Three Times? Must Be Getting Long In The Tooth

If Evander Holyfield keeps winning fights, Nelson Mandela might need another closet.

Holyfield, who defeated Mike Tyson last month in a biter, er, bitter battle to retain the WBA heavyweight title, presented the South African president with a white-and-purple satin boxing robe Monday to go with an earlier gift: the gloves he wore when he first won the title.

“I’ll never wash this hand,” Mandela quipped after shaking hands with Holyfield.

Known as the “Real Deal,” Holyfield, who won when Tyson was disqualified for twice biting his ears, jokingly referred to himself as the “Real Meal.”

Mandela declined to offer any boxing advice to his visitor.

“Everybody should follow his style who wants to be champion,” the president said. “He is the three-times world champion.”

Loose talk

Boxing writer Bert Sugar, on the chances of a Mike Tyson-Evander Holyfield rematch (in People magazine): “Who is going to sponsor it? Polident?”

He’ll be on the golf course, working on his slice

O.J. Simpson turns 50 today.

Float like a butterfly, sting like a beagle

So how would Tyson - who faces a hearing today to determine his boxing future - have fared against Muhammad Ali? “Don’t make me laugh,” the 55-year-old former world heavyweight champion, who retired in 1981, told The New Yorker. Pointing to his head, Ali added: “Tyson don’t have it. He don’t have it.”

And we can imagine how bad it’s gonna be

Speaking of athletic role models, remember that Dennis Rodman autobiography, “Bad as I Wanna Be”? Well, ABC has decided to make a television movie out of it, and is searching for a Madonna look-alike to reenact their reported tryst after she interviewed the basketball star for Vibe magazine. Filming begins in August.

So, she expected him to just brush it off?

Renowned sports artist LeRoy Neiman withdrew an offer to display $4.5 million worth of his work in a proposed museum to be dedicated to him in his hometown of St. Paul, Minn., after a local newspaper columnist criticized him thusly: “I think his art stinks.” Neiman called the comment “the roughest one I’ve ever fielded,” to which the writer, Katherine Lanpher, replied: “He seems awfully thin-skinned.”

Besides, he spotted everyone a few strokes

Fellow participants in last month’s Fore Play ‘97 charity golf tournament to benefit AIDS Project Los Angeles were none too thrilled that television star Jason Gedrick (“Murder One,” “EZ Streets”) showed up to play with chicken pox. One critic called Gedrick “tactless and selfish” in People magazine. But a spokesperson said he was in his second week of the pox and wasn’t a danger to others, adding: “His doctor gave him permission to attend the event.”

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino