(...sigh...)
Even with his now-diminished skills, Evander has shown in two years of tuneup fights that he still has enough in the tank (or, as Rocky Balboa might say, "in the basement") to get a pretty good fighter out of there. And, quite frankly, that's all WBO heavyweight champ Sultan Ibragimov is. A pretty good fighter. I only hope that someone is in Evander's ear who can convince him, should he defeat Ibragimov, that attempting to unify the heavyweight title is a health-endangering...scratch that...life-endangering fool's errand. I imagine WBC champ Oleg Maskaev would be Holyfield's next target...and he's another paper champion, a lumbering, slugging granite statue, that Evander could conceivably prevail over. After that, it gets scary. IBF champion Wladimir Klitschko is the last man in the world Evander Holyfield should ever see in the opposite corner of a boxing ring. I've blogged about a potential Klitschko/Holyfield fight before. It must never happen.
This is all about legacy for Evander. The man has all the money any human being could ever need. He's set for life. His kids' kids are set for life. He obviously wants to be remembered as one of the elite heavyweight champions of all time and he thinks that taking an alphabet soup belt off a heavyweight "champ" that no one's ever heard of will tilt the scale back in his favor historically...despite the fact that he has, with his late-career losing streak prior to this comeback, lost almost a quarter of his professional career fights. Still, I love the guy and can't help wishing him the best. I'll put the Holyfield/Riddick Bowe trilogy of fights right up there with Ali/Frazier...with the second fight, the notorious "Fan Man" fight, being the single most exciting boxing match I've ever seen.
This is all about legacy for Evander. The man has all the money any human being could ever need. He's set for life. His kids' kids are set for life. He obviously wants to be remembered as one of the elite heavyweight champions of all time and he thinks that taking an alphabet soup belt off a heavyweight "champ" that no one's ever heard of will tilt the scale back in his favor historically...despite the fact that he has, with his late-career losing streak prior to this comeback, lost almost a quarter of his professional career fights. Still, I love the guy and can't help wishing him the best. I'll put the Holyfield/Riddick Bowe trilogy of fights right up there with Ali/Frazier...with the second fight, the notorious "Fan Man" fight, being the single most exciting boxing match I've ever seen.
So, even though I won't be watching...who can afford pay-per-view anymore?...I'll be online, surfing for updated round-by-round results during the afternoon tomorrow. Here's hoping I read about Evander delivering a quick knockout or breezing to an easy, boring decision...and then taking his belt and going home. For good. Here's hoping, ultimately, that he realizes being a warrior doesn't mean you have to end up being carried out on your shield.
7 comments:
Guess that means there is still hope for Buster Douglas, assuming he is still alive. He has to be dead, right?
He's dead. Just not buried yet.
Just drape a couple pair of hammer pants over him and leave him in a dry wooded area.
I read on Red State that Hillary killed Buster because he knew too much about Vince Foster's "suicide".
Old hosses like you and me can remember the real fighters: Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Duane Bobbick (that last one was, of course, a joke). They lost me when they stopped putting them on regular TV. Plus, all those guys had style- live em or hate em. I didn't even know Holyfield was fighting for the title. I thought he was just skeering up some cash.
Herb's hammer pants comment was a good one by the way.
Give it up Evander!
Don't forget Larry Holmes defending the world heavyweight title on ABC's Wide World of Sports (unthinkable now) every two months (again, unthinkable) and doing it outside of Vegas/Atlantic City (unimaginable). Larry took the title to the people, defending it in places like Indianpolis, Birmingham, and Ames, Iowa.
And you're right about Bobick. Though he turned out to be a joke, I miss people caring enough about the fight game to invest interest in various "Great White Hope"s. To me, there's still no single sporting event more exciting than a big title fight.
Hey, I remember Larry Holmes fighting Joe Frazier's son Marvis or Marvin, and tearing him to shreds in like 4 minutes.
Did he win? I'm too lazy to google it.
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