Evander Holyfield is fighting once again, bringing smiles to the faces of both his fans and the people who make money off of him.
He's healthy -- or so they say. And what's wrong with a guy doing what he loves and making millions of dollars to do it?
Plenty.
PHOTO: AP
The problem is, Holyfield is a shot fighter trying to cash in on a name that once meant something in the heavyweight ranks. Four times a heavyweight champion, he's 2-3-2 in his last seven fights and hasn't stopped an opponent in six years.
Yes, Holyfield will claim he won all those fights. But that's the way fighters think, especially when they're in denial over what Mother Nature has done to their aging reflexes and skills.
Look beyond the fond remembrances you might have of a fighter who was once a great warrior, though, and some troubling facts emerge.
When Holyfield enters the ring tonight against James Toney he'll be two weeks shy of his 41st birthday and will have been taking punches for a living for two decades.
He's been in wars with the likes of Riddick Bowe and Michael Dokes, never backing down but sometimes taking a beating because he wouldn't. A casual look at Holyfield's always sculptured body won't show it, but age and thousands of punches to the head have taken their toll.
He'll argue with you about it, but realistically Holyfield hasn't looked good since beating Mike Tyson seven years ago in one of heavyweight boxing's biggest upsets. Before that fight, there was so much worry about his health that some feared he might die in the ring against the fearsome Tyson.
That's not a concern anymore. A problem with Holyfield's heart mysteriously healed, and his handlers make sure he undergoes brain scans and a battery of other physical tests before every fight.
The goal is to prevent Holyfield from ending up brain-damaged like some other fighters before him who didn't know when to quit getting in the head. Among heavyweights, the late Jerry Quarry comes to mind, as does Greg Page. Joe Frazier's speech is slurred, and Muhammad Ali's Parkinson's might have come from repeated punches to the face.
Nevada boxing officials looked at Holyfield's latest tests and gave him some others before giving him a license to fight.
"We feel very comfortable allowing him to fight," said Margaret Goodman, who heads the Nevada Athletic Commission's medical advisory board. "Evander is certainly an anomaly in sports. He's someone who has responded well to aging."
No one can argue that Holyfield looks awfully good for a 40-something fighter -- at least until he steps into the ring and tries futilely to land punches against the likes of the slick Chris Byrd.
The problem is, measuring the impact of years of taking punches is an inexact science, at best. Brain scans can take a snapshot of the moment, but can't predict what the next series of punches might do to Holyfield's thought and speech process.
Indeed, Goodman acknowledges that there is evidence that shows fighters have an increased susceptibility to brain injury the older they get -- which can hardly be comforting to someone who is willing to take as many punches as Holyfield.
"But no one knows what that age is," said Goodman, who is a neurologist. "Everyone's career is so different."
The real question isn't why boxing officials allow Holyfield to fight on. It's why he would even take the risk. Holyfield has been crowned heavyweight champion four times, so one more plastic belt can't mean that much. And he's got so much money that even Mike Tyson couldn't spend it all.
At a time in his life where he should be content to watch people get hit, though, Holyfield insists on taking the blows himself. He goes ahead blindly, believing that he still has the skills to become the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world once again.
"My whole life, people have wanted to retire me," Holyfield said. "They have said that I was no good. They have said that I was too small, but all it is, is talk. The most important thing for me is not my age. It is that I have taken good care of myself."
Even in today's diluted heavyweight world, Holyfield is clinging to a fantasy. Ten of his last eleven fights were for the heavyweight title, but now he's reduced to fighting a cruiserweight champion tonight with nothing but his pride at stake.
Toney may be moving up in weight but he has something Holyfield doesn't seem to have anymore -- reflexes that allow him to throw a punch when his mind tells him to.
If Holyfield should beat Toney -- and that's a big if -- he sees a possible fight with WBA heavyweight champion Roy Jones Jr. While he waits, the months and years will continue to tick by.
Boxing is a cruel master which waits for no man, even Evander Holyfield.
Holyfield should quit fooling himself, and stop conning his fans.
College basketballer Kaitlyn Chen has become the first female player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted by a WNBA team, after the Golden State Valkyries selected her in the third and final round of the league’s draft on Monday. Chen, a point guard who played her first three seasons in college for Princeton University, transferred to the University of Connecticut (UConn) for her final season, which culminated in a national championship earlier this month. While at Princeton, Chen was named the Ivy League tournament’s most outstanding player three times from 2022 to last year. Prior to the draft, ESPN described Chen as
College basketballer Kaitlyn Chen (陳凱玲) has become the first player of Taiwanese descent to be drafted by a WNBA team, after being selected by the Golden State Valkyries in the third and final round of the league's draft yesterday. Chen, a point guard who played her first three seasons in college for Princeton University, transferred to the University of Connecticut (UConn) for her final season, which culminated in a national championship on April 6. While at Princeton, Chen was named the Ivy League tournament's most outstanding player three times from 2022 to last year. Prior to the draft, ESPN described Chen as a
Robinson Cano spent 17 seasons playing in the MLB in front of all kinds of baseball fans, but he said there is something special about his stint with the Mexican Baseball League’s Diablos Rojos. He is not alone. The league last week opened its 100th season, aiming to keep an impressive growth in attendance that began after the national team’s surprise run at the 2023 World Baseball Classic, and is already surpassing some first-division soccer clubs. After finishing third in the 2023 tournament, many casual fans, some of them soccer enthusiasts disappointed after Mexico were eliminated in the first round in the 2022
In-form teenager Mirra Andreeva on Thursday crashed out of the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix in Stuttgart, Germany, after going down in straight sets to fellow Russian Ekaterina Alexandrova in the last 16. World No. 7 Andreeva, who already has two titles under her belt this season, lost 6-3, 6-2 against the 22nd-ranked Alexandrova in just over an hour. The 17-year-old Andreeva had defeated her elder sister Erika in the previous round on Wednesday, but Alexandrova quickly took control as she claimed her fourth win over a top-10 player this season. The 17-year-old Mirra Andreeva in February became the youngest winner of a WTA