The mere remnants of what once made George Foreman a fearsome heavyweight champion were enough to call in question Evander Holyfield’s right to be considered a worthy holder of the title.
Let there be no doubt about the comprehensiveness of the beating Holyfield inflicted on his 42-year-old challenger over 12 rounds at the Atlantic City Convention Center on Friday night. For 36 minutes Foreman, boxing’s most remarkable revenant, padded forward stubbornly into a volume of punishment that swamped his own sporadic and cumbersome attempts at retaliation and by the end of the fight the discrepancy in performance was certainly far greater than the official scorecards suggested.
Yet there was no reason to argue with the loser when, still buoyant behind dark glasses, he said afterwards: “He had the points but I made a point.” In fact, big George had made at least two that must be heeded.
The first was that the second career he launched four years ago after a full decade of eroding absence from the ring was fuelled by more honest commitment, had less to do with mercenary hokum than its accompanying welter of hype indicated. And the other, perhaps more telling, implication of his ability to go the distance was a substantial hardening of the persistent suspicion that beneath the rippling bulk of Holyfield’s zealously enlarged physique, there lurks the limitations of the cruiserweight he was born to be.
There should be no stinting of praise for the natural strength, durability and resolution that enabled Foreman to propel his 18½st mass relentlessly, if ponderously, at his opponent virtually from the first bell to the last without bothering to rest on a stool between rounds. But given that his lumbering, elderly man’s aggression was being met by a meticulously trained 28-year-old who is designated the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world, the venerable monument could have expected to be brought tumbling down long before the 12 rounds had run their course.
Holyfield had a glaring opportunity to produce such a finish as early as the last half-minute of the third round, when a burst of accurate hooks to the head abruptly undid Foreman’s coordination, leaving the large shaven skull bobbling helplessly on his shoulders like a beach ball in surf. The champion was allowed to bombard the defenceless target at will through the final 15 seconds of the round, relishing the freedom to lunge his 15st in behind every punch.
But – though Foreman was soon reeling blindly towards a neutral corner, his great head now lowered like that of a bull awaiting the kill – Holyfield found then, as he would in several similar episodes later, that he simply lacked the raw power to gain a knock-down, let alone a knockout.
The 17,000 spectators, who had already been nervously stirred by an unscheduled crackle of fireworks up near the roof of the Convention Center and the alarming sight of thick smoke spreading from another corner of the hall (it proved to be from nothing deadlier than a smoke bomb), noisily signalled a gathering belief that what had threatened to be a farce might turn into a drama. But, of course, the action was essentially too one-sided to justify that description.
The profoundest danger for Holyfield was not of losing but of failing to swell the respect he feels has always been unfairly withheld from him. Unfortunately, there was little about his victory to alter the majority view that he is an interim tenant whose lease of the heavyweight title will be terminated whenever he confronts Mike Tyson.
That former champion has shown signs lately of being much less than he was. But it is impossible to escape the conviction that, had he been permitted to blast at Foreman’s jaw as often and wholeheartedly as Holyfield did, the proceedings would have been briefer and more brutal. Tyson, for all his squatness, is a true heavyweight and he hits like one.
Holyfield is a likeable individual and a more than decent fighter, a sound technician who boxed with sufficient control and threw enough sharp combinations to establish a superiority over Foreman that was ridiculously insulted by the scoring of one of the judges, Tom Kaczmarek. Even when he had deducted the point referee Rudy Battle rather harshly took from Foreman in the 11th round (the low punches Battle objected to several times during the fight appeared to owe less to villainy than heavy‑armed crudity), Kaczmarek had Holyfield winning by only 115 to 112. That was an offensive distortion.
Eugene Grant’s 116 points to 111 was also niggardly and Jerry Roth’s 117-110 was definitely as close as I could have made it, even giving the giant all the best of it in his three strongest rounds, the second, fifth and 10th. Foreman never sought to take a backward step but almost invariably he was advancing into the cannon’s mouth. It was a blessing for him, and may ultimately be a damning curse for Holyfield, that the champion’s armament is not as heavy should be.
Amid a gusher of mutual admiration at the post-fight press conference, Foreman happily nurtured the wishful thinking of those of his supporters who imagined he had more than once come within a whisker of flattening Holyfield. He did reach the champion with a swinging right in the second round, spinning him theatrically off balance and going on to discomfit him so noticeably that the session could be scored for the senior citizen.
Then in the fifth Holyfield’s head was snapped back cruelly by a huge left jab and his work rapidly became ragged as Foreman, for once looking deliberately unhurried rather than laborious, found his head with worthwhile punches. And again in the 10th there was unmistakable discomfort for the favourite as he was caught with two chopping rights and weariness obliged him to initiate the first prolonged clinching of the fight.
However, such glimpses of encouragement for Foreman were vastly outweighed by the many periods when, as he joked later, he suspected the rival camp had slipped a mule into the ring and set it to kicking him. If Tyson had been granted the same opportunities, George might have felt he was keeping company with a Clydesdale.
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Apart from the third, the ninth was the round in which Holyfield most conspicuously revved up the abuse he administered consistently to his opponent’s head. It ended with the challenger wearing a dazed, slightly pathetic expression on a face which had long before become puffed and reddened under punishment. Yet the 10th round, with its contrary trend, emphasised dramatically Holyfield’s inability to punch with permanently draining effect. He was content afterwards to move quietly towards the points win that would have struck his admirers as an improbably humble objective at the start.
When Holyfield, who is still unbeaten after 26 pro fights, subsequently faced the multitude purporting to be media at this event he looked healthy and relaxed. But, understandably, he had the subdued demeanour of someone reflecting that there must be cosier ways of spending the hour before midnight. George had, he acknowledged, surprised him with the deceiving speed of his jab and had “proved at 42 he has a granite chin”.
No, he was not in trouble at any time. “George caught me with good shots but I never gave him the chance to follow up. He cut off the ring and made me do things I didn’t want to do sometimes but I did outhustle him and land more punches. The toughest thing was the relentless pressure George put on. In every moment of the fight either I had to be punching him or he would be punching me. I felt I was fighting a smart fight. My strategy was to break George’s momentum.”
He was sure Foreman had not hit him as hard with a single shot as Michael Dokes had done. But whereas he had stopped Dokes, and everyone else encountered since mid-1985, the old man had insisted on staying around.
“George wasn’t as easy to hit as I thought he would be. I thought I would rain on him. But I did hit him with all I had and for five years when I hit guys with all I had they went out. George didn’t. He proved he had determination and a granite chin.”
Foreman duly delivered an answering salvo of compliments. “If I had to lose I am glad it was to such a fine gentleman,” said George. Naturally, he had a kind word for himself, too. “I didn’t retreat, did I? I kept the fight coming all night. My legs are so strong and I wanted the senior citizens to know I didn’t need any advantages. I didn’t sit down at all, though that mule kicked me a few times and I wanted to lie down.
“The door is open for me now. I might go out and get off the cheeseburgers and on to turkey legs – naw, I’m going to stay on cheeseburgers.”
As he headed back to Texas and his nine children with his share of the spoils from the most financially productive fight in history, the possibility of further lucrative gigs could not be ruled out. Many in Atlantic City have been wondering with a shiver what Muhammad Ali, who appeared as the now familiar ghostly presence in the ring before the fight, made of all that has happened recently to the man he shattered so completely in Zaire 17 years ago.
On the evidence of Friday night, it must be said that George Foreman’s past is likely to prove greater than Evander Holyfield’s future.
