Becoming Holyfield (11 page)

The next round was awful. I couldn't lift my left arm and Qawi seized the opportunity like a snapping turtle, raining punches on me and growing more confident with every unanswered blow. I think he smelled a knockout, because he seemed to get a second wind and his punches became stronger, a sure sign of the adrenaline that comes when you think victory is at hand if only you can mount one last effort. I'd never been in a position like this before, getting pummeled and not being able to do much about it. I was pretty sure I could get out of the round intact, but I was standing at the threshold of something I'd only experienced once before: fighting past the sixth. And I'd felt a lot better going into the seventh of that fight than I was going to in this one.

One of the things that happens when you get tired is that you tend to lose sight of things that might normally catch your attention. It's tough enough mounting the total concentration required to see punches coming before they're barely even thrown, and that much harder to also stay aware of how your opponent's defenses are shifting, whether his offensive style is taking on new notes, what your corner men are yelling and what kinds of things the ref is being particularly watchful for. When fatigue starts to set in, you find yourself changing your priorities, using what's left of your focus on the most important stuff, which is trying to land punches or, when things get really bad, at least trying to not get hit too much by the other guy's. What you don't need is distractions that throw you off. At one point, I hurled a series of about a dozen huge blows at Qawi while he was hunched over twisting left and right trying to avoid them and unable to strike back. At least I thought they were huge. As soon as he got away from me, he held his hands out to his sides, grinned and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “I barely felt those.” And he looked like he hadn't. I knew what he was doing, which is what he'd been doing all week during press conferences: trying to get my goat and throw me off my game. It surprised me for a second, because up until then he'd stuck to the business of boxing. But I got over it quickly, knowing it was just a tactic.

Another thing that happened soon after was that I didn't hear the bell ending Round Six. Qawi didn't hear it either, and this time neither did the ref. We just kept on swinging until someone started frantically banging on the bell. Qawi and I finally heard it, but the ref still hadn't, and he seemed surprised when we suddenly stopped fighting and turned away from each other. You only get a minute of rest between rounds, and those seconds can be more precious than gold. To lose a handful because of a silly thing like a cheap bell was kind of galling.

And speaking of galling, it was easy to see that Qawi was getting pretty annoyed at how the crowd was on my side and kept yelling my name. But I think the anger is part of what kept him going. (Eighteen years later, when he was inducted into the Boxing Hall of Fame, an interviewer asked him what the worst memory of his entire career was. He answered, “The politics surrounding the…Holyfield fight. He was the up and comer and it was in his hometown.”) I needed something to keep me going, too, but it wasn't anger—I never got angry in the ring—it was my faith. Before, I'd tried to just put God in my mind, but now my prayers got specific, and I remember exactly what I was thinking:
Lord, please don't let me quit! Help me keep going!
It helped me a lot calling on God that way, knowing he was behind me. I actually felt a little more energized.

Truth is, though, by the middle of the fight both of us were running out of gas in a hurry. Our punches were nowhere near as effective as they should have been, and we were doing whatever we could to try to win. Qawi was throwing low blows all over the place, and the ref just wasn't seeing them. So I gave him back one for every one he threw, but if he felt them he didn't show it, and just kept on laying them on me. He was so tired there wasn't much else he could do, and I think that some of those low shots happened only because he was having trouble lifting his hands to hit me higher. A couple of times each round one of us would rally and throw a flurry, then the other one would do the same. To my amazement, I was in better condition than him. My punches were more effective, and my recovery following a flurry was faster. At some point in the bout it turned from fighting to survival for Qawi, and I started to think about the best way to win. In my career I'd never thought about anything other than trying to score a knockout, but I had enough of my wits about me to know that, before too long, I might need to start thinking seriously about just scoring as many points as possible. Qawi may have been tired but his resilience was almost beyond belief.

