Encouragingly, boxing found a way to dishonor itself without using Mike Tyson. With Tyson once again safely incarcerated, there was some doubt that the sweet science could conduct a major event minus travesty.
This view, of course, underestimates the resiliency of boxing, a game in which only the ring is square.
Not that anybody bit anybody’s ears off or quit in the corner crying. No one whacked the other guy repeatedly below his championship belts, or even needed to be disqualified for excessive hugging. These are some of the ways recent heavyweight title fights have been decided.
The two guys in the ring, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, left the disgrace to the three judges, one for each title under dispute. Nothing the fighters did to each other could be considered harmful, either to their, ahem, sport or to themselves.
In short, Lewis, tried to win a fight with a jab and Holyfield tried not to lose by remaining upright, pretty basic strategy for each of them throughout their careers. Lewis always has been afraid to finish, and Holyfield always has been afraid not to.
The mistake each one made was leaving it up to strangers to decide, because the ultimate decision cheated both men. Lewis looks like a sore loser and Holyfield looks like an old loser, whereas neither was officially beaten.
Under the maxim that the champ has to be knocked out to lose his title, both fighters would have needed to be counted out inasmuch as both were, in the fashion of modern boxing, champions, though Holyfield possessed the most initials, not to mention the most nicknames.
So Lewis avoided finishing off Holyfield and Holyfield avoided being finished off. No foul, no harm. Call it a TND (technical no decision).
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Yet boxing stole the greatest night Lewis will ever have and encouraged Holyfield not to retire by making the meeting for the “unmitigated, unadulterated, undisputed heavyweight championship of the world,” to borrow a bit of the (Don) King’s English, moot.
A tie is like kissing your sister? This time it was more like trading noogies with a cousin.
From my pay-per-view stool, I gave Lewis four more rounds than I gave Holyfield, my math coinciding with most others who were more up close and personal. To almost everybody but the ringside judges, Lewis was clearly the least awful of the two.
Lewis, trying to be the first undisputed British heavyweight champion this century, blamed blatant nationalism for the decision, as if this were soccer or figure skating.
Maybe the judges (even the English judge called it a tie) recalled the Dorothy Parker line (paraphrased version), “If all the British heavyweights were laid end to end, I wouldn’t be at all surprised.”
Said Holyfield later, “I can’t fight and judge too,” which is, of course, exactly what he should have been doing. What Holyfield should judge most critically is his inability to be 30 years old. He looked an old 36, in the way that George Foreman looks like a young 50, minus George’s punch, of course.
Holyfield should have lost just for not fulfilling his prefight prediction of a third-round knockout, not because he was incorrect but because he made it in the first place.
In his career Holyfield has always been a carnation among the cactus. He has not needed to puff himself up with loud and fake bombast as he did this time, never mind that the only serious heavyweight fight he ever finished in three rounds was against jelly-belly Buster Douglas, who would have quit quicker if he could have thought that fast.
It isn’t Holyfield not winning a fight that saddens but Holyfield losing his dignity. And now a man who never needed to lean on anyone but himself is being propped up by a bum decision. Truth didn’t matter. Holyfield, like O.J. Simpson, had the jury.
Yankee Stadium already is being talked about for the rematch, assuming that the public will demand to have this thing settled once and for all.
This fight sold out faster than Ali-Frazier at Madison Square Garden more than a quarter-century ago. This would indicate that the world will embrace a real match, as this one promised to be.
My curiosity to see the fight was great enough to scout up an Orlando sports bar. Such places I avoid devoutly because the concept manages to interfere with both the sports and the drinking.
Serves me right. Them too.