Becoming Holyfield (16 page)

But Mike's trial was scheduled to start in February. There was no way to know if he'd be found innocent or guilty, and if guilty, whether he'd go to jail. Everybody, including Don King, knew we were paralyzed and that the contracts were now meaningless.

The richest fight in history, and the most eagerly anticipated since Ali versus Frazier, was off.

I
t was a terrible blow for my fight against Mike Tyson to get canceled. It wasn't just the money, but the fact that I wasn't going to be able to defend my title against the number-one contender. Not only that, it was also too late for a rematch against George Foreman. We decided to see if we could quickly make a deal with a legitimate contender who was in line for a title shot and could be in shape by November 23.

An Italian named Francesco Damiani fit the bill. He was a big strong guy with a good record who wasn't terribly fast but had great punching power. While that deal was being made I found some sparring partners whose styles resembled Damiani's and went to work getting ready for him. Damiani showed up in Atlanta well in advance of the fight to get acclimated and participate in some promotion. During one press conference he asked if he could come watch me work out in the gym.

“Sure,” I said. “I'll be sparring tomorrow morning.”

Damiani came to the gym and watched me for about an hour, then got up and left without saying a word to anybody. That night he was on a plane back to Italy.

“They said he got injured,” Lou Duva told me. “Fell out of the ring.”

“Injured? What ring? I was the one who worked out today!”

Lou just shrugged:
What can I tell you?
“Thing is, we got the arena, paid for all the ads in advance, TV time is booked…”

“Everything except an opponent.”

“Yeah. Short notice, but I got a couple of ideas.”

It had to be a quality fighter, I insisted. I'd rather call the whole thing off, even though it would cost us a fortune, than fight someone who wasn't a legitimate contender. And he had to be in fight shape, too.

Lou nodded his agreement. “I got a guy in mind.”

That was good news. So why did Lou look troubled? “Who?”

He took a breath before answering. “Bert Cooper.”

Oh, boy. Now I knew why Lou was less than thrilled. Cooper's style was wildly different from Damiani's, whom I'd been training for ever since the Tyson bout got canceled. Where Damiani was big, slow, hard-punching and relatively young, Cooper was small, fast as lightning and a very crafty veteran of the ring. Damiani may or may not have been scared of me—we never did find out for sure why he'd left town—but Cooper definitely wouldn't be. If we were to give him this shot to fight for all three world titles, he would go at me the same way I'd gone at Buster Douglas.

“What do you want to do?” Lou asked.

I wanted to fight Bert. That wasn't the problem. I just wanted enough time to prepare properly. Boxing loves an underdog, and there had already been two major upsets in the last year. I didn't want to be on the wrong end of a third one.

I got an idea. “Let's do it,” I told Lou. “But let's move it to Atlanta.”

It was a mad scramble but we booked the Omni in Atlanta, site of my first world championship, and sold it out almost immediately. I wound up TKOing Bert in the seventh, but it was far from a cakewalk. He was so hungry and so aggressive that I was having trouble staying outside and boxing, and kept finding myself brawling instead. A minute into Round Three he caught me with a big right hand and wobbled me a little, then followed it up right away with a series of fast, hard shots. I still hadn't gotten my balance back after that right and was up against the ropes just trying to cover up and survive while he kept up the barrage. I wasn't doing it very well, and pretty soon he had me off balance and launched a tremendous, arcing right hook toward the left side of my head. I put up an elbow to try to stop it, and kind of half did, but he'd thrown it so hard and had so much body into it that the momentum knocked me right into the ropes. I felt myself going down, fast.

Something lit up in my brain, like a big neon sign saying, “You haven't gone down once in your entire pro career!” It was true. I'd never been put on the canvas. I saw that sign and in a split second resolved that I wasn't going to go down now if I had to tear a muscle staying on my feet. I almost did, too. I hit the ropes face-first, and just before my left glove touched the canvas, I caught the top rope with my right and managed to hold myself up. It twisted me around into an awkward position, left elbow on the bottom rope, but no part of me ever touched the mat.

