Atlas (28 page)

So I inspected the fight gloves, plus the backup pair, to make sure my mark was in them, then set about wrapping Michael's hands. His music was playing. Flem and Wick and some of the other guys were standing around along with the commissioners and a TV cameraman. Michael sat in a chair in the middle of the room, near the table with the medical supplies and tape. I put another chair in front of him, with a rolled-up
towel on top of the back for him to lay his forearm across. He extended his right hand. We always wrapped his right hand first because that was his jab hand, the hand that started everything. I took his hand in mine and started winding one of the wraps around it. I said, “This hand's going to sing all night.”

It's very intimate, wrapping a fighter's hands. You can feel it if there's tension in his hands, and see in his eyes and demeanor if he's drifting or if he's focused. Michael looked good to me. After I finished wrapping and taping his hands, we had thirty-five minutes left before showtime. Michael put on his cup and trunks. I helped him tie the cup on and tape it. After that, he did some more stretching, and then some shadowboxing, enough to work up a little bit of a sweat. With ten minutes to go, I put the gloves on him, taped up the gloves so the laces were secure, then put on the robe. I always did a checklist to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything. Did he have his cup? Was he wearing his trunks? That's not a joke. I'd seen fights where the fighter took off his robe and he was just in his jock; he'd forgotten to put on his trunks.

I did a checklist with my cut man, too. Made sure we had our End-Swells (flat metal devices used to compress bruises and keep swelling down) and Vaseline in a bucket of ice (you wanted the Vaseline nice and hard so that you could apply it in a thicker layer, rubbing both ways on the eyebrows to make sure that it got under the hair). Various coagulants? Check. Q-tips? Scissors? Adhesive tape? Gauze? Towels? Mouthpiece and backup mouthpiece? Check. Check. Check…

“It's time,” somebody said, sticking his head in the door. “It's time.”

A
S WE CAME OUT OF THE TUNNEL THAT LED INTO THE
boxing arena, I impulsively decided that we should run into the ring. Not jog,
run.
There was a camera guy backing up in front of us, and as the lights hit us and the music blasted, I shouted at the camera guy, “You better be moving.” He almost fell over, trying to back up and stay with us as we ran toward the ring. Michael loved it. Loved the running.

We got in the ring and he was all charged up. We had gone over this moment so many times in training. As the challenger he was going to have to wait for Holyfield, which wasn't an easy thing. “Michael,” I said, “I want you to think about one thing now: This is the last time you'll be coming into the ring first. From now on you'll be coming in second.”

When Holyfield entered the arena, he had MC Hammer as part of his ring-walk team. I said, “And this is also the last time you'll see MC Hammer. Because after tonight he'll be retired. He won't be doing any ring walks anymore.” I was just talking, but it turned out to be right. His career went into a nosedive. Hammer time was over.

As they were making the introductions, I could see that Michael was nervous. I thought,
I'm not going to disappear on him. I'm gonna show him that I'm right there with him. I'm not going to leave him alone.

I had these two old-timers in the corner with me, Moe Smith and Ralph Citro, who was a cut man with the Kronk gym for years. I wanted guys who had been around and to whom it meant something to be there, guys that could be counted on. In Moe's case, he had been around boxing for sixty years, and he'd never been in a heavyweight title fight. I felt that he should be.

Mills Lane was the referee, which I was happy about. I felt comfortable with him. Like Michael Buffer, the ring announcer who was famous for his trademark “Let's get ready to rrrruuummmble!,” Mills had his own signature phrase, which he would bark loudly after issuing the ring instructions.

“Let's get it onnnn!”

In the moments before the bell rang to start the fight, I reminded Michael once again that he was going to win this fight with his jab. Our whole plan was predicated on that, because I had noticed, watching tape of Holyfield, that he bounced, and when he bounced he wasn't set to punch. He had to stop. There was a split second where he was vulnerable. That was when I wanted Michael to catch him with jabs.

The first round went okay. Basically, when you're in the first round of a big fight like this, and there's been all this buildup and hype, you just want to make it through the round, get past the nervousness and realize that it's just a fight. You also don't want to get blitzed. You know, where the guy just comes at you with everything he's got before you're really into the fight or ready to deal with it. We got through the round okay, but the problem I saw right off was that instead of throwing the jab steadily, which was our plan, Michael was looking for one punch. I knew if I didn't see that jab, then I didn't have him. I didn't have his attention. On the other hand, I was also seeing that I was right about Holyfield. That we had gotten him at a good time. That he was vulnerable, and that this was the right night.

