Becoming Holyfield (10 page)

I've learned a lot of painful lessons about money, and about people, and about trusting my instincts. I cosigned a car loan for a singing group and got stuck with a $10,000 tab when they couldn't make the payments. Then I found out they'd sold the car for $10,000. These weren't bad guys (I'm still friends with three of them). The leader just thought that I was so rich that a few thousand here and there wouldn't mean anything to me. I loaned $23,000 to a friend to pay his taxes so the IRS wouldn't come after him. Instead of paying it back, he asked me for more money a few months later, and when I wouldn't give him any more, he got mad at me! After all, he reasoned, how could it possibly make any difference to me whether he paid it back or not?

One year when I asked Mama what she wanted for Christmas, she laughed and said, “Fifty thousand dollars!” I knew she was just kidding but I asked her why anyway. “Because the most money I've ever seen in one place is about five hundred,” she answered. “I just want to see what it looks like!”

On Christmas morning Mama opened a present under her tree and found $50,000 in cash. I made her keep it. A year later when I asked her what she wanted for Christmas, she stuck a finger in my face and said, “What I
don't
want is any more money!” She told me a string of stories about what had happened when people found out she had that kind of money. Old relatives she'd never even heard of showed up at her door. Close family she
thought
she knew began arguing about who should get what, and Mama wasn't even in those discussions. People all over the neighborhood lined up for some. If she'd honored all those requests it would have taken about $20 million, so even though she didn't mind giving most of it away, she had to say “No” an awful lot. And when she did, you would've thought she was snatching food out of their mouths or kidnapping their children. They got mad, they called her names, they refused to look at her in the grocery store…all because she wouldn't give them all this “extra” money that they seemed to feel she was obligated to parcel out for the asking.

After the car dealership matter faded away, I decided to buy a radio station from a guy who had built it up and was looking to cash out. He knew I wanted to make some investments and came to me with a proposition. “I'll sell it to you outright for $5 million,” he said. “Take a few weeks to find out for yourself if it's a bargain price, and let me know.” I asked him why he was willing to let it go below its likely market value, and he said, “Because I don't want to spend a year of my life running around and marketing the station, negotiating, paying people commissions to do things I don't need to get done, and I don't want my staff getting all nervous about who's going to buy the place and what's going to happen to their jobs. Then they start leaving and the value goes down and who needs that? If it's done right, the business will grow and whoever buys it will be happy with me.”

Sounded fair, so I did a little research and he was right. It was a nice price, and if he sold it without fanfare, the whole staff would still be in place when I took over. There was also great potential for growth. I was getting ready to fight Bert Cooper and told my lawyer to handle the details and make the deal while I concentrated on training.

When I got back, the station had been sold to someone else. I called my lawyer to find out what had gone wrong, and he said, “I decided it wasn't right for you. You don't know anything about running a radio station and it's a very complex business.”

I said, “What are you talking about! I spoke with the whole staff and they were all going to stay if I bought it. The place practically runs itself!”

“I know,” he replied. “But I still thought there was too much risk.”

That he was so concerned about me was touching. That he didn't trust me to make my own decisions was galling. The owner sold it to someone else for $7 million. They turned right around and sold it for $18 million, and a few years after that it went for $100 million.

I learned two very important things from that incident and a few others. One is that I make pretty good business decisions. I may not know all the details all the time, but when it comes to figuring out the big picture, I have good instincts, and they're often better than those of the people advising me.

The other is that, when you have people advising you, you have to be very sensitive to whatever personal motivations they bring to the party. If somebody is in line for a commission, they're going to be hot to make the deal happen. But if it's a lawyer who's supposed to be protecting you, “Don't do it” is much safer advice than “Go for it.” Lawyers suffer few consequences when they tell you to turn something down, but open themselves up to all kinds of grief if they approve of a deal and it goes sour.

