Evander Holyfield: The Boxer who will not retire
Recently a news item surfaced regarding Evander Holyfield’s comeback fight in a few months time against Sherman Williamson. The interesting thing about this is the fact that Holyfield is 48 years old and a lot of people are saying that he should have quit the sport ten years ago. Yet despite his age and diminishing skills, he keeps on boxing. This never quit attitude seems to stem from his childhood and he looks all set to box until he physically cannot anymore. Why is it that some athletes just do not know when to say enough is enough and bow out gracefully?
Evander Holyfield was born on October 19th, 1962 in Alabama. As a young child he was very athletic, first taking part in American football and then moving on to boxing. While he was playing football as a child, he could not seem to get the rhythm going and almost quit the sport. It was on his mother’s insistence that he continued to play football because his mother told him to never give up on his dreams and never quit. From there, even though he had a late surge in the game, he took up boxing instead. Over the years he started to impress with his boxing skills and because he was smaller than a lot of his opponents, he had to outperform them at every turn. His natural fighting skills and ability to knock out much larger fighters got him noticed in the right circles. In 1984, Holyfield turned professional and over the following years started to notch up some impressive victories for himself. Holyfield, over an impressive career has been the only boxer to win the heavyweight championship 5 times, more than any other boxer in history.
Holyfield refuses to retire from the sport of boxing. He is all set to face Sherman Williamson in November of this year and the fight is being fought for a number of reasons. Firstly it seems Holyfield has some financial problems, that is why a lot of commentators say that he keeps on boxing till this day. A lot of people, doctors and boxing analysts say that Holyfield should have quit the sport a long time ago. Boxing is brutal on a person’s health and one only has to look at the state of Muhammad Ali at the moment to realise what boxing can do to a person. George Foreman, also a former boxer, has found himself a very lucrative side business; selling a line of barbeque grills. So Holyfield decided to jump on the bandwagon and has started selling his own line of barbeque grills as well. This is a very sad aspect of his career, he firstly does not want to retire from the sport and secondly he is trying to copy another former boxer’s successful line of products.
It seems the sport of boxing and the aging Holyfield need each other as it seems to be the only thing that Holyfield knows how to do in his life. Without boxing, the onetime great boxer would be lost at sea and have no source of income,. There are two ways to look at this scenario; one is that if Holyfield would have retired ten years ago, he would have been a much respected boxer among fans, spectators and boxing analysts. However he did not, and he has lost respect in the eyes of his fans. The other way to look at this is that by continuing to fight he is showing all the other aging athletes out there that they should not give up just because of their age. Some other old athletes do not know when it is time to call it quits. Michael Jordan realised this fact very late because he continued to play basketball well into his 40s and so did tennis star Martina Navratilova.
Hopefully in a few years time, Holyfield will realise that his almost 50 year old body cannot withstand the blows and hits that it was once able to. The day he realises this he will have to retire once and for all and live the life of a retired athlete. He may have to speak to his mother, because it seems he took her advice of never giving up to heart; even she will tell him that it is high time he hung up his gloves and relaxed a bit.
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