I bounced back up as quickly as I could and got into fighting stance, but referee Mills Lane was pumping a hand at me and counting out loud: “Three! Four! Five…!”

He'd ruled it a knockdown and it was the right call. It was also the first time I'd ever been counted. I dropped my arms and used the mandatory eight count to get my breath back. As soon as we resumed, Bert went after me again, big time. The HBO commentators started shouting that I was in trouble, that Bert had almost knocked me down again, and it was just about that time that I got reoriented and wobbled
him
a few times. It was an exciting round and the crowd had really come alive. They hadn't expected to see me so close to getting knocked out.

In the fifth I went after Bert and landed a series of very effective uppercuts. But it wore me out, and by the middle of the round I was too tired to throw big punches. Bert had taken a lot of blows, but when he realized I was fatigued, he called up his reserves and started hitting me hard. I covered up, trying to buy time to get my strength back, when all of a sudden Lane called for time. He then came over to me and lifted up my right glove to have a look. There was a boomerang-shaped cut about three inches long right through the leather, exposing the padding inside.

I got a good rest sitting in my corner while Lou Duva changed the glove. “Haven't seen this since Ali and Cooper,” he said. That was a different Cooper, though: Henry. And it happened between rounds, probably because Ali's trainer, Angelo Dundee, was trying to get Ali some extra time to rest. Mine was a result of those uppercuts I'd hit Bert with. I'd really clocked him and don't know how he managed to stay standing. I'd opened a cut above his right eye, too, but his guys weren't allowed to tend to him while he waited for my glove to be changed. That had to wait until after we resumed and finished the round.

It wasn't until the end of the seventh round that I saw some openings and got a fresh burst of energy at the same time. I hit Bert with everything I had, as hard as I could, and it was working. The more I hit, the less he was able to defend himself, and that energized me even more. I had to knock him out, because if I didn't get him down soon, it was back to the corners and a rest I didn't want him to have. I knew I was taking a chance of completely draining myself with this all-out effort and leaving nothing for another round, but I was too committed to stop now, and I couldn't slow down, either, because I didn't know how much time was left in the round.

I was raining a series of unanswered rat-a-tat shots, and at the exact moment that I thought Lane should step in and stop the fight, he did just that. It was no surprise. He was one of the best refs who ever lived, and his judgment was absolutely uncanny. Fighters loved to have him in the ring because they knew that he would be completely fair and wouldn't miss anything.

I got my win, the hometown crowd got more than its money's worth, and I was glad we'd decided to go ahead with it. The best part for me was that, even though I'd gotten drawn into fighting Cooper's fight and not my own, I was able to make adjustments and win.

But, like I said, it was no cakewalk.

Sure enough, in the postfight interview right there in the ring, Larry Merchant turned from me to Lou and asked him if we were going to “go on ice” until Mike Tyson's difficulties were resolved. Lou set him straight on that score and told him we weren't sitting around waiting for anybody. “We'd like to fight Tyson tomorrow if we could,” Lou said, “but if he's not available, then we'll go on to somebody else.”

Mike wasn't available. The following February he was found guilty of rape and two related charges, and the month after that he was sentenced to six years in prison. So, as Lou had put it, we went on to someone else, and that someone else was Larry Holmes, one of the greatest heavyweights ever. He'd held on to the world title for an incredible seven years and had lost only three fights since turning pro nineteen years before, two to Michael Spinks and one to—wouldn't you know it—Mike Tyson. After that last loss he hung it up for four years but then decided to come back, and he did it in style, beating all six of his opponents. Three days before Mike was found guilty, Larry won a decision against Ray Mercer, who'd been unbeaten to that point.

Four months after that, I beat Larry in Las Vegas in the third successful defense of my titles.

Still, 1992 was to prove a hard year for me.