I never ding anybody for advice that was right at the time it was given, even if it happens not to work out later. I also don't credit people for things that happen that they couldn't foresee. As a novelist friend of mine once had one of his characters say, “If a man tells you a coin is going to come up heads, and it does, it doesn't necessarily mean he knew what he was talking about.”

So the bottom line is to always remember that an adviser's job is to advise, not decide. His value is in helping you to see all sides of the matter at hand, not making the decision for you. I've learned not to ask, “Should I or shouldn't I?” but, “Tell me the advantages and disadvantages.” That also helps to make sure that an adviser doesn't get insulted if you go the other way. I also expect advisers to support a decision once it's made, even if they're unhappy with it. There's no sense sowing doubt by second-guessing, and if you think I made such a rotten decision that you just can't live with it, disappear for a while instead of hanging around telling me I'm wrong.

Sheryl, the girl I met the night Paulette told me she wanted an annulment, didn't know that I was married. It hadn't mattered when we were just friends, and when it became clear that Paulette and I weren't going to make it, I didn't know how to tell Sheryl without it looking like I'd been hiding something from her. Since I was going to get divorced anyway, I didn't think it made a difference.

I was wrong. Sheryl had put a photograph of me in the front parlor of her parents' house, where she lived. One day a relative of her mother's came into the house, saw the photo and said, “Hey! That's Evander Holyfield!” Turns out she was friends with Paulette's mother, and that's how Sheryl discovered I was married.

I apologized, not just to Sheryl but to her parents, whom I'd grown to like very much. I explained that I was going to get a divorce, and that seemed to satisfy everybody. They liked me as much as I liked them, and they understood that I'd been in a tight spot about explaining things to Sheryl before this. Since I'd been planning to dissolve my marriage, they figured I'd acted reasonably honorably.

I went home and told Paulette that I was ready to move ahead and end the marriage.

“No,” was all she said.

“What do you mean, no?”

“I mean, I changed my mind,” she said. “I don't want a divorce.”

I didn't get it. We'd both agreed to this months before, and nothing had changed. Paulette wasn't clear about why she'd changed her mind, but it didn't matter. I now had to go back to Sheryl and tell her there was a problem. She was upset, of course; so was I. I upset her even more when I told her that I couldn't abandon my kids. If Paulette didn't give me a divorce, I wouldn't have any choice but to stay with her while I figured out what my next step would be. A formal divorce would give me certain rights to be with my children. If I simply left, I'd have no rights at all, and I couldn't take that chance.

Sheryl went to her mother to ask her what she should do. Her mother said, “If you feel this is your man, just be patient and see how it works itself out.” Sheryl and I had a lot of long talks about how we'd handle this new situation, and while neither of us was happy about the whole thing, at least it was all out in the open and we were headed somewhere.

It was a tough time for me. I had no bad feelings toward Paulette and in many ways still loved her, but I didn't want to be married to her anymore. I loved Sheryl, too, and trying to keep both of them happy was a high-wire act, especially with everything that was going on with my career. I had to go to Paris to fight Mike Brothers, then Henry Tillman in Las Vegas. It was all part of my goal to become the first cruiserweight ever to become undisputed champion of the world, and it took a tremendous amount of energy and focus.

Shortly after I fought Tillman and was getting ready to face Ricky Parker, Sheryl told me she was pregnant. It wasn't at all planned, and it threw us both for a serious loop. For one thing, I had promised myself never to have another child out of wedlock. For another, it brought home how bitter Sheryl had been about finding out I was married and that I was going to have a problem getting a divorce.

I was in a practical quandary now. I wouldn't leave my two kids to go with a new one, even though Sheryl wanted me to, but there was also no thought on my part of breaking off with her. However it had come about, she was right about one thing she'd said, which was that the child she was going to have was mine, and therefore so was the responsibility. As far as I was concerned, I was going to be a part of Sheryl's life for at least the next twenty-one years.

