By Huck Allen: Evander Holyfield seemed out of touch with reality last Saturday night by saying he’s ready to fight Mike Tyson in a trilogy fight following his first round knockout loss to Vitor Belfort. Holyfield sounded delusional in talking about wanting to fight Tyson.
It’s as if Holyfield believes that nothing has changed in the eyes of Tyson and the boxing public after his first round knockout defeat. It’s fair to say that Tyson will NEVER fight Holyfield again after watching what happened to him against Belfort in Hollywood, Florida.
If this were a movie, Holyfield would find a good trainer, and work hard and come back to avenge his loss to Belfort. An impressive knockout victory for Holyfield over Belfort in a rematch would erase everything that happened the first time around.
Everything would be as it was before the loss, and Holyfield could then face Tyson in a trilogy match and make huge money. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. The way Holyfield looked, Belfort would likely knock him out even faster in a rematch.
“I think it was a bad call. He shouldn’t have stopped the fight that quick,” said Holyfield in being interviewed after the fight with Belfort.
If the referee hadn’t stopped the fight, Belfort would have knocked Holyfield down again because he was unloading on him and looked shaky.
Holyfield surely would have gone down, and if he’d gotten up, he would have been dropped again. He was too slow for Belfort, and his defense wasn’t adequate to get out of the way of the speedy shots that the Brazilian was hitting him with.
“Of course I would,” Evander said when asked if he still wanted to fight Mike Tyson next.
It was probably the worst possible time for Holyfield to mention wanting to fight ‘Iron’ Mike Tyson still. Still, in the 58-year-old mind of Evander, he truly believes the Belfort clash was stopped prematurely by the referee.
We haven’t heard the 55-year-old Tyson’s reaction to Holyfield’s loss, but you got to believe he wasn’t happy with what he saw.
“The guy pushed me. The guy is strong,” said Holyfield of the 44-year-old Belfort.
“But I wasn’t hurt. There wasn’t no shot that hurt me real bad. He got me with a shot, and I was off-balance. I’m not hurt. It’s kind of sad,” said Holyfield.
Maybe Holyfield wasn’t hurt badly, but the fact that his balance wasn’t there and not firing back often enough to match the storm of punches being thrown at him left the referee no choice.
With Tyson, you can’t rule out him giving Holyfield the fight anyway. After all, Tyson’s recent exhibition match was against Roy Jones Jr, who was knocked out five times in the second half of his once-great career.