He Passes the Test of Time

One guy looked like as Greek god. The other looked like a Greek restaurant.

The heavyweight champion of all the world, old What’s-His-Name, beat George Foreman in the Convention Center here Friday night.

He ought to be ashamed of himself.

If you ever have seen a train run over an elephant--and seem to get the worst of it from time to time--you have a picture of Friday night’s fight.

One guy looked like a statue. The other fought like one.

But, Evander Holyfield, who was 10 when George Foreman won the heavyweight championship, hit the old man with every punch in his arsenal. But when you come right down to it, Holyfield seemed to annoy Foreman more than hurt him.

Holyfield is a fitness freak. He has his own ballet teacher, gym teacher, he has this high-tech menagerie of equipment, things to make his punches resistant, things to beef up his long muscles, the whole health religion.

George looks a little like a plate of hamburgers or a pizza with everything.

I would say the good news is, it’s OK to pig out on junk food. Throw away that skim milk and get a double malt. Don’t be afraid of ice cream.

Holyfield didn’t even come close to putting that fat old party down. George came into the ring looking like something that should have a guy in a turban riding on his head. Holyfield was skipping and dancing around the ring like a kid with a puppy.

George stepped in from time to time to rap him upside the head and teach him some manners as if he were a kid skipping school or stealing pies.

You have never seen a more frustrated fighter than the heavyweight champ in the middle and late rounds. The punches that bounced Buster Douglas, Alex Stewart and all those kids all over the ring bounced off George Foreman like raindrops.

George didn’t telegraph his punches. He sent them by fourth-class mail. Nevertheless, Evander Holyfield, the product of a dawn-to-dusk fitness regime, couldn’t seem to get out of the way of any but the slowest.

They said George would get tired and fall like an old tree in the forest along about the seventh round. Hah!

Holyfield appeared to be counting on it. He stepped back periodically in case George didn’t have room to fall. George didn’t have reason to fall.

Usually, watching an old faded champion failing in a comeback against a young bull of an opponent is a sad sight. I’m sure people wanted to cover their eyes watching Jack Johnson at Havana, Dempsey in the 10th round against Tunney, Louis against Marciano and Ali against Holmes.

But the crowd was on its feet chanting “George! George! George!” this night. It was magnificent, really. The ringsiders kept waiting for the telltale “thud!” that never came. George didn’t even sit down between rounds.

They thought they would have to carry George out of the ring along about the fifth round. I’ll tell you something: George took a pounding to the face, but he can walk up to anybody today and say, “Yeah, but you should see the other guy!” By the ninth round, George was throwing punches from memory. But they hurt. Even when his trademark chopping right was more of a paw than a poke.

He almost dropped young Master Holyfield in the seventh at a time when much of press row still had the fight even.

The old man was glassy-eyed but still proud. His tormentor was leaping at him like a dog pack on a wounded bear, when suddenly George called upon remembered skills, skills he used to practice when Evander was in grade school, and he almost swatted the champion to one knee.

Right then and there, it seemed to this ringsider, Holyfield abandoned his grandiose schemes of a ringing knockout and settled for a nice safe decision. He was like a pitcher who stops challenging the hitter and resorts to junk and curves or a tennis player who settles for the baseline and returning serve.

“George earned a lot of respect from me,” Holyfield said after the fight. “I learned very quickly I couldn’t run him over and I had to change to a tactical fight. I knew then I had to fight the best fight of my life.

“At 42, who would think George would be able to go 12 rounds with me?!”

George Foreman, that’s who. The magnificent old man taught young Holyfield--and anyone else who was watching--to respect his elders. He absorbed punishment without flinching. He carried the fight to the younger, faster opponent. He never once relied on clinching or hanging on. He fought three minutes of every round, as best he could. From time to time, it was the younger Holyfield who seemed to want the breather.

It reminded me, incongruously, of Hemingway’s classic, “The Old Man and the Sea.” In that, you will remember the old fisherman tries to reel his marlin all the way back to shore, but little by little the sharks eat away at it until he only has the bones--and his pride--left.

Holyfield is still champion, but Foreman is of the folklore of pugilism. He has redeemed a star-crossed career. It will be recalled he was humiliated by Muhammad Ali in Africa all those years ago and, despite grandstand stunts like fighting five guys in one night and knocking out Joe Frazier for the second time, he couldn’t coax Ali back into the ring, and finally had to retire in discouragement.

He has come out from under that cloud. He lost a fight is all. But the guess here is, in the annals of pugilism, he won a championship. He is almost America’s Sweetheart.