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April 2001
Each month we bring you a selection of articles from the current and past issues of BOXING MONTHLY. To buy the magazine, see our subscription or back issues pages, or use our world distribution map to find a news-stand copy. Why not use our Interactive Forum to express your own boxing comments and opinions!
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IT'S OVER One man's floor is another man's ceiling, and while John Ruiz made history by becoming the first ever Hispanic world heavyweight champion, the story of this fight is that the world championship career of the great Evander Holyfield has surely come to an end. GRAHAM HOUSTON reports from Las Vegas |
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RARE SIGHT: Holyfield was given a beating and dropped by Ruiz in the 11th round, something that had even Tyson or Lewis could achieve
- Get Big Pic Watching Evander Holyfield get battered in the last two rounds of his fight with John Ruiz in Las Vegas, it seemed that we were witnessing the last stand of one of the ring’s great warriors. And after Holyfield had been declared loser by a unanimous decision, the feeling at ringside at the Mandalay Bay casino resort on 3 March was that the career of this remarkable fighter had come to an end, and with it the end of an era. But apparently not. The 38-year-old Holyfield, bruised but unbowed, appeared at the post-fight press conference to tell us that he intends to fight on. Having lost the World Boxing Association title to the 29-year-old Ruiz in their return fight, he now wants a rubber match so that he can become the first five-time heavyweight champion in history. If successful, it seems he will continue his Quixotic quest to leave the game as — once more — the undisputed champion. It was like listening to a man who had lost touch with reality. For the sad fact is that Holyfield — beyond any doubt — is a spent fighter. His body is magnificently sculpted but the reflexes are not there any more, the hand speed has gone and even the famed Holyfield durability has diminished. What he has left is his great will, the never-give-in mentality that helped make him a great fighter and contributed to his stirring victories over the likes of Dwight Muhammad Qawi (as a cruiserweight), Michael Dokes, George Foreman, Riddick Bowe in their rematch and, unforgettably, over Mike Tyson. But dogged determination is not enough. Ruiz, whom many believed defeated Holyfield in their close fight for the vacant WBA championship last August, left no doubt this time when he knocked down and beat up his legendary opponent in the 11th round. Yet Holyfield insisted afterwards that he had won. The judges, he said, had got it wrong, just as they had done — in his own mind — when he suffered his first defeat, against Riddick Bowe, when he was outpointed by Michael Moorer in their first bout and when he lost the unanimous decision to Lennox Lewis in their rematch. In the Moorer and Lewis fights, Holyfield had support in the crowd and among the media. But only the most fervent, blinkered Holyfield loyalist could have found fault with the decision this time. Not only did Holyfield suffer the 11th-round knockdown, there had been the deduction of a point for a low blow in the previous round. "The judges are in agreement," announced dapper MC Jimmy Lennon Jr. when the fight ended. So had a different set of arbiters the last time the two men fought — but in Holyfield’s favour. This time, though, it was Ruiz’s night. Stanley Christodoulou of South Africa had the widest score, 116-110, Chuck Giampa of Las Vegas made it 115-111 and Patricia Jarman-Manning of Las Vegas saw it a little closer than her colleagues, 114-111. In the American pay-per-view television coverage, analyst Bobby Czyz (who had Ruiz romping home in the first fight) saw it as just a one-point win this time for the "Quiet Man" from the Boston suburbs, who becomes the first Hispanic heavyweight champion, even though the boxing world recognises Britain’s Lennox Lewis as the true king. Yet he cannot bring himself to admit it. Holyfield will argue that he was the one going forward for most of the fight, which is true. He certainly did the most damage, for Ruiz finished with a vertical slice on the forehead, above the left eye (from a clash of heads), bruises and swellings under each eye and a bloody nose. And there was a controversial element that will strengthen Holyfield’s belief that he is the better fighter. It came in the 10th round. Holyfield seemed to be coming on, Ruiz appeared to be weakening. But Holyfield went marginally low with a left hook, then followed with another left hook that seemed to be a legitimate body shot — and Ruiz went down. Referee Joe