My older brother Willie was one of those quietly special people a few of us are blessed to have in our lives. He was the artist in the family, and although he never really fulfilled his creative promise, he had something of the artist in his heart. As a child I didn't know my father, but between Willie and my coach, Carter Morgan, that important role managed to get filled.

Willie, whom we all called “Bo,” was fiercely protective of all of us, especially my brother Bernard and me, the two youngest. I have a hazy memory of one incident, but Bernard remembers it more clearly and has told the story often. He and I were walking home from the local golf course where we caddied on weekends. Two neighborhood roughnecks, who were notorious for hanging around the golf course and beating up and robbing caddies, came up to us on the street and demanded the money we'd just made. Neither Bernard nor I was ready to hand it over just like that, and we put up some resistance, but there wasn't any doubt that we were going to lose the money. The only question was how painful we were going to make it for ourselves.

That's when Bo showed up. “What's going on?” he asked.

Bernard pointed at one of the thugs. “They're gonna take our money!” he said.

Bo looked at the other two kids, each of whom was the same size as him. “That so?” he said.

One of the kids stepped up and said, “And what're you gonna do about it?”

Willie stared at him for a second, then turned to Bernard and me. “You two go on home,” he said.

I didn't like the sound of that. Willie was pretty tough, but he was so good-natured he never got into fights, and taking on two big guys wasn't something I wanted to see him try. A few bucks wasn't important next to seeing my brother take a beating. “Come on, Bo,” I said. “Isn't worth it.”

“I said, you go on home.”

Reluctantly, Bernard and I turned and walked away.

I don't know what happened—Willie never said, and he wasn't the type to brag about things like that—but those two guys never so much as looked at Bernard or me again.

After I became a professional fighter, Bo became an important member of my team. He laid out training plans for me and was always pushing me to get in the best condition possible. When it started to look like I'd be going up against Tyson pretty soon, he stepped up the workload even more. A lot of guys tried to get me to do one more rep or another minute on the treadmill, and I usually just did what I thought was best. But when it was Bo standing over me on the weight machine yelling, “Gimme two more!” I gave him two more. I loved my older brother with all my heart and I loved having him around.

Willie lived with his fiancée, Renee, and her kids. One night about 2
A.M
. someone started banging on the door of their house. Renee's older son Dante got up and went to the door, and when he saw that it was his uncle Michael, Renee's brother, he let him in.

Michael pushed Dante aside and stormed across the living room to a bedroom where Renee's younger son Larry was sleeping. He started banging on the door and yelling something about the kid having stolen part of his income tax refund. Larry got up and opened the door just as Willie came out of his bedroom in time to see Michael point a shotgun at Renee's son.

“If I don't get my money back,” Michael was shouting, “somebody's gonna be dodging bullets!”

“Michael!” Willie said. “Are you nuts? Get that gun offa him!” Willie stepped forward. “Come on, man,” he said. “You ain't gonna shoot anybody.” Willie and Michael were good friends, and Willie thought that some calm talk might defuse the situation.

But Michael whirled around and pointed the shotgun at Willie. “You lookin' for somea this, too?”

His words were slurred and he was unsteady on his feet. Willie, probably realizing Michael was very drunk, took another step forward, his hands up and his palms facing out. “You don't need to do this, Mike,” he said softly, soothingly. “Come on now. You been drinkin', you ain't thinkin' straight—come on now.”

Michael, weaving unsteadily, pushed the barrel up against Willie's chest.

“Now you know you ain't gonna shoot me,” Willie said, “so why don't you just—”

The gun went off with a deafening blast, and just like that, in front of Renee and her kids, my brother Bo's chest exploded and he was dead.

Renee was in a bad state of shock when she called me. I dressed quickly and got into the car to drive to Willie's house. It was raining, and the flashing lights from the police cars were reflecting from every surface, disorienting me. When I got out of the car the cops recognized me. One of them started to wave me through the line they'd set up, but a higher-ranking officer overrode him. “You need to stay out here, Mr. Holyfield,” he said.