All-time great Evander Holyfield sure accomplished a heck of a lot during his long boxing career. Undisputed cruiserweight king, unified heavyweight champ, puller of huge upsets, and the distinction as being the only fighter to have won a world title across three separate decades: the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. All this and more belong in Holyfield\u2019s trophy cabinet.<\/p>\n
Holyfield vs. Ruiz: The First Fight<\/p>\n
And it was on this day a quarter of a century ago when \u201cThe Real Deal,\u201d or if you prefer Evander\u2019s other ring nickname, \u201cWarrior,\u201d made more boxing history. At this time, a 37-year-old, somewhat grizzled ring warrior, Holyfield, refusing to retire despite all he had done, met John Ruiz in Las Vegas. Lennox Lewis had vacated the WBA belt, and Holyfield and \u201cQuiet Man\u201d Ruiz fought for it.<\/p>\n
Holyfield still looked magnificent physically, yet his skills had eroded. Ruiz, best known at the time for having been brutally wiped out inside a round by David Tua, this back in 1996, was a good fighter, one who didn\u2019t necessarily excel at one particular thing but did all things pretty well. And Ruiz was the younger man at age 28.<\/p>\n
Holyfield was 36-4-1(25), Ruiz was 36-3(27).<\/p>\n
Ruiz, who was looking to make some history of his own by becoming the first-ever Latino to win the heavyweight title, was by far the more aggressive fighter of the two. Holyfield had a good round three, when he hurt Ruiz and seemed to have him in some trouble, but aside from that, it appeared as though Ruiz was banking the rounds. It was far from a great fight, and it was apparent how much Holyfield had slipped as a fighter.<\/p>\n
After 12 decent but not at all spectacular rounds, the three judges had it close, very close. Holyfield edged it via scores of 114-113, 114-113, while the third official had it 116-112 for Ruiz. And, boy, did Ruiz cry robbery afterwards.<\/p>\n
Ruiz Cries Robbery After Defeat<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was highway robbery without a gun,\u201d Ruiz insisted, with plenty of people agreeing with him. \u201cI won the fight, and he knows I won the fight. I was definitely robbed. I had control of the fight. I am very surprised by the judges\u2019 decision. I don\u2019t know what fight they saw.\u201d<\/p>\n
But Holyfield was having none of it, with the now four-time heavyweight boss stating how he \u201cfelt like he should be champion now,\u201d this as the decision in his return fight with Lewis didn\u2019t go his way when Holyfield believed it should have done. \u201cThe decision against Lewis just didn\u2019t swing my way. If you look at the fight and judge it, you\u2019ll see that I controlled the fight,\u201d Holyfield continued.<\/p>\n
So, while he was arguing over the decision that went against him in a previous fight, Holyfield was also plotting his next move. And so it would be that he and Ruiz would meet again, the two even boxing a trilogy. Fight two saw Ruiz get his revenge with a points win of his own, while the rubber match was scored a draw.<\/p>\n
A less-than-thrilling heavyweight trilogy, to be sure, but not one without some drama, some action, and a fair amount of controversy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"All-time great Evander Holyfield sure accomplished a heck of a lot during his long boxing career. Undisputed cruiserweight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-62711","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62711","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=62711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}