Ex-champ's quest: Holyfield awaits shot at title

“Going into the ring, you either get a grade of A or F, there’s no in-between. I got an A that night,” Holyfield said.

Monday marks the anniversary of that knockout, a kind of distant victory that makes a fighter feel particularly lucky to still have his memories.

Memories of great, colorful days, back when Holyfield had most of his hair and all of his right ear. Back when he was represented by lawyer-talk show host Neal Boortz, when they threw parades down Peachtree for boxers and when big-money fights were low-hanging fruit.

Any other fighter would look back on such a time from the comfort of a retirement that required neither a mouthpiece nor a cup.

Last week, however, Holyfield waxed nostalgic from the Police Athletic League gym in southwest Atlanta following a training session. Turning 48 last Tuesday, he was working up a mighty froth in the ring while reviving old fundamentals with PAL boxing coach Mike Vail. He adopted the gym as an occasional training site not long after his 13-year-old son Elijah began learning the ropes there.

Staying in shape

His body still hard as flint, Holyfield nonetheless has faced a softening of his résumé through the years. A vagabond appearing in five states and two foreign countries in his last 10 fights, he has lost half of them. An unbeaten 25-0 after beating Douglas in 1990, he is 43-10-2 today.

There is no party planned for the 20th anniversary of Holyfield’s first heavyweight title (he would go on to lose and regain pieces of it four times). Just more conditioning to stay ready for another title shot that he’s convinced is fated to happen.

If anything, he is employing this anniversary to lend some sort of numerical symmetry to a quixotic belief.

“When I was a 65-pound 8-year-old, I was told I could be a heavyweight champion if I didn’t quit. It took me 20 years to get it the first time. And I think I’ll get another shot soon, 20 years after that,” he said.

“Then, they didn’t know if I was good enough. Now, they think I’m too old.”

The man from whom he wrested that first belt won’t reflexively dismiss Holyfield. “I don’t blame him [for still fighting] because it is crazy how weak the division is,” said Douglas, from his home in Columbus, Ohio. The heavyweight division is in the hands of various Europeans, mostly unknown to the American audience. What glamour that survives in boxing rests in the lighter weight divisions.

Douglas, 50, hasn’t fought since 1999. His reign began in February 1990 when, as a 42-to-1 underdog, he knocked out Mike Tyson in Japan in one of sport’s great upsets. It ended less than eight months later in his next fight when, as an overweight, overwrought champ ripe for the plucking, he met Holyfield.

“He wasn’t physically or mentally prepared for that fight,” said his former manager John Johnson.

Douglas’ condition at the time was so shocking that it prompted an AJC columnist to change his prediction between editions. Picking Douglas to win for one deadline prior to the fight’s weigh-in, he reversed course afterward when Douglas came in at 246 pounds, 15 more than he weighed for Tyson.

“We got on the scales [for the weigh-in] and he was holding his breath, trying to suck in his stomach, for dear life,” Holyfield remembered.

“He started crying that there was something wrong with the scales. He had tears in his eyes. I was amazed. Here’s the heavyweight champion of the world worrying about weight. I was wondering how could he be that fragile?

Holyfield dominated the fight from the outset. Then, just 70 seconds into the third round, Douglas threw a wild uppercut that missed, leaving his head exposed. Holyfield’s right found its mark, dropping Douglas.

“He was hit with a great punch,” Johnson said of his man. “He didn’t lie down in that fight. He was trying.”

Douglas’ share of the purse that night was $19.4 million (Holyfield’s was $7.5 million). Holyfield went on to earn tens of millions more in bouts against the best of his era — including a trilogy against Riddick Bowe, a victory over the born-again George Foreman, two fights with Lennox Lewis and two victories over the ear-biting Tyson.

Opponent’s struggles

Douglas didn’t fight again for nearly six years and never met a meaningful opponent in his nine-fight comeback afterward.

“The only signature fight I had after that was with life itself,” he said.

“I had a hard time dealing with that [loss to Holyfield] and with my mother’s death [she died shortly before he met Tyson]. It was a wild time in the 1990s; I had so much to deal with. And I wasn’t going to get any better until I stopped wallowing around in self-pity.”

Douglas’ depression revealed itself in grotesque weight gain. Giving in to his excesses, he ballooned to more than 400 pounds and, at one point in 1994, slipped into a brief diabetic coma.

Today, he estimates his weight at around 260. Married and the father of three, he is the author of a cookbook geared to diabetics. He and Johnson are training a Columbus heavyweight, and he has deep charitable roots in the area.

As with Holyfield, Douglas has had to chase the wolf from his door, dodging foreclosure. He still maintains a 58-acre spread outside Columbus.

“He’s as happy now as he has been in a long, long time,” Johnson said.

“Just keeping the wheels moving, man,” Douglas said.

The fight with Douglas was just the beginning for Holyfield. And, as much as that bout was celebrated back in Atlanta, it wasn’t until his two victories over Tyson “that people really recognized me as champ,” Holyfield said.

“What I felt after beating Tyson, I missed when I beat Buster Douglas.”

In the two decades since winning the title for the first time, Holyfield has been in 26 fights, and gone 249 rounds — many of them punishing. As jarring as it may be to think that 20 years have passed since Holyfield first achieved his dream of a championship, it is doubly so to consider that he is still chasing it as a relative artifact.

With no fanfare, no entourage, no guarantee of his next fight, he worked out last week in a PAL gym flicking jabs at shadows, imagining one more big fight.

“He’s really focused on becoming the heavyweight champion of the world again. There’s nothing else out there he wants to put his mind to,” Hallmark said. In his last fight, in April in Las Vegas, Holyfield beat 41-year-old Frans Botha in an eighth-round TKO. The fight drew a little more than 3,000 to the Thomas & Mack Center.

Making fights has become increasingly difficult. A planned match-up with 38-year-old Sherman “Tank” Williams (34-11-2) in Detroit for early November has been twice pushed back and remains in contractual limbo.

“Of course he gets frustrated,” said California-based trainer Tommy Brooks, who works Holyfield’s corner. “For a former champion and a former millionaire, it’s like a slap in the face. You can’t get a straight answer from anyone.”

Holyfield’s answer to it all is a stubborn declaration: “I’m still standing.”

Equally stubborn is the faith that, if he just believes hard enough, his day will come again.