Evander Holyfield Beyond the Glory: The Warrior That Couldn't Quit

If I was going to do a top ten list of Heavyweight Champions that don't get enough respect. Evander Holyfield would not only be on my list but towards the top my list. Because all he did was win and beat the best boxers that were out there to be beat. Including people like Riddick Bowe, probably the most dominating Heavyweight of the 1990s, George Foreman when every one else was being knocked out by him, Larry Holmes the former Heavyweight Champion of the World, the best Heavyweight of the 1980s. Michael Dokes another former Heavyweight Champion, Ray Mercer, another Heavyweight Champion, to me Evander and Michael Moorer are in this same category. Both former Cruiserweights, who've never gotten the respect they deserve for, even being Heavyweights, let alone for being World Heavyweight Champions. Which is exactly what they both were, former Heavyweight Champions who weren't even respected as Heavyweights, let alone World Heavyweight Champions. And a lot of this has to do with the fact that Evander was never seen as a Heavyweight but a Cruiserweight and not the true thing.

All Evander did was beat everyone, well everyone that mattered, he lost a few fights late in his career. The losses he had in his early and late 40's, he probably should've retired after the Lennox Lewis fight early last decade or in the late 90s and another reason why Evander doesn't get the respect he deserves. Is because as he was coming up and becoming a great Heavyweight. Including beating he guy for the Heavyweight Championship in 1990, the guy who gave Mike Tyson's first career loss in James Douglas. The guy who was dominating the Heavyweight Division, Mike Tyson was on the downhill of his career, even though he was only in his early 20's. Because Iron Mike had his rape case in 1992, gets convicted, serves three years in prison, when he should've been entering the prime of his career. And even fighting Evander to see who fights Buster Douglas for the Heavyweight Championship or getting his rematch.

The fight that I most remember about Evander, is actually a loss he had in 1992 against Riddick Bowe. And I was only sixteen at the time about a month away from my seventeenth birthday, a Junior in High School. But in November of 1992 he fights Riddick Bowe to defend his World Championship and he was fighting a bigger stronger man and was getting beaten the whole fight. But he would refuse to go down and kept fighting back and landing his own big shots and wasn't going to lose World Championship by getting knocked out or quitting. He forced Riddick to beat him in that fight.