Holyfield, Evander 1962–

Evander Holyfield 1962–

Professional boxer

At a Glance…

Setback at the Olympics

Pro Success in Two Divisions

A Title Regained

Sources

Evander Holyfield is the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a determined competitor who has ascended to boxing’s heights against far larger and heavier opponents. Holyfield made history in 1993 by accomplishing a rare feat—he won back a championship belt from the man who defeated him for the title in 1992. Holyfield has overcome obstacles of every sort, both mental and physical, to regain his hold on the championship crown and the respect of boxing’s demanding audience. Reflecting on his accomplishment after his November 1993 defeat of then-champion Riddick Bowe, Holyfield told Sports Illustrated: “I didn’t come back to win the title so much as to redeem myself. I didn’t come back to win or to get the belt but to prove that one setback didn’t make me a bum.”

Redemption has been sweet for Holyfield. As a younger man he was not naturally a heavyweight and so had to undergo rigorous training to compete at that level. For more than a decade the fighter has worked long and hard with a veritable army of trainers, conditioning experts, and strategists to remain a potent force in the heavyweight division. Superbly conditioned throughout his career, Holyfield has become boxing’s most lethal practitioner by adhering to a punishing schedule that has taken its toll on his personal life and has at times seemed hardly worth the effort. Only after losing the title—and subsequently retiring briefly—did the champion boxer realize how much his career meant to him. He has returned to the ring stronger and more determined than ever. Holyfield told Sports Illustrated that when he analyzed his years as a boxer, he realized he had been “trying to be good to please others.” He added: “That’s when I knew I would come back, but this time to please myself.”

Holyfield, the youngest of eight children in a one-parent family, was raised in Atlanta, Georgia. The fighter credits his mother, Annie, with much of his success—she instilled a strong work ethic in him and provided him with Christian values. Holyfield’s deep Christian faith kept him out of trouble as a youth and has sustained him through his career. Often when he signs autographs he adds a citation for a Bible verse, and he regularly supports favorite churches in his hometown and other cities.

Nicknamed “Chubby” as a child, Holyfield was known in his neighborhood as a “good kid” who would shy away from fights and who would generally back down when bullied. He performed odd jobs for pocket change and spent his spare time at the Warren Memorial Boys Club in Atlanta. There, at

At a Glance…

Born October 19, 1962, in Atlanta, GA (one source says Atmore, AL); son of Annie Holyfield; married Paulette Bowens (divorced, 1991); children: Evander Jr., Ashley, Ebonne, Ewin, Education: High school graduate.

Boxer, 1971—. As amateur, won bronze medal at light-heavyweight in 1984 Summer Olympics. Turned professional, November 1984. Won World Boxing Association cruiserweight title, 1986; won International Boxing Federation cruiserweight title, 1987; won World Boxing Council cruiserweight title, 1988. Moved to heavyweight division, 1989, and became undisputed heavyweight champion, 1990-92; retired briefly after losing decision to Riddick Bowe, 1992; became WBA/IBF heavyweight champion in a rematch with Bowe, 1993.

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the tender age of eight, he began to experiment with boxing techniques under the tutelage of Carter Morgan, the center’s boxing coach. “To tell you the truth, the only reason I got interested in boxing was the speed bag,” Holyfield told the Boston Globe. “The speed bag made a lot of noise and I wanted to learn how to hit it. They had to stand me up on a chair at the Boys Club to reach it. It took about two months to get it down.” Soon the youngster was participating in pee wee boxing tournaments in Atlanta. “I always went out in the ring feeling I was the best,” he said. “The only reason you fight is to prove it. As a kid, I loved to say, ‘I’m a boxer.’ But to tell you the truth, when the fights started I’d think, ‘How’d I get myself into this?’”

Football was Holyfield’s first love. He excelled as a linebacker on the Warren Boys Club team and hoped to have a stellar career at Fulton High School as well. He made the team as a sophomore, but at five-foot-four inches and 115 pounds he was hardly an imposing athlete. All season he warmed the bench, distraught because he was overlooked time after time. Boston Globe reporter Ron Borges wrote: “So little Evander Holyfield … sat on the bench. Game after humiliating game. He wanted to quit. Once he even suggested it to his mother, Annie, who had raised eight Holyfields with no intention of any of them quitting when troubled waters rose. She told him four simple words that ended their conversation: ‘You finish it out.’”

Dutifully, Holyfield rode out the season, and when he was finally called into play during a regional championship game he absolutely excelled at cornerback. The team lost the game, but the coaches had only praise for young Holyfield. Unfortunately for them, it was too little too late. Holyfield did not return to football, ever. “It kind of hurt my feelings when the coach said I was too small,” he told the Boston Globe. “So I just gave up on football and told myself, ‘Evander, stick to boxing.’ Football was important, but once I saw I wouldn’t get a fair chance, I went back to what I did best.” With its various weight divisions, boxing offered ample opportunity even for a youngster as diminutive as Holyfield.