The fight was being scored on a “must” system. The winner of a round gets ten points and the loser nine or fewer. No tie rounds are possible. If there's a knockout or TKO, the scores don't matter. But if it goes the distance and you didn't pay enough attention to scoring points because you were so intent on a knockout, you could end up losing a fight you might have won if you'd handled things differently.

While Qawi was resorting to low blows, I had a different strategy, which was to keep working on his left shoulder. It looked to me like he might be having a problem with it. When I got back to my corner Lou told me he'd noticed it, too, and he started shouting, “Hit the target! Hit the target!” at me from the corner to keep reminding me. Spectators probably thought he meant Qawi, but he was talking about the shoulder. It might not seem to you that the shoulder is as vulnerable a spot as the face or belly, but get it sore enough and you essentially take your opponent's entire arm out of play. He won't be able to hit well from that side and he won't be able to defend it, either.

The more tired I got, the harder it became to fight outside and use my reach. Qawi and I were both hunched over a lot, our ears practically touching, trading blows that lacked the power of a fully extended arm behind them. The first half of the eighth was good for me, but when I tried to take a momentary breather on the ropes after a series of combinations that had Qawi on the defensive, he exploded and was all over me. I hadn't expected it, and he got in a lot of good shots before I gathered myself and fended him off. So much for breathers in this bout. As much as both of us needed one, neither was willing to let the other have it.

At one point I grabbed Qawi around the head and held him close for a few seconds, not allowing him any room to haul back. When he broke free he started miming a warning to me not to do that again, and while he was in the middle of it I flicked out my left hand and popped him on the cheek. He didn't like that at all, and came after me with a vengeance. I grabbed his head a few more times and I could tell it was getting to him, which was fine. Believe it or not, getting your opponent angry is not a bad thing. Maybe you've wondered why fighters often goad their opponents in the days and weeks leading up to a fight, baiting them and trying to humiliate them in public. What could be the point of angering a guy who's about to try to knock your head off?

The point is that you can't do your best if you're mad. Sure, a little adrenaline is good now and then. It helps give you strength for a good shot or two when your energy level is down. But, for the most part, anger has a way of taking over and making you forget your plan and your techniques. It's easy to spot when a fighter loses his temper and gets reckless. He wants to smash his opponent's face in so bad he just wades in and starts throwing wild punches. But he usually ends up leaving himself wide open, and if the other guy is patient and keeps his head, he can find that opening and exploit it. One thing you'll notice about most great fighters is that they're almost methodical in the ring. They stay within their game and they don't get drawn into the other guy's style. They may look fierce and determined and serious but they don't look angry. Boxing has been called the “sweet science” and it's usually the “scientific” fighters who become champs.

Qawi had been trying to get my dander up for the whole week before the fight. He told the press I was a baby, that I wasn't ready to fight him, and that I was “mediocre.” He told them in detail everything he was going to do to take me apart in this fight. I have to admit I was embarrassed. After all, we were in my hometown, and everyone was reading all of this stuff in the papers and watching it on television. But I try not to react to things like that or talk trash myself—it's the way I was raised and there's no percentage in it anyway—and I think it bothered him that he wasn't getting to me.

And I was pretty sure now that his low blows weren't so much trying to hurt me as to provoke me. I could've complained and started shouting at the ref to pay attention, but as soon as I did, I might as well lay down and give up the fight. Instead, I just concentrated on the job at hand, and when I saw the opportunity to tweak Qawi a little by slapping him in the middle of his lecture, I took it. In the next round, I had him against the ropes for a few seconds and worked him over pretty good, and when he came out of it, he smiled and shrugged again, as though I hadn't hurt him. More mind games.

There was another distraction as well. Both of us were perspiring like crazy. It was a little on the warm side in the arena, and we were working so hard the sweat was flying off with every blow. The canvas was soaking wet, and as the bout wore on it was becoming difficult to maintain sure footing. In the tenth my foot slipped completely and I went down, hard. I got up right away and because it was a slip there was no count. The ref motioned for the canvas to be wiped, and a few towels came out at the edges when we were on the opposite side of the ring, but the whole floor looked like a damp T-shirt and there wasn't much that could be done about it. As the fight wore on and we kept perspiring, it got even worse.

