promising better days to come.
Tomorrow night in a basement arena of a bread-and-circuses casino in a city built on gambling, drinking and the scenic wonders of semi-naked flesh, these two servants of a Greater Power will try to pound each other into roadkill ...
In a sporting world where too many athletes tend to find God shortly after the cops find them ("Ah did it! Yes! I stole them things, your honor! That shoebox full of cocaine was MINE! But I seen the light, judge! Honest!"), it is difficult not to view these shenanigans with a certain cynicism.
It is particularly difficult in the land of Evander Holyfield and his wife of eight months, Dr. Janice Itson.
Without even looking at the records, says Ms. Itson, a medical internist, she knew that the medics had misdiagnosed Holyfield's alleged heart condition in 1994, the one that was supposed to keep him from fighting ever again.
"I knew in prayer," she said. "And it turned out it WAS (a misdiagnosis)."
She knew when it was time for Holyfield to begin training for this second Tyson bout because God told her "during a walk to the store."
She knew when the fight date was set for March that it wasn't going to happen. She even phoned Holyfield and told him to quit training and come home - which he did - because the fight wouldn't happen in March, it would happen in June.
When Don King set it for May, she didn't waver. It would be in June.
And after Tyson suffered a cut eyebrow in training, it was, indeed, set for June 28.
"He (God) wanted him to fight in June," she says. "We just try to live by the Lord in everything we do, even the timing of the fight. Because God has a purpose for the timing and everything else."
That purpose, she says, is for her husband to successfully defend his heavyweight crown. God has told her.
"You hear God, and God promises you victory. And I think that when you've got that assurance ... the outcome (is settled)."
A query about the possibility of a Tyson victory throws her for a second. Then: "No, no. I can't answer that because that's not going to happen. He will win ... he WILL win!"
Holyfield, while totally committed to his beliefs, has what seems a more rational approach: that the Lord has given him the talent and the ability to work and to learn. "The only time bad things happen," he says "is when I don't do the work."
But Tyson is working, too, his Islamic convictions apparently every bit as firm. The bookies, a bottom-line lot, have him at 2-1 now and figure he'll still be favored, although at lower odds, come fight time.
If the Greater Power factor has a place in their equation it is in the old story of the two boxers of equal religious fervor, crossing themselves just before the bell.
An old Irish-Catholic priest was sitting at ringside.
"Does that help?" a man asked.
"Only if he can fight, my son," he answered. "Only if he can fight."