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Now they tell us
For the past few days, International Boxing Federation judge Eugenia Williams told one story and stuck to it. She insisted she saw what she saw, which was Evander Holyfield narrowly beating Lennox Lewis in last weekend's heavyweight championship fight.
But Thursday, appearing before a New York state Senate committee investigating the controversial draw, Williams allowed that maybe she didn't see everything. Maybe the ringside photographers got in her way during several critical junctures in the fight.
And next week, maybe she'll say she spent most of the fight crawling under her desk, searching for a pencil that the referee kept kicking onto the floor.
Funny, isn't it, how an investigation or just a whiff of scandal will jog people's memories, loosen their lips, screw up their courage or makes the lightbulbs over their heads suddenly switch on.
For the past few days, Holyfield kept insisting there was no excuse for his less-than-inspired performance that night. Now he admits he was weakened by a virus in the days leading up to the fight, that his stomach ached and his legs cramped in the locker room just before he entered the ring.
And the reason he kept it to himself until now?
"I thought it would be a short fight," Holyfield said, "so I didn't think it would matter."
Apparently, he wasn't the only one.
World Boxing Council judge Larry O'Connell of Britain now admits his decision to score the fight even was clouded not by partisanship or a failure of nerve, but by simple reckoning.
"When someone said my scorecard added up to a draw, my heart sank," O'Connell said, "I was surprised as anyone."
In the wee hours of Sunday morning, the result of Holyfield-Lewis seemed indecipherable. Several days later, no hard evidence has yet surfaced to support suspicions the bout was rigged or even that any of the people connected to it exerted undue influence on the judging.
Now, though, with the New York state Senate investigation under way, a grand jury in Manhattan about to take the matter up, and two other state agencies ready to do the same, people are tripping over each other to say they saw it coming.
Now, Lewis is talking about a "conspiracy," and his promoter, Panos Eliades, says he would like to stage the rematch without rival promoter Don King in the picture.
Lewis and Eliades both know there is virtually no chance of a conspiracy being found or of King disappearing. But the longer and louder the controversy calls attention to the sorry state of the sport, the more the momentum will swing toward Sen. John McCain's effort to pass federal legislation reforming the sport.
The Arizona Republican, who has invested months of time and effort trying to refine the measure, was ringside in Madison Square Garden for the fight and saw his worst fears confirmed. He has been warning any one who will listen that the sport practically invites fraud by giving so much authority to the sanctioning bodies and the promoters.
"When they do," he wrote in a letter to Eliot Spitzer, New York's state attorney general, "boxers are subject to manipulation and the public is cheated."
The injustice of this fight didn't so much touch a nerve as grab it, twist it, and refuse to let go.
For years, fight fans have been subjected to one outrage after another, then left to shake their heads and paraphrase what a crooked alderman once said about Chicago: "This town ain't ready for reform."
But this time, there is a real sense that could change. It may not be as sweeping as McCain envisions, but a hopeful sign has already surfaced. On Wednesday, the influential Nevada boxing commission said it would consider a proposal by promoter Bob Arum to announce the judges' scoring following each round of a scheduled May 8 WBC super bantamweight title fight.
It's not much, but it's a start. Especially considering the source was Arum, who once replied to a tough question with a quote that describes his racket better than any other:
"I'm telling the truth today. I was lying to you yesterday."