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Tag Archives: Evander Holyfield
Top Five – NJPW Stars Defect To WWE
Throwback Thursday Video – Evander Holyfield Vs Dwight Muhammad Qawi 2
Showtime put up the 4th round of Evander Holyfield Vs Dwight Muhammad Qawi 2, so we may as well write a little about it.
Top Five – Holly Holm Beats Ronda Rousey
30 For 30 – Chasing Tyson Review And Evander Holyfield Career Retrospective
Boxing tells good stories. It’s an easy sport to understand because it’s mano y mano. You don’t have to worry about illegal defense, pass interference, or unwritten rules about bat flips and inside pitches. ESPN’s 30 for 30 documentary series has leaned on boxing for these reasons.
Muhammad and Larry was the third 30 for 30 film ever broadcast on ESPN, while One Night In Vegas, an interesting attempt to pair Tupac Shakur and Mike Tyson, aired later in the first season. Both films provided intrigue, but were rather unfulfilling. In season two, No Mas, featuring Sugar Ray Leonard trying to get an answer from Roberto Duran as to why he quit in their second fight, was an excellent film and one of the better ones in 30 for 30 history. Chasing Tyson doesn’t have the same depth as that one did, but it does provide a look back at an often overlooked boxing figure, Evander Holyfield.
When I say overlooked, I don’t mean that Holyfield the personality is overlooked. He’s a tremendously famous boxer. I mean Holyfield the boxer, is often overlooked as a fighter because of the time in which he came into his own in the heavyweight division. Holyfield’s entire career is set in Mike Tyson’s shadow. Yes, even though he beat Tyson twice.
Thus, Chasing Tyson is the perfect title to the documentary.
Tyson/Holyfield II – Looking At SI’s Oral History
Reading through Sports Illustrated’s oral history of the Tyson/Holyfield catastrophe, it’s still amazing how it ended. Yesterday would’ve been the 15th anniversary of the fight. At the time, I was so pro-Tyson and was so disgusted and disappointed with him. I was disappointed because he knew he was losing and rather than winning, he decided to get DQd. He’d dispute that Holyfield’s head-butts and a cut from a head-butt on his eye were the reasons to be so desperate. But, he was no longer the baddest man on the planet. Holyfield was a bit of a miracle. It wasn’t too long before their first fight that Holyfield’s career seemed to be in danger because of heart issues. And yet, he had an even more perfect plan at beating Mike Tyson than Buster Douglas did.
The oral history has quotes from lots of folks who were on the scene including Tyson himself. Holyfield declined to be interviewed for the piece.
Here’s Tyson’s last comment:
At that particular moment I realized I was an undisciplined soldier, and that’s what really bit me in the butt. It’s never supposed to be personal and I took it personal. And that’s when my career fell. I never took boxing personally before. I took it as a business and I was very successful. Then, I took it personally and I wanted to be grand in what I was and I didn’t respect the sport. I was all about me.
You can read the full piece here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/writers/the_bonus/06/28/tyson-holyfield-oral-history/index.html.
Here’s the fight in its entirety: