Evander Holyfield bit the bullet, which was not easy with an abscessed tooth. From his front-row seat Friday night, he wondered if Carl "The Truth" Williams might not have quit, not that he was begrudging Mike Tyson anything after the spectacular left hook.
"It was a nice move," Holyfield said Saturday while sipping a breakfast of orange juice and coffee. "Well-executed. I give Tyson credit for the fight."He admired it the way a basketball player might look at a Michael Jordan move. Tyson had slipped a Truth jab, and as Williams dropped his right, in preparation to punch, he came up with the fight-ending hook.
"He springs like a rattlesnake," Holyfield said.
There was no awe or fear in his expression. Holyfield is as stoic as a fakir lying on a bed of nails.
"Sometimes I worry that he doesn't have the intensity or the mentality to be violent," said Dan Duva, promoter of the only man on the planet now with any chance of beating Tyson.
But there is a quiet "seething," Duva said, "when someone jumps in his face, the way Dwight Qawi did before their first fight, calling him a boy, an amateur. He doesn't say anything, but he steams."
He said Holyfield was steaming Friday night when the Tyson entourage began heckling him. The Duva campaign is to "shame" Tyson into the only fight that could make the champion more than $20 million. The champion doesn't believe the hype. He knows Holyfield is out there. He picked him out of the crowd while still in the ring. "I want you," Tyson said. Then, as the closed-mouth Holyfield was about to leave the post-fight news conference, Tyson hollered: "If he dares think he can fight me, we can go in the cellar and the one who comes back up with the keys is the champion."
Tyson knows more boxing history than Dr. Joyce Brothers. He was quoting Jack Johnson. He was also starting his own campaign. It sounded like intimidation, but Holyfield will not be intimidated.
He did not answer Friday night, just kept walking.
"The mike was in his favor," he explained. "I couldn't say nothing if I wanted to say anything."
He dismissed it all as "playground talk, that's all that is."
"Like you got to talk yourself up more than intimidate the other guy," he said.
But when the Tyson claque began clucking "that street talk" to Holyfield, as if the undefeated former cruiserweight champion was raised in prep schools, the seething began, said Duva.
Saturday morning, with the seething gone and the toothache still there, Holyfield coolly analyzed the fight.
He liked the way Williams, even with his long arms, was able to stay inside against Tyson, that it was safer there.
"He has so much more firepower when he can spring into his punches from the outside," Holyfield said.
Inside, though, is where Tyson's right uppercut is so dangerous.
"Yeah, but the only time a guy punches is when he's not getting hit," Holyfield said. "Your offense can be your defense. You've got to go out and punch him."
Holyfield's offense is his defense. He has been easy to hit, but against Michael Dokes and eight days ago against Adilson Rodrigues, a Brazilian difficult to underestimate, he has been able to withstand the punches. Neither Dokes nor Rodrigues hits like Tyson, but if Holyfield indeed has a great chin, if Tyson hits him early and he doesn't go anywhere, then maybe this big fight can be a fight. Maybe Tyson, a great fighter who has yet to be in a fight, can finally be tested. If character wins fights, Holyfield has it.
He thought Williams also was not intimidated, that "he came out ready, looking confident, like he was there to fight."
"He missed Tyson with a good right uppercut, that would have hurt," Holyfield said. "Man, he just missed. He meant to hurt him. He was building his confidence. I think he just got hit by a good shot."
Referee Randy Neumann stopped it quickly, too quickly for some. But, Holyfield said, "From my angle, it looked like the man quit, he just shook his head when the ref talked to him and once the ref stopped it, he made a fuss."
Quitting is perhaps too harsh a word, but Holyfield said it wasn't as if he were rooting for The Truth and was disappointed. He said he "never had anything against Tyson" and "he's been a good champion."
He "applauded" the move that led to the hook, how Tyson lured Williams into lowering his jab.
"You could see how he was moving the man down," said Holyfield, imitating the peek-a-boo Tyson style and the champion slowly bending his head, lower and lower, until Williams' jab was aiming lower and lower.
Williams' jab was landing, but Tyson was just waiting. Lower and lower, and then he suddenly wasn't there at all and there was the hook, as clean and direct as a Metroliner.
"I know what Tyson is capable of doing," Holyfield said. "At any time. But he wasn't doing anything different than usual. He was just trying to catch a guy trying to get away from him. It was pretty."
That's what makes Tyson an artist. He takes brutality and makes it pretty. This guy wants to match brushstrokes with the best. That's what makes Holyfield. It should be a masterpiece.