Holyfield Floors Moorer Five Times To Claim Ibf Title

Evander Holyfield came back from a biting to give Michael Moorer a beating.

Holyfield knocked Moorer down five times in a wild heavyweight title fight Saturday night before the fight was finally stopped with a battered Moorer sitting on his stool in the corner after the eighth round.

“He came to win,” said Holyfield, who added Moorer’s IBF heavyweight title to his WBA belt in one of the fiercest title fights in years. “When a guy comes to win, it’s always going to be a good fight.”

Moorer was valiant under tremendous pressure from Holyfield and held his own until he was put down once in the fifth round. Holyfield knocked him down twice in the seventh round and twice more in the eighth round.

“I was going to keep getting up,” Moorer said.

But ring doctor Flip Homansky wouldn’t give Moorer a chance to get up again. He looked at Moorer in the corner and told referee Mitch Halpern to wave the fight to a close.

“Every time he got knocked down he got up and answered my questions,” Halpern said. “The last time he did not answer my question.”

It was a gritty performance for Moorer, often called a reluctant warrior in the ring. And it brought him praise from the ultimate warrior, Holyfield, who was coming off two huge wins over Mike Tyson.

Like the last Tyson fight, Holyfield was bleeding again against Moorer. But this time it wasn’t because of a bite to his ear. Rather, it was from a head butt in the third round when Moorer was still very much in the fight and the two heavyweights were going toe-to-toe.

“There was blood in my eye, but I’ve been there before and I know what to do about it,” Holyfield said.

With a crowd of some 10,000 roaring at the nonstop action, Holyfield unleashed right hand after right hand against Moorer, who kept getting knocked down and kept getting up again.

Even after being knocked down for the fourth time, in the eighth round, Moorer motioned to Holyfield to bring it on. It was in sharp contrast to previous Moorer fights in which he had been roundly criticized for his unwillingness to mix it up.

Moorer was in the fight early, winning the first two rounds on two ringside scorecards and splitting them on a third. He wasn’t afraid to exchange punches with Holyfield, and sent the WBA champion staggering across the ring with a right hand late in the first round.

Moorer had been holding his own, rocking Holyfield with right hands and winning some early rounds. Holyfield was cut in the third round over the right eye and didn’t seem able to hurt Moorer in the early rounds.

Then the fight changed - on a right hand from Holyfield that caught Moorer directly on the chin.

Moorer fell to the canvas, then got to his knees quickly and finally got up at the count of seven. But the falls continued, once too often for the ring doctor.