After his upset win over Ray Mercer on February 7, 1992, ex champ Larry Holmes signed to fight Evander Holyfield for the heavyweight title. After his tougher than expected bout with Bert Cooper in November of 1991, many were calling Evander a fraud, and said he hadn’t beaten anyone of note since knocking out
Buster Douglas in 1990. Those cries only got louder when he agreed to fight another 42 year old ex champ in Holmes, but Evander was only doing what his managers said. He would have been fighting Ray Mercer, but he was upset by Holmes, and thus the fight was made.
I went to the Pavilion in Cherry Hill, New Jersey to see this on on closed circuit, but wasn’t expecting much. The twelve round snooze fest from Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, went pretty much as I had suspected. Evander was the aggressor, and Holmes laid in the corner like he had with Mercer, but it didn’t work this time. The only damage done to Holyfield was a severe cut suffered when Larry hit his eye with his elbow. The champ won an easy twelve round decision, did the best he could in a difficult situation, and went home to Atlanta still the champion.
After the bout, the critics starting with the same crap, but this time Evander had agreed to fight a top contender in November. More than likely it would be Riddick Bowe, who only needed to defeat Pierre Coetzer in July to seal the deal. It was a bout the boxing public craved, and I was no different.
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