The second round, Michael went out and this time he did what we'd worked on. He threw the jab. He also hooked off the jab, which was another thing we'd worked on in camp. I felt that could be very effective for him, especially because he was a southpaw. But near the end of the round, which he was dominating, he got careless. He threw a big right uppercut, and he posed after he threw it. He stood up too much, didn't move after he punched, and Holyfield caught him with a short right followed by a left hook that put him down.

My family was in the arena watching. When Michael hit the canvas, Nicole burst into tears. Elaine had her eyes closed. She couldn't watch. But little Teddy said, “It's okay. He's up. He got up at the count of two. He's not hurt.”

One of the questions about Moorer was his chin. He'd gotten knocked down in previous fights but he'd always gotten back up and won. When I saw him go down, after the little jolt of anxiety of whether or not he'd get up, I thought,
I need to remind him that every time he's been on the floor he's always gone on to win.
The other thought I had was that I needed to tell him why he'd gotten knocked down, what his mistake had been, so he could feel good about going back out there. Because the worst thing for a fighter is to go back out there not knowing why he got hit. It's like sending a guy into a dark room. He doesn't know what's there.

In retrospect, the knockdown was the turning point in the fight, because one of the judges scored it an even round on account of how dominant Michael had been up to that point. We didn't know it at the time, but that was our heavyweight title right there. That could have been a 10–8 round. A lot of judges would have just counted the knockdown and ignored the rest of the round. But that isn't what happened; two judges scored it 10–9 for Holyfield and the third judge made it 10–10. Technically, that's the correct way of scoring a round like that, but still you don't expect it.

In the third round, Michael went out very cautiously. He fought only when he was being forced to fight. I was yelling at him, trying to wake him up. If you're a gardener, you don't wait until the weeds are killing your bushes, you start pulling them before they take root and start choking your garden to death.

“I want you to use that jab and I want you to work off it,” I barked at him when he came back to the corner. “But I don't want you to be satisfied with it. You go in there and you start backing this guy up and doing what we trained to do. Otherwise don't come back to this fucking corner! You hear me!”

As the fight progressed, the pattern continued, Michael coasting instead of hitting the gas. I'd get him to step it up for a while, but I was frustrated by my inability to get him to keep his foot to the floor.

I had told Michael in training camp that “you look at Holyfield's
body and it can be intimidating if you allow it to be because it's so chiseled. But it's actually a negative for him.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“He's so streamlined and tight that there's actually not much protection in his body.” Holyfield had gotten hurt by body punches when he fought Michael Dokes. The perception was that wasn't the place to go. But the reality was that it was the place to go. I told Michael that, and whenever he landed a body punch in the fight, you could see Holyfield grimace. The problem was he wasn't doing it enough. Every time I saw Michael stop working, I said to myself, “How can I get him to do more?”

Holyfield looked lethargic to me. He wasn't the consistent offensive machine he usually was. But incredibly, at the end of the fifth round, Michael tapped him on the ass with his glove before they headed back to their corners. It made me crazy.

“What the fuck are you doing, tapping this guy on the ass?” I yelled at him. “He ain't gonna let up on you because you do that. Don't start looking for deals or begin lying to yourself.”

As the fight went on, Michael kept letting Holyfield hold on the inside, kept letting him rest, kept letting him use his experience to conserve energy for the later rounds. Even though I thought we were winning most of the rounds, I was upset. We were trying to take a special fighter's title.

Sure enough, in the seventh round, Holyfield stepped it up. Even though Michael was still doing some good things, I got caught up in what he wasn't doing. Holyfield was too seasoned and too smart a boxer. If we left him in a position to be able to steal the fight, he would. Especially because he was the champion and we were in Las Vegas.

The eighth round produced more of the same from Michael. I could see all the opportunities he was missing. I was scared, frankly. I thought we were blowing it. When the bell rang, ending the eighth round, I put Michael's stool in the corner and climbed in the ring. As Michael walked toward me, I grabbed him and looked in his eyes.

“If you don't want to fight this guy, I will!” I yelled. I needed to get through to him somehow, so I sat down on his stool. It was impulsive. It wasn't premeditated or planned. Michael didn't know what to do. He just stood there, looking at me.

“Do you want me to fight him?” I said. “Do you? Do you want me to change places with you?” I had his attention now. “Look, Michael, I'm not getting up until you tell me you want to win the title. Do you want to win the title?”

“Yes.”