Setback at the Olympics

Any doubts Holyfield might have had about being a boxer were laid to rest when the 1980 Olympic Trials were held in Atlanta. Borges noted that while watching those matches the young hopeful “saw…that he could fight with all the others standing between him and a gold medal.” After graduating from high school, Holyfield worked for minimum wage fueling planes at the De Kalb-Peachtree Airport, but his thoughts centered exclusively on his chosen sport. He trained in his off-hours, often rising at four in the morning to jog before catching a six o’clock bus to work. Then as now he was almost obsessive about his training, rarely missing a workout and resting only on Sundays. Between 1980 and 1984 he compiled an impressive amateur record of 160-14, winning a Golden Gloves title and qualifying for the 1984 Olympic team. In what must have been a major accomplishment for the athlete, he managed to win an Olympic berth in the light-heavyweight division—testament to the fact that he was still growing and could possibly become a heavyweight someday.

The 1984 Olympics proved Holyfield’s first major disappointment. He knocked out his first three opponents to advance to the championship round against a New Zealander named Kevin Barry. During the fight, Holyfield landed a punch just a split second after the referee had ordered the fighters to break. He was disqualified for hitting late—a call that many observers still dispute. Holyfield was ultimately awarded the bronze medal, but he wore it not as an honor, but almost as a badge of shame. “I still use it as a motivating thing,” he told the Boston Globe. “People aren’t going to let me forget it anyway. No matter how many fights I win, they’ll always ask about what happened at the Olympics.”

Pro Success in Two Divisions

Shortly after the Olympic Games ended, Holyfield turned professional in the cruiserweight (190 pound) division. He became the first fighter of his Olympic class to win a championship when he unseated Dwight Muhammad Qawi in a grueling fifteen round decision on July 20, 1986. That win brought him the cruiserweight titles of the World Boxing Association and the International Boxing Federation. Less than two years later he became undisputed cruiserweight champion by unseating the World Boxing Council’s top contender, Carlos DeLeon. Holyfield realized, however, that the big money and the stardom could only be found in the heavyweight division. With the support of his trainers—father and son team Lou and Dan Duva—he announced his intention to fight as a heavyweight beginning in 1989.

The decision was met with a chorus of disapproval. Many observers doubted that Holyfield, who rarely weighed more than a comfortable 212 pounds, could ever withstand the punishment meted out by opponents who entered the ring at 230 or more. Undaunted by the dire predictions, Holyfield and a massive team of trainers embarked on “Project Omega,” a total-concept conditioning program. For more than a year Holyfield worked with an orthopedic surgeon, a former Olympic triathlete and swimmer, and even a former ballet dancer. He perfected his agility, his endurance, and his speed, but his most impressive gains were in the bench press and weightlifting departments. Month after month he endured three workouts a day, six days a week—workouts that included running, swimming, sparring, weight lifting, and aerobic exercise. Philadelphia Inquirer contributor Robert Seltzer concluded that Holyfield’s punishing regimen gave him “the most impressive physique in the heavyweight division.”

The doubters were soon stilled as Holyfield crushed his first six opponents, all of them heavier and supposedly stronger than “little Evander.” Soon his trainers’ assertions were proved true—what Holyfield lacked in weight and stature he more than made up for in heart and desire. Holyfield himself told the Boston Globe: “You can’t just fight for money because if you do, after the first round you can think you don’t need to take all the punishment. You’ve got the money now. You fight for the belt plus the pride.” He added: “If I was doing this in my backyard, I’d still want to win with nobody watching just because I don’t want him to have the bragging rights over me.”

By late 1989 Holyfield was being touted as the only legitimate threat to the reign of Mike Tyson, then the undisputed heavyweight champion. Negotiations were under way for a Tyson-Holyfield bout when “Iron Mike” was defeated in a staggering 1990 upset by James “Buster” Douglas. Since Holyfield was the number-one ranked contender in the division, Douglas agreed to fight him rather than take a rematch with Tyson. A Holyfield-Douglas showdown was set for October of 1990.

The outcome of that fight was almost a foregone conclusion. Douglas, pudgy and unmotivated, hardly mounted any opposition at all to the superbly conditioned, hungry Holyfield. When Holyfield knocked Douglas down during the third round, the fight was over. A new undisputed heavyweight champion was crowned, one who preached values like Christian virtue, hard work, and determination. Asked what it felt like to be a star, champion Evander Holyfield replied: “Ain’t no stars except up in the sky.”

