Boxer Has Something to Say : With the Pressure Off, Holyfield Is Confident

What has gotten into Evander Holyfield?

Here he is, only days before what might be the last big fight of his career, speaking engagingly with reporters. Hanging around with Hammer. Promising that he absolutely, positively will defeat Riddick Bowe and regain his heavyweight crown in their rematch Saturday.

Holyfield, who used to be one dull exception to the rule that boxers are colorful and carefree, suddenly has a new, chirpy attitude that edges remarkably toward the Muhammad Ali side of interesting.

Some men seem born to be heavyweight champion. Holyfield, in every light moment leading up to Bowe II, seems like a man far more comfortable being the former champion. Being the favored champion was hard. Being the underdog, undersized challenger is, apparently, fun.

Lose a title, gain a personality.

“I’ve seen him like this before,” said his longtime manager, Shelly Finkel. “But it was before he won the title. The title, it just drains you.

“He felt tired from it. It wasn’t that he was uncomfortable, but he has his private (times). He has his own agenda, and that wasn’t necessarily to be in the spotlight all the time. He did whatever he could, but he also wanted to raise his kids and do those sorts of things.

“I felt he could handle it, and he did, until the Bowe fight.”

The first Bowe fight was last Nov. 13, when Holyfield lost a 12-round decision and his undisputed heavyweight title to the younger, bigger, more colorful Bowe.

General opinion at the time was that Holyfield, 30 then, would drop into the background, where he always seemed to belong anyway.

“I like my position, and I don’t think Evander liked his too much when he was champ,” Bowe said recently. “It’s the difference between enjoying it and going through the motions. Evander was going through the motions.”

Even when Holyfield won the undisputed heavyweight title Oct. 25, 1990, beginning a two-year reign, he wasn’t the main story. Buster Douglas, verging on obesity, was the fascinating part of that fight.

Through most of Holyfield’s two years at the top, he was considered a hard-working fighter who had nothing to say and would be crushed as soon as he got into the ring with Mike Tyson. Holyfield was interesting then mostly in comparison, as a sort of anti-Tyson: placid, almost genteel, and bland.

But with a showdown finally set to go, Tyson was convicted of rape and sent to prison. So, Holyfield was left alone in a division that craves bigger-than-life personalities, not smaller-than-usual title holders.

What was a boring champion to do?

“I should’ve just retired right then and there and said that’s it,” Holyfield said of Tyson’s imprisonment. “All the time they talked about Mike Tyson, there was always room in my mind to go to the point where this is who they say I can’t beat. I wanted to prove it.

“Then this man went to jail. After that, anybody I fought, I felt there was nowhere else for me but to go down.”

Already having seen his marriage fall apart, Holyfield trudged through a defense against Larry Holmes, wearying of the title more and more. Then, he was handed to Bowe. He lost and, almost immediately, announced his retirement.

It was a 12-round toe-to-toe heavyweight classic. And, in Holyfield’s odd career, it would figure that he is remembered more fondly for the fight he lost than the 28 he won.

He was brave, and he lost. For a while, that was enough.

“When the fight was over, when Bowe got the decision, right then and there I was relieved,” Holyfield said. “I thought, ‘Now I don’t have to fight Lennox Lewis. I don’t have to fight anybody. I can go home and rest and I don’t have to worry about anybody calling me and telling me I have to be here or there.’

“I felt that the pressure was off. Everything was off my back.”

Said Lou Duva, Holyfield’s co-trainer through the glory years who heartily approved of Holyfield’s retirement: “He wasn’t dedicated enough anymore to keep being champion. He was more interested in hanging around with stars, that MC Hammer guy. . . . When he lost, that should have been it. He had a good run, it was over.”

Duva and George Benton went straight to training Michael Moorer, a young contender who is supposed to fight Bowe in the spring, should Bowe defeat Holyfield again. Moorer recently dropped the Benton-Duva tandem for Teddy Atlas.

So why come back? Why endure a yawn-inducing 12-round decision over Alex Stewart in June to earn the rematch with Bowe, who bounced Holyfield around the ring last time?

Because in reviewing the tape of the Bowe fight, Holyfield realized his major mistake. Believing Bowe was out of shape, Holyfield slugged it out, looking for the knockout. And Holyfield is sure he can correct that tactical error this time.

Said his new trainer, Emanuel Steward: “It’s not about money. It’s not about the title. It’s about beating Bowe. That’s all it is.”

“It’s not an obsession,” Holyfield said. “Listen, I was brought up to win. I was brought up to finish the job. You don’t do a half-done job. I want to feel good about boxing.

“If I want to be happy about my life, I had to get back in there and see if I could do it. If I didn’t, I’d always have a cloud around me.”

Holyfield, who has not said what he will do after this fight, has not tiptoed into the rematch, either, talking loud enough to aggravate Bowe with his confidence.

“I will win the fight,” Holyfield said. “It doesn’t make any difference what kind of shape he’s in. It’s not about Bowe. I’m coming in to win. I promise, I will win.

“First time I fought him, it was quite different. I was the champ and had never lost. I felt I didn’t really have anything to gain any more than to just win. I had more of a lackluster attitude.

“I have a lot more within me to pull for, to be blessed to get another opportunity to get back in seeking victory, able to make an example for a lot of people that they can count you out, but . . .

“I know I will win.”

Holyfield and Steward say the one thing they are working on is maintaining better balance, pointing out that he had been lunging and lurching against Bowe.

“(Balance) is as important as anything,” Holyfield said. “I believe that in the first fight I was wanting to go out there and impress myself and mostly impress the media. I went out there to get a sensational knockout. I was out there banging. I wanted to knock him out. It’s what I went for.

“I didn’t look to box. I did what I felt would be short and easier, but I found I made it a lot harder for myself.

“When I beat Buster Douglas, people said he was fat and I didn’t get the credibility. Even though he went in three rounds, it didn’t come down to stamina.

“With George Foreman, they didn’t give me the credit that I fought a good fight and I did what was necessary to win.

“With Tyson, for him to pull out and for me to jump in with Bert Cooper . . . I battled back with Bert Cooper, but people say, ‘Oh, a journeyman almost beat you.’

“Then after the Larry Holmes fight, here’s Bowe. He’s young and this is a way to silence everybody (by trying to knock Bowe out).”

A year later, Holyfield has left the silence behind.