Holyfield Provides a Touch of Class : Boxing: He retained his dignity through Olympic disappointment and lost millions in Tokyo. Now he has to overcome a bigger opponent.

The horrible moment lives on, as it will for the rest of his days, in the mind of Evander Holyfield.

“I thought it must be a nightmare, that if I woke up, it would just go away,” he once said of that moment in the summer of 1984 when he was kicked out of the Olympic Games in Los Angeles.

In a semifinal bout of the light-heavyweight division, Holyfield was administering a beating to New Zealander Kevin Barry when, during an exchange, the Yugoslav referee, Bligorije Novicic, yelled, “Stop!”

Holyfield had already launched a left hook that landed on the side of Barry’s head and knocked him out. A great roar went up when Novicic waved Holyfield away and it appeared as if he had won the fight. But Holyfield wasn’t being designated the winner, he was being disqualified.

Only U.S. Coach Pat Nappi, who was already on the ring apron and angrily shouting at Novicic, knew that Holyfield had been disqualified for a late blow. Slowly, the cheers of the 16,000 on hand turned to boos. Outrage ruled, particularly after replays and stopwatches showed that Holyfield couldn’t have stopped his punch at the command to do so.

The incident is remembered today not only for the drama of the moment, but for the class and dignity Holyfield showed. There were no tantrums, no tears, no threats.

No one would have blamed him if he had gone back to the Olympic Village, packed up and gone home to Atlanta. Instead, he showed up two days later on the victory stand, graciously accepting his bronze medal. A great ovation went up when the light-heavyweight gold medalist, Anton Josipovic, another Yugoslav, raised Holyfield’s hand, a gesture that seemed to say he was the real champion.

In a professional sport where prickly personalities and childish behavior are common, Evander Holyfield remains boxing’s Mr. Class.

Thursday night here at the Mirage, Holyfield challenges Buster Douglas for the heavyweight championship. In the six years since his nightmare in Los Angeles, Holyfield may have more muscles, but class and dignity still define the man who is favored to beat Douglas.

Holyfield was at ringside last February in Tokyo when Douglas upset Mike Tyson and took away Tyson’s championship. Upon leaving Tokyo, Holyfield discovered he was in the same first-class section of Tyson’s flight home.

Both felt pain, for Tyson and Holyfield had already signed for a battle of unbeatens in June, 1990, and all those millions were gone when Douglas knocked out Tyson.

“He left his seat and came over to me and said he felt bad for me, and asked if my eye would be OK,” Tyson said a month later. “He’s a nice guy, really.”

Another example: Holyfield had a cold the week he fought Alex Stewart in Atlantic City on Nov. 4, 1989, and, although he stopped Stewart on a cut, it was an extremely difficult fight for him. Several times, he seemed a punch or two away from being knocked down by Stewart.

“I didn’t want him to fight that night,” said George Benton, co-trainer of Holyfield, with Lou Duva. “I wanted to postpone the fight. But I’m not the manager, so I didn’t speak up. I didn’t even want to suggest it to Evander, because I didn’t want that seed of doubt in his mind.”

At the news conference after the fight, Duva raised the subject of Holyfield’s cold, a secret before the fight.

“Evander wouldn’t even discuss it to anyone after the fight,” Benton said. “That’s the kind of guy he is. When I asked him later about it, he told me he didn’t want to take anything away from Stewart’s effort.”

OK, so he’s a nice guy. Can he fight?

At 24-0, you figure he can fight at least a little bit. But he has been brought along carefully by promoter Dan Duva, Lou Duva’s son. If you were putting together a list of fighters you wouldn’t want Holyfield--or any other prospect--to fight before he got a championship bout, Razor Ruddock, Riddick Bowe, Bruce Seldon, Tim Witherspoon and Michael Dokes might well be on it.

Of those, Holyfield has fought only Dokes. And on March 11, 1989, at Caesars Palace, Holyfield wound up in the fight of his life before he knocked out Dokes in the 10th round. It was viewed by many as the most exciting heavyweight fight of the 1980s.

But critics of Holyfield maintain it shouldn’t have been an exciting fight, if Holyfield is of championship caliber. Dokes, it is always pointed out, was years past his prime and coming off rehabilitation from drug abuse.

A second knock on Holyfield is his size. At 6 feet 1, 210 to 212 pounds, he is a small, though powerfully built, heavyweight. In Douglas, 6-4 and 235 pounds, he meets the third-biggest heavyweight champion in history.

Said Douglas’ trainer, J.D. McCauley: “You take Holyfield out of those weightlifting gyms where they’ve had him the last few years, and you’ve got a guy walkin’ around at 195. Look at Holyfield’s legs--they’re pop bottles. Evander’s going to learn Thursday what the difference is between a big heavyweight and a little heavyweight, and he won’t like it.”

In every fight, Holyfield has impressed critics with his upper-body strength, his courage and stamina. Not known for his defensive work, he has been hit hard and often. He has been rocked and stunned, but always he had more left at the finish than his opponents.

Critics say his stand-up style and lack of lateral movement make him vulnerable to a taller heavyweight with a strong left jab, such as Douglas. In other words, if Douglas took Tyson apart with his left jab, how can a smaller, more exposed Holyfield stand up to it?

“All fighters get hit,” Holyfield says. “Good fighters will hit you, that’s part of boxing. Buster’s a good fighter, but I’ll be ready. I feel I have an edge in conditioning--if it goes into the late rounds. It will come down to how much Buster can take, how much he can endure, because he will have to endure.”

If Holyfield loses, and if in the postfight analysis it is felt by most that Douglas was too strong and Holyfield not strong enough, it won’t be a favorable development for a new partner we’ve seen in recent years in boxing--the strength coach.

Holyfield has been in involved in high-tech weight-training programs since 1984, shortly after turning pro, when it seemed he would never grow naturally into a true heavyweight.

He not only has a strength coach, Lee Haney, seven times bodybuilding’s “Mr. Olympia,” but a stretching coach as well, Mareya Kennett, who owns a ballet school.

Pressure, Holyfield says, is the key to beating Douglas.

“Buster’s at his best when you let him dictate the pace,” he said.

“I won’t let him do that. I have a good jab too, and I can hit him with it. I don’t underestimate him at all. He won the title because of total domination (of Tyson), and he looked good doing it. But I’m prepared.”

Rocky Marciano, the unbeaten 1950s heavyweight champion, fought bigger heavyweights his entire career, knocked out 43 of 49 opponents, yet fought his entire career at less than 190 pounds.

As his old trainer, Charley Goldman once put it: “You don’t have to weigh 220 to knock a guy out. You just have to hit him.”