Holyfield Should Hit Him With His Wallet

How do rich people get their sporting kicks?

Well, some of them drive fast cars. Some of them hunt lions. Some spear fish or hook marlin. Some race speedboats, others sail big yachts. Some climb the Matterhorn. Sky-diving interests some.

But most of them stick to 18 holes at the country club, or a set or two of tennis, maybe the occasional polo game. They might even try the community marathon or company picnic softball.

But can I ask you something? If you had, oh, say, $20 million, $30 million in the bank, a fleet of exotic cars, a mansion in Georgia, a safe full of blue-chip stocks and triple-A bonds, if you had guys to open car doors for you, valets to help you dress, secretaries to open and answer your mail, would your idea of a fun evening be a fistfight with a 6-foot 6-inch, 245-pound giant with fists the size of paving blocks and a chin to match? Would you schedule a fight with this guy--and then show up for it?

Rich men usually have coachmen or butlers to thrash people like that for them. Bodyguards.

If the rich want excitement, they go on safari. They get people who load their guns for them, and beat up the game and get them a head to put over their fireplaces.

By any yardstick, Evander Holyfield is a rich man. And rich men don’t usually put themselves in a position where they might get their noses broken, their eyes cut or their brains damaged. It used to be a staple of the cartoon in the paper to see a rich guy getting his top hat knocked off by a snowball. People like to see the rich get roughed up.

If so, they have a real chance of getting their jollies Saturday night at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. Two millionaires will show up there to try to beat the bejabbers out of one another.

It’s hard to understand why Evander Holyfield would want to. After all, Riddick Bowe is the champion. He has yet to pile up a lot of his potential money. But Evander has made his.

Moreover, Holyfield lost decisively to this man only a little less than a year ago. Who needs a sequel with the same plot? Wouldn’t he be better off going bowling or swimming or just hanging out?

Evander ponders the question.

“I made some mistakes in the first fight,” he says. “I was out to impress people. People had said, ‘Here, you can’t knock down a man 43 years old. You can’t hurt George Foreman even.’

“So, I was out to impress. I felt I needed to knock Riddick Bowe out to restore some gleam. I had fought Larry Holmes and they said, ‘Well, he can’t knock Larry Holmes out. He can’t knock anybody out.’

“I thought, ‘There’s no way this Bowe can last 12 rounds.’ But I didn’t set out to tire him out, I set out to knock him out.

“I wasn’t pleased with my fight. I said, ‘I’m going to go straight at him and knock him out.’ I didn’t fight a smart fight. I have to fight a smart fight and not get caught up in one of my stubborn fights.

“I didn’t use what I had. I have good legs, I have good hand speed and good agility. But I didn’t use my strengths. I fought like I had to knock him out, that was my only chance. I went away from my strengths.

“So, it ended up, he out-hustled me. He was the busiest fighter. He fought the fight I should have been fighting.

“I fought a big man’s fight. He fought a little man’s fight--and he had 40 pounds and several inches on me. I got our roles confused.

“You see, fighting’s not all about talent. When you get to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world, you have talent. All fighters have talent. All are able to fight. The difference can be in the one who thinks.”

How do you out-think a right to the mouth?

“You give some thought to not getting hit in the mouth,” Holyfield counters.

Because the Bowe fight was the only one he has lost as a pro, Evander is not convinced it was a trend, more a coincidence. That’s what’s making this man who should be involved with mergers, leveraged buyouts and stock options go into a business venture where he’ll bleed for his money and his dividends may run from a cauliflower ear to a detached retina to simple unconsciousness.

It used to be simpler to get and stay rich. All you had to do was buy railroads or run banks or clip coupons. John D. Rockefeller never even got a split lip. Evander Holyfield may have to visit his money in a walker.

* DESERT STORM

Oscar De La Hoya gets up from knockdown to score first-round knockout, and Michael Carbajal wins in five on card in Phoenix. C2