Holyfield, Moorer Fight Apathy
There’s something missing as Evander Holyfield prepares for his first fight since his two showdown bouts with Mike Tyson. And it’s not just part of his ear.
Forget, for a moment, that Saturday night’s fight with Michael Moorer will unify two parts of the heavyweight title. Forget that Holyfield is seeking revenge against one of the two fighters ever to beat him.
Holyfield and Moorer simply have a tough act to follow in the wake of two of the biggest heavyweight title fights of all time.
“It makes this fight seem dead a little,” Holyfield said.
With the volatile and fearsome Tyson replaced with the introspective and cautious Moorer, it has been left mainly up to Holyfield to carry the promotion for the fight that will unify the WBA and IBF heavyweight titles.
Though he’s being paid well to do so - $20 million for the scheduled 12-round fight - even Holyfield has seemed to have trouble trying to raise Saturday’s fight to the level of his two fights with Tyson.
At Wednesday’s final prefight press conference, Holyfield left it up to his attorney, Jim Thomas, to try and add some excitement to the fight.
“This is the kind of fight all of you say we need in boxing,” Thomas said. “For once, all the action will be inside the ring.”
Showtime executive Jay Larkin, whose company is televising the fight via pay-per-view, took to berating the assembled media for not taking the fight as seriously as Holyfield’s fights with Tyson.
“What we don’t have is a car crash and because we don’t have a car crash, reporters come up to me and ask what’s wrong with this fight,” Larkin said.
Fight promoters say they expect to sell about 12,000 tickets for the fight, to be held at the 19,000-seat UNLV campus arena.
Three other title fights are on the card, with Ante Miller defending the WBA cruiserweight title against France’s Fabrice Tiozzo; Wilfredo Vazquez defending the WBA featherweight title against Genaro Rios; and IBF cruiserweight champion Uriah Grant defending his title against Imamu Mayfield.