By Dave Lahr: The planned February 20th bout between forty something year olds Evander Holyfield (42-10-2, 27 KO’s) and Francois Botha (47-4-3, 28 KO’s) has been called off, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. The fight was supposed to take place in Kampala, Uganda. However, the fight fell apart when the promoter missed making his payment to the 47-year-old Holyfield.
What makes this cancellation even more disappointing is that expecting a huge crowd of 80,000 to turn up to see these two old timers fight at the Nelson Mandela stadium. The fight will now be rescheduled for March 6th, if possible. However, Botha, 41, has a fight scheduled on February 27th against Joey Abell at the same Nelson Mandela stadium, so something has got to give with this.
The Holyfield-Botha fight will be moved to the United States, where it’s unclear how many fans this fight could drum up. Holyfield, ranked #15 by the World Boxing Council, hasn’t fought in over a year since losing a controversial 12 round decision to then WBA heavyweight champion Nikolay Valuev on December 20th, 2008, in a fight that was held in Switzerland. Holyfield fought well enough to win the fight, but the judges wound up giving Valuev a 12 round majority decision.
Holyfield also could fight on April 24th possibly against 2nd tier heavyweight Derric Rossy. After losing two consecutive fights to champions Sultan Ibragimov and Valuev in 2008, it looks as if Holyfield is going to go after a little easier pickings to stay busy and bide his time before he lands another world title shot.
However, Holyfield turns 48 in October, and it’s hard to imagine that he’ll continue to be handed world title shots based on wins over 2nd tier heavyweights. Following three consecutive losses to Chris Byrd, James Toney and Larry Donald between 2002 to 2004, Holyfield was out of boxing for two years until 2006. Holyfield then won four fights against Jeremy Bates, Fres Oquendo, Vinny Maddalone, Lou Savarese between 2006 and 2008. Those fights put Holyfield in position to fight for the heavyweight titles against Ibragimov and Valuev.
If this is the course that Holyfield will take to get another title shot, he’s going to have to fight much more often than he has recently. Holyfield has wasted a year since his loss to Valuev. It’s doubtful that the Klitschko brothers will want to fight Holyfield even if he keeps winning. World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye might give Holyfield a chance in the future, but Haye might not stay as a champion for much longer because he wants to fight one of the Klitschko brothers in 2010.
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