The Omni—Atlanta
July 12, 1986

One of the questions boxers get asked most often is, “What was your best fight?” It's not an easy question, and is a little like asking a mother who her favorite child is. People expect me to answer with one of the “big” ones, like when I became undisputed heavyweight champ of the world or when I knocked Mike Tyson out. And if I'm in a hurry or the person asking the question isn't really interested in a thoughtful answer, I might mention one of those and be on my way. But the truth is, it kind of depends on what you mean by the “best” fight, and there are a lot of ways to look at that. A boxing expert or television commentator might answer it one way, an historian of the sport another, a coach or trainer still another.

From my point of view, my greatest fight wasn't against Mike Tyson, Buster Douglas, George Foreman, Riddick Bowe or any of the other legendary champions I've fought. It was against a fellow named Dwight Muhammad Qawi.

The fight had historical significance. It occurred two years after the L.A. Olympics and was the first time one of the American boxers from those Games was fighting for a world title as a professional. A lot of my teammates from that “Class of '84” were there to cheer me on, like celebrated gold medalists Pernell Whitaker, Tyrell Biggs, Mark Breland and Meldrick Taylor. They were as excited as I was and marched with me to the ring, but instead of using my name, they kept calling me “Real Deal,” something they'd started doing at the Olympics. After I got disqualified in the Kevin Barry fight, somebody said that I'd gotten a raw deal. I replied, “Doesn't matter. I'm still the real deal,” and my teammates began calling me that. When they started doing it in public, it stuck and became my pro nickname.

I was only 186 pounds at the time and was fighting as a cruiserweight. I'd already fought eleven times as a professional and was undefeated, earning eight of those wins by knockout. So I had reason to feel confident, and I did, but I wasn't kidding myself that this was going to be easy, for a couple of reasons.

The first was Qawi (pronounced kah-WEE) himself. Known as the “Camden Buzzsaw,” he was the WBA world champion, and this fight was in defense of that title. World champions defending their titles are like grizzly bears defending their young: They'd sooner die than lose.

Qawi was a very tough guy from a very tough background. His original name was Dwight Braxton, and when he was nineteen he was sent to Rahway State Prison for armed robbery and served nearly six years. Rahway had a great boxing program—one of the inmates in it was James Scott, a middleweight title contender—and Qawi joined up and learned the right way to use his fists. A month after he was released, and with no amateur boxing experience outside prison, he turned pro. He started off 1-1-1 but then reeled off a string of fourteen straight victories, which put him well up into the world rankings. The last of those fights was back at Rahway—as a pro fighter this time, not an inmate—where he went ten rounds against James Scott and won a unanimous decision. Three months later he fought the great Matthew Saad Muhammad, won by TKO in the tenth and became world champion. He then converted to Islam and changed his name to Muhammad Qawi.

At the time of our fight, Qawi's brother Stanley was himself incarcerated at Rahway as a repeat offender, so Qawi was probably pretty angry at the world when he stepped into the ring. It didn't help his mood any that we were fighting in Atlanta, my hometown, and while the crowd cheered for me, they booed him right from the start. He brought his Muslim minister into the ring to pray with him. My Christian beliefs were pretty well known among Atlanta fight fans by then, so it might have looked to some people like there was some kind of religious war going on. Even though there wasn't, it probably added to the tension in the arena.

There was a lot riding on this fight, and a lot of people counting on both of us, but that's not why I consider it to be my greatest. There was something else going on that night.

Even though I was undefeated in my professional career, only one of my fights had reached the eighth round, and only two others had reached the sixth. That's generally a good thing, because it means you dominated your opponents. The problem was, because I'd never gone the distance, nobody really knew whether I could. The rap on me from observers of the boxing scene when I was an amateur was that I ran out of gas early, and if any opponent ever took me into the late rounds, I'd never make it. I thought I would, but I didn't really know for sure.

Lou Duva, canny veteran that he was, had a strong feeling that my endurance was going to get tested in this bout. Qawi was incredibly strong and durable, and if he thought he was getting outboxed, there was a good chance he'd try to hang back a little and let me wear myself out. The fight was scheduled for fifteen rounds, an eternity in boxing, and if we went all the way, it would be almost twice as long as my longest pro fight up to then.

