Evander Holyfield has explained why he lost via knockout in 109 seconds when returning to boxing after a decade away to face Vitor Belfort.
The former cruiserweight and heavyweight champion took some punishment and many clean punches from Belfort, but that’s not the way he sees it.
In a delusional statement to the man who put on the event that tanked at the box office, Holyfield denied losing shockingly.
This defense comes despite 99 percent of those who watched the fight with their eyes open disagreeing.
“If you talk to Holyfield, what the world perceived to happen, didn’t happen,” Triller boss Ryan Kavanaugh told The MMA Hour.
“If you talk to Holyfield, Vitor apparently stepped on his foot, which I haven’t seen the footage yet. This made him trip, and that’s why it looked like he fell.
“He swung really hard, which we all know that he did, and that was the knockout swing. Had he connected with Vitor, Vitor would probably still be in the hospital today.
“He missed and put him into the ropes cause he swung so hard.
“Vitor came back aggressively, but Holyfield is a notoriously slow starter. His strategy is let me get hit, let me see how he punches, and then I’ll come out with my returns.
“If you look closely at that footage, he was blocking. He said he got hit once. If you ask Holyfield, [Vitor] got one hit, and the rest of it he was blocking.
“So the stoppage, in his opinion, was the problem. Because he’s like, ‘I would have come back, and I knew what I was doing.”
EVANDER HOLYFIELD CHARADE
Despite Kavanaugh and Holyfield’s attempts to play down the loss, that’s not how things went down with Belfort.
Holyfield took a clean shot and was hurt. He took more clean shots, and the referee stepped in. “The Real Deal” shouldn’t have been in there – plain and simple.
Kavanaugh and Holyfield are simply defending the performance because they have a contract for more fights.
If they admitted what we all know, Evander Holyfield would not be going anywhere near a ring again.
They’ll probably apply for a license in Florida again, which they will get, and the whole charade will play out again.
Sad.
The views expressed in this article are opinions of Phil Jay.
