{"id":275655,"date":"2025-11-21T15:42:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:42:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/275655\/"},"modified":"2025-11-21T15:42:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T15:42:07","slug":"evander-holyfield-fought-over-15-world-champions-but-says-one-man-stood-out-as-the-best-he-faced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/275655\/","title":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield fought over 15 world champions but says one man stood out as the best he faced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/evander-holyfield\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Evander Holyfield<\/a> shared the ring with a number of legendary names throughout his iconic career.<\/p>\n<p>After becoming undisputed at cruiserweight, \u2018The Real Deal\u2019 moved up to the banner division and it didn\u2019t take him long to make an impact, claiming the undisputed heavyweight crown after a victory over Buster Douglas.<\/p>\n<p>He then picked up wins over fellow greats such as <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/george-foreman\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">George Foreman<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/larry-holmes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Holmes<\/a>, Riddick Bowe and <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/mike-tyson\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mike Tyson<\/a>, whilst also suffering defeats to <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/lennox-lewis\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lennox Lewis<\/a> and James Toney.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/news\/holyfield-on-best-heavyweight-in-history\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Having fought over 15 world champions during his 57 fights<\/a>, Holyfield says one man stands out the best fighter he faced, revealing to <a href=\"https:\/\/ringmagazine.com\/en\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ring Magazine<\/a> that the honour goes to Bowe.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI would say Bowe. I had three fights with Bowe. He was very competitive, he was always going to be in shape when he fought me. Then\u2026 I would say Qawi.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxrec.com\/wiki\/index.php\/Evander_Holyfield_vs._Riddick_Bowe_(1st_meeting)\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">The first meeting with Bowe took place in November 1992, with \u2018Big Daddy\u2019 claiming a unanimous decision<\/a> win to hand Holyfield the first defeat of his career.<\/p>\n<p>Holyfield did manage to get revenge with a majority decision victory one year later, but Bowe ensured he had the last laugh with an eighth round TKO win in their third and final meeting, bringing to an end their epic trilogy.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/features\/ranking-the-holyfield-vs-bowe-fights\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">loss to Holyfield in their second fight was the only defeat that Bowe suffered in his professional career<\/a>, with the former world heavyweight champion finishing with 43 wins to his name, making it clear exactly why Holyfield views him as his best ever opponent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield shared the ring with a number of legendary names throughout his iconic career. After becoming undisputed&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":240412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-275655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275655","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=275655"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/275655\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/240412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=275655"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=275655"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=275655"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}