So Lou hooked me up with a fellow name Tim Hallmark, who owned a gym in Houston. Tim came up with a punishing, six-week conditioning program to get me ready, including stationary biking, running up and down steps, using a Versaclimber…more like getting ready for an Ironman than a prize fight. It was the hardest training I've ever done, and all of it was on top of my regular boxing training, which I did with Duva later in the day.

Part of that kind of conditioning is obviously to try to improve your stamina, but the other part, and just as important, is to get you familiar with being exhausted so you learn in advance how to deal with it and it doesn't surprise and shock you when it happens. I think I ran enough miles and turned enough pedals to go halfway to the moon in those six weeks, and my lungs felt like they were on fire all the time, but Tim was relentless and kept pushing me to do more. I couldn't complain, though, because Tim trained right alongside me, doing every single thing that I did, so I had no call to tell him he was being too tough. When the big night arrived, I felt like I was in the best shape of my life.

Once in the ring, I sneaked a few glances at Qawi when his robe came off. He looked to be in pretty good shape, too. This was a world-class brawler who'd won twenty-six fights, fifteen of them by knockout, and was never happier than when an aggressive opponent was willing to trade punches with him. At that very moment I realized there was no way he would ever lay back and let me wear myself out. He was going to be in my face every second.

That was fine with me. As far as I was concerned, the more he was willing to slug it out with me, the more likely I'd score an early victory. This was the fight I mentioned earlier in which someone had scrawled “Nail him, Chubby” on a blackboard down in the locker room. The fight was being broadcast on ABC's
Wide World of Sports,
and they had a shot of me shadowboxing in front of that sign. While I was warming up they showed a taped interview with me talking about being called “Chubby” as a kid, but it was the “Nail him” part that was in my head. I not only wanted the world title, I wanted to get it with a knockout.

It took a long time to get all the prefight formalities out of the way in the crowded ring, but eventually everyone was cleared out and we got going. Qawi was the early aggressor and didn't waste much time before coming after me. He was half a foot shorter than me but used it to his advantage, crouching to lower himself even farther so he could punch upward from underneath and go after my middle while giving me less of a target. I spent the first part of the round trying to get his measure, throwing a jab and a hook that missed but told me something about his defensive reflexes. I was moving around the outside of the ring while he held the middle and just turned in place to follow me as I circled him. I was dancing all over the place while he stayed pretty still. Given how the rest of the fight went, I wish I'd not spent quite so much energy that early on.

Qawi was hitting me pretty hard, but I was starting to get a feel for how his punches developed, how his body moved when he threw them, and what he was leaving open in the process. About thirty or forty seconds into the round he dropped both hands slightly, just for a split second, and as he started to bring them back up I faked with my right. He hesitated, so slightly it was barely noticeable, but it was enough to let me shoot out a quick left jab to his face. It startled him and he dropped his hands, so I threw my full weight into another shot. That doubled him over, but I straightened him back up with a left uppercut and he fell away from me.

I have to admit, I was pretty amazed at how quickly he recovered from that flurry. But I'd rocked him good and he became a little more cautious about leaving big openings. We'd started off with me as the young newcomer and him as the veteran who was going to teach me a lesson, but by the time the bell sounded ending the round we were two well-matched fighters angling for openings and trading solid punches. Each of us got off a few good shots, we each made some mistakes, but I was pretty sure I'd won the round. On the other hand, I had a little difficulty telling when the round ended. They were using some kind of toy bell and the noise from the crowd was so loud I couldn't hear it. Neither could Qawi. We both kept fighting until the ref signaled that the round was over. That could be a problem for me: The last time I didn't hear something important in the ring it cost me a shot at an Olympic gold medal.