Cortez ruled that Ruiz had been hit low and instructed the judges to take a point from Holyfield while telling the challenger he had five minutes in which to recover. It is Holyfield’s position that he did not actually hit Ruiz low but on the top of the foul-proof protector, and that his opponent went down in the hope of either getting a win by disqualification or simply to buy some time. Holyfield pointed out that he was hit low twice himself in the fight but did not go down. In fact, Ruiz, after taking about three minutes of recovery time in the 10th, retaliated by hitting Holyfield — seemingly on purpose — with an extremely low left hook. Whatever one may think — and only Ruiz himself knows how badly he was hurt — the fact is that the three-minute delay in the proceedings broke up the momentum of Holyfield’s attack. And Ruiz appeared to be re-energised when the bout resumed. There was booing from the crowd when the low-blow incident was replayed on the big TV screens on two sides of the arena, because the second of Holyfield’s hooks was clearly in the target area while the one that preceded it did not seem all that low. Ironically, in the first Holyfield-Ruiz bout there had been a similar incident, also in the 10th round, when Ruiz took a knee claiming a low blow. Many people believed Holyfield’s punch had been fair. But referee Richard Steele deemed otherwise and gave Ruiz time to recover, although he did not penalise Holyfield a point. If Ruiz did indeed get a break from Joe Cortez at a crucial juncture in the rematch, his camp would argue that this was only fair, considering that Holyfield had been allowed to get away with rough tactics that included use of the head and elbows. But the 10th round controversy gives Holyfield, if only in his own mind, the validation he needs to keep fighting. We may dismiss his assertion that he did enough to win the fight on points, but he can argue with some legitimacy that he should have been winner by knockout. And so the prospect of Holyfield-Ruiz III looks a very real one, perhaps in Beijing later this year. Promoter Don King says he has the backing of Chinese entrepreneurs, who were in attendance at Mandalay Bay. But King said no date has been arranged for the proposed fight. Both fighters need time for rest and recuperation. Ruiz looked in a worse state than the loser, but Holyfield suffered, too. He was cut over the left eye and bloody inside the mouth, his eyes swollen and lumpy, the right eye partly closed. But he said that it was not a case of him having had a bad night, merely that he had allowed the fight to go to the judges. He said he will have to get back to the way he used to fight, which was stopping his opponents. But the last time he stopped someone was when he halted Michael Moorer in eight rounds in their rematch more than three years ago. In the weeks leading up to the rematch with Ruiz he had promised to look spectacular this year, with three knockouts in three fights. The words turned out to be as empty as the ones Holyfield delivered when he predicted a third-round knockout over Lennox Lewis in their first bout. But his trainer, Don Turner, had been especially upbeat, saying that Holyfield had been looking better in the gym than he had in years. The Holyfield camp confidently forecast that the fight would not go six rounds. I must confess that I bought into the Holyfield mystique. The reasons why he struggled in the first match with Ruiz seemed plausible: that he had suffered a ruptured eardrum in the second round and couldn’t get his balance right; that he tends to fight down to the level of his opposition and had underestimated his opponent. But even Holyfield said there were no excuses this time, no eardrum perforation, no physical ailments of any kind going into the fight. His weight seemed perfect at 217lbs (15st 7lbs), which is 4lbs lighter than he weighed in for their first fight. (Ruiz was 227lbs, which was 3lbs heavier than he had been the last time.) What happened was, quite simply, that Holyfield has, in the boxing sense, become an old man. He did his trademark bounce to try to get into some sort of rhythm, but instead of the combinations we had been promised it was mostly one punch at a time, just like the last fight. And although his left hooks were heavy, they seemed to lack snap and leverage. He was often outjabbed and beaten to the punch by Ruiz. He landed some useful digs to the body but never applied a sustained attack downstairs. I am sure Holyfield wanted to jab more, wanted to put punches together, wanted to be consistent to the body. But he just could not put it together. He said afterwards that Ruiz has an awkward style, and this is true. Ruiz leaned in low from the waist and moved his head and shoulders just enough