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Holyfield forgets his past
"Who is that guy?'' the man from Atlanta asked, his face wincing. "I don't know him anymore.''
That seems to be the question two days before Holyfield, the WBA and IBF title holder, fights WBC champ Lennox Lewis for the undisputed heavyweight championship of the world at Madison Square Garden.
What's with Holyfield and this uncharacteristic behaviour?
Who is this heavyweight champion and what have they done with the humble, quiet and respectful Holyfield?
It all started innocently enough on one of those major conference-call interviews to promote this event. Questions and answers. And then this one.
"Do you have a prediction, Evander?''
It was the first time he said it -- third-round knockout.
"I'm not predicting, I'm telling you,'' Holyfield said on that Feb. 24 call. And ever since, he hasn't stopped saying it, because everyone keeps asking about it, because no one can believe it.
Because it doesn't sound like Holyfield.
Because it doesn't make any sense.
"I was kind of shocked when I heard it,'' said Don Turner, Holyfield's trainer. "I don't usually pay a lot of attention to what fighters say. But when Evander says something, I've come to believe in him. Having said that, I don't understand this.''
Nobody does.
The new Holyfield has opened up considerable schools of interpretation, putting the best psychologists in the sports-media business to work, all trying to determine what this is about.
There is the position that he actually believes what he is saying, that he is so consumed with religious belief and belief in himself, that if he says he is going to do something, he will do it.
That doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless you're a believer.
There is the thinking that he is trying to goad Lewis into altering his style, to change from being the plodding starter he usually is into opening up early and exposing his weaknesses. Lewis' two most apparent flaws as a heavyweight fighter are his reluctance and his balance. One is a mental thing. The other is physical. Maybe Holyfield thinks if you tell Lewis he will last only three rounds, and you repeat it often enough to turn it to mantra, he will come out and be aggressive from the start, thus leaving himself open for Holyfield's best weapon -- a left-hook counter-punch.
"I do look at that as an insult,'' said Lewis, who ranks among the puzzled when it comes to Holyfield's first career prediction. "I'll definitely still be there in the third round.
For the record, Holyfield has but one third-round knockout on his boxing resume, the night he took the heavyweight championship from James (Buster) Douglas. He hit Douglas with a decent punch that evening, but Douglas could have got up, if he hadn't been so overweight, if he hadn't succumbed so willingly. And it was in Round 3 that Mike Tyson chose to put an end to his second fight with Holyfield by chomping on his ear.
Which begs the question, anyhow: Why Round 3?
"I'm more spiritual and that spirituality gives me confidence that I never had before,'' Holyfield said. It all goes back to a time before the first fight with Tyson.
REMEMBERS LOW POINT
"That was like a low point for me,'' Holyfield said. "At the beginning of 1995, I told people I was going to carry the Olympic torch and I told people I would be the heavyweight champion of the world. But Riddick Bowe won our fight and I was derailed. Then I fought Bobby Czyz, I felt I would blow him out, I tried to blow him out. Couldn't do it. I got discouraged.
"At my lowest point, that's when Tyson wanted to fight me. And I'm thinking 'If I can't get through Czyz, how can I fight Tyson?' My training wasn't going good, not until the final week. Then the Lord told me victory was mine. I wasn't just fighting against Tyson, I was fighting against the press. Nobody said I could win. To overcome all that, I had to allow myself to grow more into the Lord.''
Now he believes he can do anything. Even if anything means a third-round knockout over Lewis, who has been knocked out only once before. There will not, Holyfield insists, be a fourth round Saturday night.
"I don't have a Plan B,'' he said, sounding puzzling still, sounding like he has never sounded before.