Holyfield Takes Beating in This Corner

When a fighter becomes heavyweight champion of the world, it is customary to compare him to the great ones of the past. You know. Could Muhammad Ali beat Jack Dempsey? Who was better--Jack Johnson or Joe Louis? They even had a simulated, computer fight between Ali and Rocky Marciano.

So, you look at Evander Holyfield and you ask yourself, could he beat Dempsey?

Well, probably. Dempsey is dead.

It’s when you measure Holyfield up against more recent champions that you have trouble evaluating his chances. Could he handle Floyd Patterson? Well, maybe. Patterson is 57.

It’s when you get to more recent vintage champions, you can begin to strike up barroom arguments about how well Holyfield could do against some of the old-timers.

I mean, you remember George Foreman? He was heavyweight champion of the 1968 Olympics and he won the world title in ’73.

Now, we’re not wondering whether Evander could beat George in his prime. That’s not even arguable. The proposition is whether Holyfield could beat him right now.

Well, he did. But barely. In the last round of their fight, Evander was hanging on for his life. Or, his title, anyway. George was 43 at the time.

Then, you can get down to the question of Evander against another figure from boxing’s colorful past. Larry Holmes was champion in the ‘70s, in the days of Muhammad Ali, Earnie Shavers, Leon Spinks.

You don’t need any hypothetical argument here, either. They fought at Caesars Palace last Friday and once again the generation gapped. You would think a heavyweight champion in his 20s could make short work of a former champion in his 40s. But, once again, Evander looked like a guy trying to find a keyhole in the dark.

Holmes not only had age on him, he had height, reach, weight. He cannily retreated to the ropes and held his massive arms straight in front of him so that Evander had to throw punches by way of Philadelphia all night. By the time they got to their target they had lost all their velocity. The only bloodshed was Holyfield’s. Holmes was not only fat and 40, he was so out of shape that, by round 12, he was sick to his stomach in his corner.

It has always been held to be a rule-of-thumb that the state of any art advances with the passing years. Movies are a far cry from the hokey, jerky, melodramatic silents of our youth. Drama is better, music is more sophisticated.

Sports are supposed to keep pace, too. Golfers are better, baseball players, faster, football players bigger; and boxing is supposed to be a far cry from the stand-up, stilted, mechanical postures of its beginnings.

But you have to wonder about the state of pugilism. You don’t have to concern yourself with whether the current champion is better than other champions of history in their prime when he isn’t much better than they are right now. They are overweight, overage, overeating, overpaid and over the hill. And they make Evander look like a guy chasing a slow bus.

It’s not a question of whether he could beat them in their prime. He almost can’t beat them in his prime. And their dotage.

You don’t have too much to relate it to. But, back in 1910, you may recall, in the “white hope” era, the supremacists talked the former champion, Jim Jeffries, into making a comeback, after five years, to reclaim the title from Jack Johnson. It was a joke. The fat, clumsy, befuddled Jeffries took a bad beating from the roaring-with-laughter Johnson, who knocked him out when he got good and ready.

George Foreman laid off longer than Jeffries--more than 10 years--but was able to come back and fight the current champion to a standstill. Jeffries was 35 years old when he got his comeback shot. Foreman was 43.

What does this mean? That none of these guys out there now are to be confused with Jack Johnson? True. Holmes had only one fight in five years when he started his comeback. But Holyfield wasn’t laughing during their fight. He was too busy bleeding.

In the fight game, it is usual to refer to mediocre opposition as “a bunch of stiffs.” But Holyfield may be reduced to fighting the real article. They may have to exhume his opponents. It’s obvious if they have a pulse and can see without glasses, Evander is in for a tough night. To the question, “How would he do against Dempsey?” the answer would have to be: “Well, let’s see, if Dempsey were alive today, he’d be 97. I’d say it would be a draw.”