Bowe Bounces Back in Rubber Match : Boxing: He gets up from sixth-round knockdown to stop Holyfield in the eighth.

In a bout full of hard and heavy action, flurries, fatigue and finally, a dramatic collapse, Riddick Bowe survived another wild trip with an aging but still-dangerous Evander Holyfield on Saturday night.

Barely.

Two rounds after Holyfield had him teetering on the verge of a knockout loss, Bowe dropped Holyfield twice, triggering referee Joe Cortez to halt the bout 58 seconds into the eighth round before 12,174 at the Caesars Palace outdoor pavilion.

“I fought with all I had tonight, and all I had wasn’t enough,” Holyfield said.

It was the rubber match of this semi-epic heavyweight trilogy, with Bowe (38-1, 32 knockouts) avenging the defeat he suffered to Holyfield two years ago, which cost him the heavyweight title, and handing Holyfield his first knockout loss.

This is the only one of the series, which began three years ago when Bowe took the undisputed title from Holyfield with a unanimous decision, that ended in a knockout.

And, with the 33-year-old Holyfield (31-3) matched against an opponent who was three inches taller, 23 pounds heavier and five years younger, Holyfield chose a blistering, toe-to-Bowe pace. At various moments during the bout, it could have been a knockout either way.

“At times, I had him,” Holyfield said after the fight. “But I wasn’t able to finish him. I gave it my very best tonight, but Riddick was just a little bit better.”

Bowe was all but finished 30 seconds into the sixth, when Holyfield cracked a left hook followed by an overhand right against Bowe’s head, sending Bowe onto his back.

But, though Bowe struggled to beat the 10-count and was obviously groggy and off-balance for at least another minute as the round wound down, Holyfield strangely did not pounce on him. Instead, he looked too tired to attack, choosing to paw with his jab as Bowe jabbed weakly back at him from a corner, eventually regaining his senses as the fight continued.

What was Bowe thinking in the staggering aftermath of the first knockdown of his career?

“I was thinking the same thing he was thinking, ‘Hell, this ain’t right,’ ” Bowe said. “I was shook up, really in trouble.

“But I knew I had to be cool about it, and I thought maybe Evander had punched himself out. He was already tired.”

In between the sixth and seventh, Bowe’s trainer, Eddie Futch, told Bowe to stay away from Holyfield’s left hook, which he did the rest of the way.

“I told him to stay low,” Futch said, “don’t stand up straight. When he did that, [Holyfield] missed the punch repeatedly.”

Though he flurried effectively when he put his punches together, Holyfield looked tired at many junctures of the bout, at times grimacing as he gasped for air.

Holyfield, who has had troubles with his left shoulder recently and retired briefly last year because of a congenital heart problem, said he re-injured his shoulder somewhere around the third round Saturday night. He needed about 20 seconds to recover from a low blow delivered by Bowe in the fifth. Bowe was penalized a point for the blow.

Through seven rounds, Holyfield, by virtue of the knockdown and the point penalty, led Bowe on all three judges’ cards, 66-65.

The eighth began as almost all the other rounds began: with Holyfield charging out to meet Bowe in the middle of the ring. Bowe landed the first big shot, a right to Holyfield’s chin, but Holyfield immediately wobbled Bowe backward with a counter left cross.

Then, with Holyfield leaning forward either from exhaustion or aggression, Bowe fired a quick right cross to Holyfield’s chin. Holyfield reacted by stumbling across the ring as Bowe backed up, and Holyfield eventually fell face first into the canvas at Bowe’s feet.

“He exchanged with me, and I finally caught him,” Bowe said.

The two-time former champion barely made it to his feet to beat the count, looked pained and deeply weary as the fight was restarted, then got hit with two Bowe overhand rights that sent him to the canvas again.

When Cortez waved off the fight, Bowe threw both arms into the air. Afterward, he sounded more relieved than triumphant.

“Yeah, that was hard,” Bowe said. “But it was fair.”

Holyfield looked quicker and sharper in the early going, winging several clean counterpunches when Bowe leaned in for errant power shots and landing hard jabs throughout the first several rounds.

Bowe seemed to find his rhythm in the second and third rounds, and the two, who had been chummy during public events all week long, exchanged several blasts after the second-round bell, echoing their extracurricular exchanges in their first rematch.

The third round was all action, with both men locked onto each other, exchanging tight uppercuts and hooks to the body.

By the fifth, appearing to be gunning for a knockout, Holyfield had blood on his mouthpiece, but also had scored many points with quick three- and four-punch combinations.

In an earlier bout, World Boxing Organization junior-featherweight champion Marco Antonio Barrera, picking his spots with hard flurries, stopped challenger Eddie Croft at :38 of the seventh round.

Barrera (39-0, 27 KOs) dominated from the opening bell, raising a welt over the right eye of Croft (22-3-1) by the second round.

Orlando Canizales (42-2-1, 31 KOs) scored a second-round knockout victory over Julio Portillo (14-5-1) in a junior-featherweight bout.

Also, welterweight Luis Ramon (Yory Boy) Campas raised his record to 61-1, with 54 knockouts, by knocking out Anthony Jones in the second round. Jones fell to 35-8-1.