I started off the second round fighting “inside” a little, standing a bit too close to Qawi. Having a much longer reach than he does, I had the advantage of being able to land punches when he was too far away to hit back effectively. Letting him draw me in close robbed me of that advantage, and I'd have to stay alert not to let that happen again. He was also trying to get me on the ropes, and I had to twist away to get back to the middle where I wanted to be. Neither of us did a great amount of damage in that round, but a lot of punches got thrown and I could feel the effect, not just of getting hit, but of expending all that effort. Both of us were working hard, not giving an inch, and neither of us was willing to clinch and get a second or two of wind back. And, again, neither of us heard the bell ending the round.

I came out for Round Three like a tornado, punching as hard and as fast as I possibly could. I didn't give Qawi a chance to do anything but cover up and try to stay alive. There was no way I wanted this fight to go the full fifteen, because the pace we'd established was so grueling, there was a chance the victory would be based on whichever one of us just managed to stay on his feet while the other keeled over from exhaustion.

But it was a tremendous risk. If I didn't put him down and end it early, I could run out of fuel and have nothing left for the later rounds. Muhammad Ali based an entire fight on a strategy like that, which he called the Rope-a-Dope. Nobody thought he had a chance against an indestructible George Foreman in Zaire in 1974, but Ali essentially spent the first seven rounds up against the ropes with his arms over his face, letting the physically superior Foreman whale away at him. By the eighth round, Foreman could barely lift his arms, and Ali, bruised but fresh as a daisy, sprang like a panther, hit him with a one-two combination and knocked him out.

Qawi wasn't trying to do that to me. I was just overwhelming him, letting it all hang out in the hopes of scoring a knockout or at least doing some serious damage. I staggered him, but he recovered as quickly as he had before, and when I went back to work on him he hit me below the belt. He'd been going for my middle a lot, so it was hard to know if it was deliberate, but it was the only thing that could stop the onslaught and it did. The ref saw it, pulled us apart, and gave Qawi a warning. A few seconds later, with the ref behind him, he did it again, this time three quick low ones, and got another warning. After that, he managed to pull me inside again, and he got off some good punches to my head and ribs. When he hit me low yet again, I gave him a good one right back. We both got warned that time, but those situations are a lot like getting an elbow in basketball: Sometimes you have to serve notice by giving one back, even if it gets you a foul. It lets the other guy know you can't get pushed around. Just before the bell I got in a good roundhouse to the side of his head and thought I'd probably won the round.

But man, was I tired.

I went back to my corner with newfound respect for Qawi. The guy was an absolute tank. I knew he was tough—he had a fearsome reputation and had whipped a whole bunch of great fighters—but I didn't know he was
this
tough. As I sat down, I started to get a little worried. I was really bushed, and it was only the end of the third round. I'd hit Qawi with everything I had and he was still standing. How could I possibly keep this up for another twelve?

Duva was screaming instructions in my ear but I wasn't hearing him. I was praying. It wasn't anything specific, just trying to put God in my mind.

In the fourth, Qawi got me against the ropes and kept me there for an uncomfortably long time. I couldn't seem to mount an offense of my own, and he was able to get in a lot of hits without me giving any back. But he was doing what I'd done in the third, holding nothing back in an attempt to put me down and risking fatigue if he didn't. I eventually got away from him and managed to land some punches of my own, but on-air commentator Al Trautwig correctly called them “scoring” punches. All else being equal, the judges would award the round to whoever landed the most blows, whether they did any real damage or not. Of course, it wasn't like Qawi was fresh himself, but I think my fatigue showed more than his at that point in the fight. A lot of my blows were missing their targets, and those that were landing weren't landing hard. Qawi was still throwing low shots, but for some reason the ref wasn't seeing any of them. Trautwig told the live television audience, “There's no way I can imagine this going fifteen.” I couldn't imagine eleven more rounds of this either, and tried not to think about it, but I couldn't help it. Just before the bell, Qawi hit my left arm repeatedly and I could feel that there had been some damage.