At 5:45 (Eastern Time, United States), Evander Holyfield made boxing history in Zuric, Switzerland.
With a wide unanimous decision over Nikolai Valuev, Holyfield won the WBA Heavyweight Championship and became the first five-time champion, breaking his own four-time record, and also the oldest champion in boxing history at age 46, breaking George Foreman’s record of doing so at 45.
The victory was only tainted by the fact that Valuev didn’t come to fight and proved even more limited than previously thought as he spent almost the entire match following Holyfield around like a trained dog. Also, there was the minor detail that Valuev was considered by some to be a filler champion since the man who beat him, Ruslan Chagaev, had made a mockery of the title by never defending it against legitimate opponents and pulling out of his two biggest fights, claiming injury each time in order to become a “champion in recess” or something along those lines. He should have been stripped of that title long ago, but, nevertheless, Holyfield-Valuev was billed as a title fight.
The fight proceeded at a very slow, inactive pace, with Holyfield dancing circles around Valuev while the champion lumbered around the ring. When it came time to throw punches, it was all Holyfield, though he only landed around three or four power shots a round early on. Still, in comparison, Valuev did absolutely nothing, refusing to let his hands go.
Holyfield clearly won the first five rounds, then slowed a bit, but not enough to ever let Valuev back into the fight and certainly never enough to let him take control. Valuev made the rest of the fight closer, perhaps edging out two or three rounds along the way but still losing convincingly as the Swiss crowd chanted, “Holyfield, Holyfield, Holyfield,” carrying the legend to what appeared to be an incredibly easy victory.
After the final bell, Valuev embraced Holyfield and even went so far as to bow to him, admitting he lost to an all time great who is nearly a decade past his best…
All of this would have been the story today if Evander Holyfield didn’t get robbed in Zuric, Switzerland in one of the most disgusting decisions in boxing history.
By what can only be called corrupt officiating, Holyfield lost a majority decision, with the cards reading 114-114, 116-112 and 115-113. Giving Valuev three rounds would have been considered generous; four rounds, almost outrageous. Seven and Eight rounds? Absolutely baffling.
While a Holyfield victory would have hurt the sport by exposing the weakest heavyweight era perhaps of all time as being even weaker than previously thought, denying him the victory he earned cripples the division and hurts the entire sport in general.
The judges should be sought out and forced to hand over their licenses. They are Pierluigi Poppi (whose card of 116-112 probably warrants psychoanalysis), Mikael Hook (whose 115-114 is something from the bizarro world as well) and Guillermo Perez Pineda (a laughable even card of 114-114).
It was not a difficult fight to judge. If you give Valuev every round that was relatively close, he still loses handily on the cards. To find a decision this bad, you have to go back to the fight between Ben Rabah and Urango from 2006 in which Ben Rabah won about ten rounds and lost a unanimous decision. Before that? Probably the fight from 1999 in which Holyfield got an undeserved draw against Lennox Lewis after losing ten rounds.
It’s a sorry day to be a boxing fan when a 46-year-old man can’t get his hand raised after winning eight, nine rounds against an inactive and unwilling champion.
