admin
MANCHESTER. — A blanket of Manchester drizzle falls as an audience of 25 homeless people and passers-by watch the broad-shouldered man squeeze his 6ft 2in frame through the narrow doorway between a fried chicken shop and a Middle Eastern takeaway.
“He’s the guy who bit off Mike Tyson’s ear, isn’t he?” says one watcher. An older man, dressed in filthy jeans and a tattered beanie hat, has more accurate memories. “No, it was the other way round,” he says. “Hell, I remember him fighting Riddick Bowe, man!”
It is a poignant reminder of the glory days for former world heavyweight boxing champion American Evander Holyfield, when his rivalry with Tyson was the most exciting in sport and the ebb and flow of his trilogy against Bowe was electrifying.
Memories have faded and the bright lights of Las Vegas, where Holyfield twice dazzled and defeated Tyson in the professional ring, are a world away. Most of Holyfield’s £150 million career earnings are gone, frittered away on gambling, funding three expensive divorces and maintenance payments for some of his 11 children. For the past month, Holyfield’s life has consisted of visits to homeless centres and soup kitchens across the UK, from Gateshead to Burnley, Huddersfield to Hull, volunteering his time “to give back to those who helped my mother feed me as a child”.
Then he hosts “an evening with Evander Holyfield,” at hotels and conference centres on the outskirts of town as he tries to claw back some of his lost fortune.
Now a grandfather who will be 50 in 10 days’ time, Holyfield says he was preyed on by “parasites and leeches” who took advantage of him to grab a slice of his fortune.
“I think it was my lack of education,” he says in his Alabama drawl.
“You make a lot of money but you don’t know how money works, you don’t know how to calculate. I gave more than I should have. I gave, gave, gave. People talk you into doing things that you’re not accustomed to doing. My mother didn’t read, my father didn’t read. They worked. If you told them to do something, they did it. Nobody told me I had to ask questions. Boxers are smarter today, though, nobody gonna rip off the Klitschkos.”
A year ago, Holyfield still hankered to get into the ring with one of the Klitschko brothers, Vitaly and Wladimir. Both refused, not wishing to destroy one of their heroes and the boxing world released a sigh of relief. Wladimir Klitschko defended his four heavyweight titles against former Olympic champion Alexander Povetkin in Moscow.
Despite a £21 million purse, it was a contest holding little interest outside eastern Europe, the challenger a virtual unknown and Klitschko unable to captivate the public in the same way that Holyfield and Tyson once did, with all their foibles. Holyfield spent the evening in Bury on the latest stop of his speaking tour, telling the rollicking and cautionary tale of his life to an audience who had paid £70 each to hear it. The price of the ticket included dinner and a comedian.
Holyfield’s story has many punchlines, but few of them are funny. — AFP.
Online Reporter