to throw Holyfield’s timing out of synchronisation. Every so often he would slam in a jab or fire a sneaky right-hand lead. He ducked under a lot of Holyfield’s intended haymakers. His rushes prevented Holyfield from getting set. At other times, Ruiz backed up to conserve energy. It was not the easiest style to figure out, but the Holyfield of a few years ago surely would have done so. On the outside, Holyfield was waiting too long. And Ruiz often got the better of it on the inside when he brought up right uppercuts. There were spells when Holyfield seemed to be taking over, notably in the third, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth and 10th rounds. But Ruiz came back every time, determined and gutsy. He couldn’t seem to miss Holyfield with the right and shook him so significantly late in the sixth, after the old gladiator had controlled most of the round, that one had the strong impression that this time Ruiz was the puncher in the fight. Things had looked bad for Ruiz when a bruise and swelling developed under his left eye in the second round. Then he was cut in the fourth, angrily gesturing to the referee that he had been butted. "Accidental," Joe Cortez ruled. But Ruiz seemed to be wilting in the ninth and 10th, and Holyfield appeared to be coming on strongly. There was a lot of blood from Ruiz’s nose. "Legs don’t look too steady," I noted in the 10th. Then came the low-blow ("alleged" low blow, many might say) incident, and Ruiz gathered himself after the time-out and landed his own low left hook to let Holyfield know the fight was still very much on. Coming out for the 11th, Holyfield was ahead by one point on the Jarman-Manning card, behind by a point on Chuck Giampa’s, while Stanley Christodoulou had Ruiz three points in front. A dominant last two rounds would have pulled out the fight for Holyfield, who had finished strongly in his first fight with Ruiz. But a big right from Ruiz in the 11th put a spectacular exclamation mark on his performance as it blasted the champion to the floor, blood trickling from a cut over his left eye. Holyfield somehow got up at the count of five and, after the eight count, held on to Ruiz in a manner reminiscent of a wobbly Thomas Hearns clutching James Kinchen 12 years ago. Both men went down as Ruiz tried to disentangle himself. Even when they got to their feet, Holyfield was still hanging on as the referee tried to pry them apart. Ruiz dropped to his hands and knees and crawled around Holyfield to escape his opponent’s embrace. Holyfield was out on his feet but somehow staggered through one of the worst rounds of his career although he got hit by some more big shots. Not many heavyweights in that much trouble could have made it to the bell. But the huge round for Ruiz (scored 10-7 by judge Jarman-Manning, 10-8 by the other two judges) in effect decided the fight. Holyfield did his best in the 12th but he seemed to be pushing his punches. He was fighting on heart and instinct now, and Ruiz slammed him with several more right-handers although he couldn’t put him down again. But Ruiz had won the fight. The knockdown Holyfield suffered was startling indeed when you consider he never seriously looked like going on the floor in either of his fights with Mike Tyson or the two with Lennox Lewis, and was surely a graphic indicator of deterioration. The only other knockdowns Holyfield suffered were the three against Riddick Bowe (one in their first fight, which Holyfield lost on points, and two in the rubber match that Bowe won on an eighth-round knockout), although he was given the mandatory eight count when the ropes kept him from going down in the third round of his fight with Smokin’ Bert Cooper in 1991. It has been a long, hard road for Ruiz. "We made it on credit cards," the exuberant Norman Stone yelled afterwards. "No one gave us anything. Johnny’s everything that’s good about boxing." No argument there. Ruiz deserves the big purse that he will get for the rubber match — deserves everything he gets. He never lost sight of his dream, even after the humiliation of the 19-second knockout defeat he suffered against David Tua five years ago. Some say he is at best a glorified journeyman, which seems harsh but is probably true. But, be that as it may, Ruiz once again rose to the occasion. Holyfield, the 5-2 on favourite, did not easily yield the title. "I don’t want to see him again," a smiling Ruiz said afterwards in a compliment to the man he had just defeated. But it seems he will indeed see him again, this time in the People’s Republic of China. That is where Holyfield might finally be compelled to accept the inevitable: that it is time for him to go. In truth, the departure is already overdue. |
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