Holyfield is a go-to guy when it comes to handicapping big fights. (Heczar Designs)
“He is getting better and better and I think he’s hitting the people a little harder than he used to hit them…”
Former heavyweight champion of the world Evander Holyfield was called the “Real Deal” for a reason. He could punch. He could box. He never turned tail and ducked a challenge, even when, as was often the case, he was the smaller man.
Having finally found a life after boxing that connects to boxing via his new promotional outfit, Real Deal Championship Title Boxing, Holyfield is a go-to guy when it comes to handicapping big fights; especially fights between giants in boxing’s marquee division.
No fight in that category is bigger than the bout between Anthony Joshua and Deontay Wilder.
Joshua holds the IBF, WBA, and WBO heavyweight titles. Wilder wears the WBC crown. The winner of their fight, with all four of the major heavyweight titles on the line, will be the first big man to unify the division since Lennox Lewis in 1999.
“I think it would be a great fight,” said Holyfield. “That is what boxing needed, a shot in the arm.”
A shot in the arm is better than a shot in the foot, but Holyfield, who is as comfortable with a macro as microanalysis, tends to favor his countryman.
“Both of the fighters are good fighters and I think with Deontay, he’s a guy that has got the base to do anything. He’s a good fighter.”
With his recent victory over Luis Ortiz, Wilder made believers of some of his harshest critics. What he does isn’t boxing by the book, but it works.
“I would say he (Wilder) has the best aggression I’ve seen,” continued Holyfield. “You’ve got to look at the person for where they’ve come from.
“Here’s a guy, he boxed because the fact is he wanted to help his kid. But how many people you think fighting look like him? He’s got a basketball body.
“He worked his skills and everything they thought he wasn’t going to be, he became. He is getting better and better and I think he’s hitting the people a little harder than he used to hit them.”
With the Klitschkos retired, with Tyson Fury returning to the fray, the formerly moribund heavyweight division is pulsing with possibility, so much so that even long shot operators like Luis Ortiz, Alexander Povetkin, Joseph Parker, and Dillian Whyte add more depth than padding to the proceedings.
And Evander Holyfield couldn’t be more pleased.
“I’m honored and I am proud that it (the heavyweight division) is back.”