“Then you gotta show it!” I got up from the stool and let him sit down. “Listen,” I said, “this guy is finished!” I squeezed a wet sponge on Michael's head to cool him off.
“He's finished!”
I was right up in his face. “Michael, there comes a time in a man's life when he makes a decision to just live, to survive—or he wants to win. You're doing just enough to keep him off ya and hope he leaves ya alone. You're lyin' to yourself, but you're gonna cry tomorrow. You're lyin' to yourself!…And I'd be lyin' if I let you get away with it! Do you want to cry tomorrow? Huh?
Then don't lie to yourself anymore!
There's something wrong with this guy! Now back him up and fight a full round!”

Over in Holyfield's corner, he was being told things like “Trust in Jesus,” and “Relax,” and “Breathe deep.” If you could have cut around the arena, the contrasting scenes that were going on at that moment were really something. Down in their seats, Elaine and Nicole and little Teddy were sitting in front of this big gambler, Roger King of King World (the syndication company behind shows like
Wheel of Fortune, Jeopardy!
, and
The Oprah Winfrey Show
), who had $200,000 riding on Michael. Elaine told me later that when King realized he was sitting behind her and my kids, he said, “That's why I bet on this fight. Your husband. I didn't bet on Moorer, I bet on him.” He wound up talking to them throughout the fight, and when I sat down on Michael's stool, he said, “Now that's different. I've never seen that before.” Meanwhile, Elaine was going, “Oh my God. He's lost his mind.” And my nine-year-old son, little Teddy, was going, “It's okay. Dad knows what he's doing. He's trying to get Michael to fight.” And on the HBO telecast, Jim Lampley was saying about me and Moorer, “I don't know how long that marriage can last, but it's an interesting one.”

Despite my attempts to rouse him, Michael didn't pick up the pace in the ninth round. It was as if he refused to acknowledge to himself that the heavyweight title meant something. If he told himself it actually was important, he'd be too vulnerable if he lost. If he didn't acknowledge the importance, then he couldn't be hurt. That was why I told him that he
was lying to himself. I knew it was going to hurt if he lost. I knew it. I felt that I couldn't let up. At the same time there was a temptation to let up, there was this little voice in my head saying: “They're not going to look at you, they're going to look at him. They're going to say, ‘You did all you could. You can't fight for the guy. He's a mutt. It's not your fault.'” The impulse to hide behind that scared the shit out of me. If I did that, I was a co-conspirator—I was the real mutt.

So I kept pounding it into him. “I'm telling you, you're blowing it, Michael. You're blowing it! And you know what? You're gonna cry afterward. You're gonna cry! He's gonna lose his next fight instead of this fight!”

Some people might think I was too hard on him. But I knew it was all there for us. Holyfield was less than a hundred percent. By not going full out, Michael was allowing him to survive. Holyfield was grabbing him, and clutching, and Michael was going along with it, he was making that silent contract with Holyfield, he was embracing it. If Michael had kept pressing him, he would have knocked Holyfield out. As much respect as I have for Holyfield, that's the simple truth.

In the twelfth and final round, Michael continued to nail Holyfield with his jab and with the jab-uppercut we had worked on in training camp, but always just one punch at a time, landing then backing off, the way he'd done throughout the fight. When the bell sounded, my first thought was,
Did we do enough?
Everyone else in the corner was kissing him and hugging him, saying, “Hey, champ!” and congratulating him. The first thing I said to him was, “You could have done more.”

In those agonizing moments while we were all waiting for the decision, that's what I kept thinking.
You could have done more.
What's funny is that down at ringside, my son, little Teddy, was like an echo of me. He was telling Elaine, “I don't know if he did enough.” A nine-year-old boy analyzing it as calmly as could be.

The longest moment in boxing is the one right after you hear the words “The winner and…,” and you're waiting for the ring announcer to say either “new” or “still champion.” That's an excruciating moment. At ringside, where my family was sitting, Roger King and this other gambler who had bet on Holyfield were arguing over who they thought had won. My daughter was so nervous she was shaking, but my son was
very serene. He was listening to these two gamblers argue. King was going “And new!” and the other guy was going “And still!,” and that's all my son could hear, “and new” and “and still” back and forth. So when Michael Buffer said, “The winner and
new
…,” Teddy turned back to the Holyfield bettor and said, “And new!” and that was it. Everybody started going crazy, hugging each other, jumping up and down. That's all I was waiting for, that word. But if you watch the tape of the fight, you'll see that while Michael was hugging Davimos and the Duvas and their partner Bill Kozerski, I was off by myself to one side, lost in my thoughts. Meanwhile, Jim Lampley, on TV, was saying, “What is Teddy Atlas thinking right now? Look at him, he's the only one not sharing in the celebration.”