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Holyfield a potent force
Perhaps in the murky history of the fight game's beginnings there was a better begatter than Commander Evander. It was said Jack Johnson could go a pretty good stick, and as anyone who's attended any of the heavyweight title press conferences-cum-circii in recent years will attest, there is seldom a shortage of smiling, semi-clad potential begatees.
But until some claimant steps forward, Holyfield's current string -- nine children, five born out of wedlock to four different women, three with his first wife and two with the current spouse of record with whom he no longer lives -- gives the term "unification bout" a whole new meaning.
And it says something of the state of the heavyweight division that in the frantic attempt to build tonight's Holyfield-Lennox Lewis title bout in New York, the Evander talk has been as much about sack as sock.
Lewis, a chess-playing dreadlocked introvert who says he's a man of peace, has repeatedly slagged Holyfield as "immoral" for claiming to be God's champion while ignoring the Thou Shalt Not bit about adultery and serving as the anti-poster for Zero Population Growth.
Holyfield, in turn, has stepped out of character to become an ersatz Ali, spouting to the world that he will stop Lewis in the third round while simultaneously explaining how prayer and the Lord rejuvenated him after a lacklustre Bobby Czyz bout so he could pound the snot out of Iron Mike Tyson.
Strangely enough, no one questions Holyfield's religious fervor. Not even when his now-estranged wife informed breathless media before Tyson II that she'd known all along the fight would be held in June instead of May because God told her as she was walking home from the grocery store.
But there is a tiredness to the whole business.
Holyfield has gone from Commander to the Real Deal to the Warrior, pushed his religion and came out with his own clothing line, Warrior Wear.
He still needs a charisma transplant.
Lewis has fought nobodies. Not his fault, perhaps, because he's big and strong and dangerous, the timing was never right for a bout with Tyson, and Holyfield wasn't about to agree to a title unification until he got his guaranteed $20 million US (Hey, he's got nine kids to support).
Even Don King, the shock-haired spielster who has somehow managed to switch meal tickets from Tyson to Holyfield, seems to be going through the motions.
The man who once said of Black Americans "George Gershwin wrote Rhapsody in Blue, but he couldn't have done it without the black keys," is reduced to spouting his own religious rhetoric. He is now Holyfield's promoter because "a Voice said 'Don, Don, why dost thou persecute Holyfield?' And in the twinkling of an eye, I became his greatest advocate."
There is something wrong here.
This is, after all, the bout boxing fans have supposedly wanted for years: a bout from which one man will emerge with the whole heavyweight title pie -- Holyfield's International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association belts, and the World Boxing Council's version now held by Lewis.
You hear people talking about it, but not the way they did before Tyson-Holyfield I or II, or for that matter even Tyson-Peter McNeeley, a mismatch that took less time to complete than the national anthem that preceded it.
No doubt the pay-TV numbers will be good. But in the end, this one is just a fight between two millionaires who'll probably do it again in six months because there's nobody else until Tyson gets out of the slammer.
A guy with beads in his hair vs. a guy who does as much banging outside the ring as in. Somewhere, Louis and Marciano are shaking their heads, mourning the game that was.