I'd never felt that bad physically during a fight. Just to raise my arms took everything I had, and it felt like I had no muscle left at all, that it had just gotten eaten away and I was moving on pure willpower. I couldn't afford to coast—in a close match, the decision will almost always go to the reigning champ, not the challenger—but it was all I could do to keep moving. My lungs were burning like they'd never burned during all that conditioning Tim had put me through, way beyond the point where I would have fallen off the stationary bike and curled up on the gym floor.

It wasn't lost on me that I was in Atlanta, that the audience was full of my friends and family and supporters. There were people here who'd been with me from the very beginning, people who'd opened their hearts and their wallets because they had faith that I could be the champion. All of those Olympic greats had shown up to be with me, the fight was being broadcast on the most popular sports show in the world, and I felt like I was ten seconds away from replacing that guy who falls off the ski jump during the opening credits of every episode. And it was only the eleventh round.

The good news was that Qawi was worse off than I was. He wasn't covering himself as well as he usually did, and for a great defensive fighter like him to keep letting down his guard was a sure sign he was fading. He could take a punch, that was for sure, but nobody could take as many as I was throwing and not feel the effect.

A pattern had developed and it continued in the later rounds. We'd jab away at each other for a while, then I'd get my strength back and put everything I had into a series of combinations, instinctively trying to end the fight even though I kind of knew that wasn't going to happen. Then Qawi would rally and come back at me while I'd cover up and try to absorb the blows with my arms. Through it all, I don't think he took a single step backward, ever. No matter how many times I hit him or how hard, he just kept coming, like one of those little windup toys that bangs into walls over and over. While I could stop him for a few seconds by throwing a hail of punches, as soon as my strength gave out there he was again, moving forward, looking like I'd never touched him.

In the eleventh, he got to the crowd, too. They'd been on my side all along but started to sense that there was something real special about this guy, about how he just wouldn't quit, and they began chanting his name. That's all fine and well, but did it mean they were seeing more heart and fight in him than in me? Was he showing them more determination? Were the judges seeing it that way as well? I couldn't let that happen. I went into Round Twelve swinging with everything I had, determined to put Qawi down.

It was a good plan, but what actually happened was that I hit him until I couldn't hit him anymore, then he shook it off and came right back after me, same as before. I just couldn't believe this guy. No matter what I did, I couldn't put him down and couldn't make him back off. And I'd spent so much energy trying that all I could do was cover up and try to catch my breath when he took his turn as the aggressor.

But I was even surer now that, even though we were kind of taking turns, we were far from equal. I was throwing a greater number of punches than he was, and landing a lot more as well. The idea of knocking him flat and scoring a knockout was starting to look like wishful thinking, so I tried to concentrate on making sure I was the one getting off the most shots and controlling the action. It was critical that the judges see me as the winner of each round, because the way this fight was going, a decision on points was the only hope I had. The crowd shifting loyalties this late in the fight—that wasn't good.

In the fourteenth round I noticed something. The crowd hadn't been chanting “Qa-wi! Qa-wi!” They were chanting “Ho-ly! Ho-ly!” They were still on my side, urging me to give it all I had, pouring whatever energy they could generate right down into me. Then, when the bell rang to start the fifteenth round, I felt my heart soar. I could practically see God smiling and hear him whispering in my ear, “You did it!” Even a bulldozer running over me couldn't stop me from going the distance now. Despite my weariness, I was happy. Win or lose, I'd passed the most significant milestone of my professional career. I now knew for a dead certainty that I could go the distance against a relentless opponent, and my critics knew it, too. Just a few more minutes of reaching farther into myself than I ever had, leaving absolutely nothing left at the end, and it would be over. Whatever it took, I was determined to go down to the wire swinging as hard as I possibly could.