Holyfield’s reign as undisputed heavyweight champion was studded with controversy. While promoters and fans clamored for a showdown with Tyson, he opted for a relatively easy appearance against former champion George Foreman. Despite Foreman’s colorful patter before the showdown, the match proved uneventful. Holyfield won a unanimous decision in the April 1991 fight but failed to knock out the flabby and aging Foreman. That same summer, Holyfield agreed to meet Tyson, but the planned fight was cancelled after Tyson was accused—and subsequently convicted—on rape charges. Instead of Tyson, Holyfield met another aging challenger, Larry Holmes. Again the match ended with a unanimous decision for Holyfield, but again he was criticized for failing to knock Holmes out. Observers began to suggest that Holyfield lacked punching power.

“They said I couldn’t knock anybody out,” Holyfield told Sports Illustrated. “It was getting to me. I was confused. I wanted to settle down and live the good life, but I wanted the respect. I was being pulled in two different directions. Then I fought Bowe and I forgot about winning; all I thought about was that I had to knock him out. Winning wasn’t the thing; knocking him out was.”

Riddick Bowe offered Holyfield his first substantial competition. Larger and younger than Holyfield, Bowe was undefeated as a heavyweight and was highly motivated by a life of poverty and privation. The two men met on November 13, 1992 in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Bowe emerged the victor in a brutal slugfest. After the match, Holyfield announced his retirement. He returned home to Atlanta to spend time with his children.

Philadelphia Inquirer reponer Robert Seltzer wrote: “When Bowe captured the title [in 1992], Holyfield felt relief-relief that his crown, and the burden that went with it, was gone. He was Evander Holyfield, private citizen. He did not belong to the world anymore.” Then a curious thing happened. Holyfield began to miss boxing. He felt that he shouldn’t retire after a defeat that might have been caused by lapses in strategy. Early in 1993 he returned to the arena with a new manager—rapper Hammer—and a new trainer, Detroit-based Emanuel Steward. Once again Holyfield threw himself into a training schedule that combined endurance conditioning with strength enhancement. With Steward’s help he formulated a game plan that would include less brawling and more subtle boxing. According to Sports Illustrated contributor Tom Junod, Steward appealed to Holyfield’s near-obsession with a need for atonement by turning “boxing itself into a form of prayer and his training camp into a form of worship.” After a lackluster match against Alex Stewart, Holyfield earned another chance to meet Riddick Bowe in Las Vegas.

A Title Regained

The Bowe-Holyfield rematch took place on November 6, 1993. Bowe weighed almost 250 pounds; Holyfield a scant 217. The twelve-round match was full of excitement, some planned and some unplanned. At midpoint in the fight, a publicity-seeker parachuted into the ring, sparking a melee and a 20-minute delay. When the fight resumed, Bowe seemed to have lost some of his spark. Holyfield won in a decision that returned to him the belts of the International Boxing Federation and the World Boxing Association. In order to become undisputed heavyweight champion once more he must meet World Boxing Council champion Lennox Lewis.

The 1993 victory against Bowe placed Holyfield in the company of Floyd Patterson and Muhammad Ali—the only heavyweight champions to regain their titles from opponents who had previously defeated them for the crown. In his Sporting News analysis of the match, Dave Kindred concluded: “This time the good small man found a way to beat the good big man. Holyfield won the hard way.”

Holyfield has always credited his success to two factors—his religious faith and the inspiration provided by his mother. “When I lost at anything, I was always able to go back and learn from those losses and then concentrate on the next fight,” he told the Boston Globe. “I made the 1984 Olympic team not because I didn’t lose any fights but because I was able to keep focused and I had a strong lady in my life, my mother. She taught me you have to live for today. Tomorrow is not always promising and not always promised. It’s an attitude that comes from a lot of pride and a lot of faith.”

Secure in his faith and proud of his accomplishments, Holyfield is a far cry from the nasty, snarling stereotype most boxers readily accept. “I don’t believe that you have to be mean to be successful in the ring,” the champion told the Philadelphia Daily News. “I don’t understand why some boxers are motivated by hate. The way I see it, it’s possible to be a good person and a good boxer at the same time, as long as you’re able to master the technical skills that enable you to do your job well. And that’s all boxing is, when you get right down to it. A job.” He concluded: “Fighting is to the death, kill or be killed. In boxing, two athletes compete against one another. When it’s over, you hug.”

Sources

Associated Press reports, November 6, 1993; November 7, 1993.

Boston Globe, December 9, 1988; October 24, 1990.

People, November 16, 1992.

Philadelphia Daily News, July 27, 1989.

Philadelphia Inquirer, October 9, 1990; November 5, 1993; November 6, 1993.

Sporting News, November 2, 1992; November 15, 1993.

Sports Illustrated, April 18, 1988; July 24, 1989; November 5, 1990; November 15, 1993, pp. 22-27; November 22, 1993, pp. 48-51.

Upscale, February 1994, pp. 30-34.

Washington Post, October 23, 1990.

—Mark Kram