Heart of the Warrior
Evander “The Real Deal” Holyfield

By Jeffrey Stepakoff

Photography by Charlie McCullers

A big hand reaches out and pulls me into the circle of men. There are a dozen of us, every man in the un-air-conditioned warehouse gym, all standing together, holding hands. Except for Tim, the strength and conditioning coach who leads the group in Christian prayer, these men are all African Americans. Some young and fit, others grizzled and crooked, they are all fighters and trainers of fighters. They are a tough-looking crowd. You don’t want to mess with any of them. And even though it’s only 8:30 in the morning, we are all sweating profusely because we are in Houston in August and this is how Evander Holyfield likes to train. In the heat. Holyfield stands across from me in the circle and gives me a nod, thick beads of perspiration falling from his brow. And that’s when I get it. That’s when I finally get the answer I came to Houston looking for.

Here is this great man. An unprecedented four-time world heavyweight boxing champion. He’s reportedly earned about a quarter of a billion dollars. He’s got nine kids, a loving wife, his own foundation. He’s a great role model, a great leader, a great Atlantan. Why does this man literally put his future quality of life at risk by fighting someone 12 years younger, as the 44-year-old Holyfield will do on Oct. 13 when he fights current champion Sultan Ibragimov in Moscow? Why not simply retire, rest on his laurels, put on a few pounds and enjoy life’s riches? What drives a man like this? That is what I have come to Houston to find out: What is really in the heart of the warrior?

Evander Holyfield’s primary residence is in Fairburn, Ga. A near-mythical estate, the 54,000 square-foot home has 109 rooms, including 17 bathrooms, three kitchens and a bowling alley. It sits on 235 acres replete with a stable and horses. But this is not where he works, really works. When Mr. Holyfield, as his business managers call him, has a major fight for which to prepare, he comes to Houston.

Holyfield’s Houston residence is modest by comparison not only to his south Atlanta home, but also to those in the surrounding area. The Bushes live nearby. Holyfield’s 20-year-old neighborhood consists of lovely 4,500 square-foot houses on practical quarter-acre tracts. Still, although the wealth isn’t in your face, it is there. These are McMansions, I suppose, but consciously understated. The people who live here have downsized by choice. A person with a big job can focus here in a way that would be implausible in a 54,000-square-foot, 235-acre single-family home. A person can get things done here.

Suffice to say, my rented Ford Taurus is clearly out of place as I turn into the neighborhood and I am quickly pulled over by a guard in a golf cart. The well-fed rent-a-guard bristles when I spit out the address I seek. “I went in there once, never again,” he says, pointing out Holyfield’s house. I wonder if this is some sort of well-honed joke predicated on the idea that they are both fighting men, or if he’s serious. Neither possibility puts me at ease as I drive up to the house, park, and wait for the four-time heavyweight champion of the world to show up so I can ask him some pointed personal questions. Holyfield is late. I roll down the windows and perspire continuously.

After about an hour, a large black SUV drives up the street. The vehicle parks in the driveway and Holyfield and four associates hop out and wave me over. I shake hands on the move, following these guys through the garage and into the kitchen where Holyfield and I sit close together, facing each other, at a simple kitchen table. I am struck, immediately and mainly, by how ordinary Evander Holyfield really is.

This is precisely the thing that has confounded his critics, inspired his fans, and really makes him so fascinating. He is an ordinary man who has done extraordinary things.

Up close, Holyfield is boyish looking. He is clean-cut, his face and head shaven smooth save for his trademark moustache, which, graying ever so slightly, is the only discernable hint of his true age. He is not the hulking monster one expects when thinking about a heavyweight prizefighter. At 6 feet 2 inches, 215 pounds, he is not a diminutive man, to be sure. But he is smaller than many he has fought. In fact, because of his size, countless reporters have openly called him reckless for accepting some fights. Throughout his career, Holyfield has been a frequent object of criticism and doubt from the media. He was considered too young for his first title bout, too thin for his second, not strong enough to handle a punch from George Foreman. But Holyfield’s performance in the ring nearly always silences those voices, swiftly and unambiguously. He didn’t lose a fight for the first nine years of his professional career. Today he is ignoring those derisive voices once again, completely confident that he will beat the younger Ibragimov and become the oldest heavyweight champion in the history of the sport.

I ask him the expected questions about training and how he got started. And he answers in the expected ways. What is most interesting is not listening to Holyfield recount and expand upon information that is readily available on Wikipedia. What strikes me as most notable is that Holyfield wants to talk to me. He has points to make, a story he really wants to tell. The more he opens up, the more I begin to realize that there are in fact two Evanders. There is Holyfield the fighter, the champion, the CEO of the “Real Deal Warrior” brand. And there is Evander Holyfield the man. And this man is vulnerable and human, and is thinking not only about his upcoming fight, but also about his life and his legacy.

To say that Holyfield loves Atlanta is an understatement. “The closest you gonna get to heaven being alive, is Atlanta, Ga.,” he tells me. But he has to get away to train. He needs to focus and he doesn’t want to be rude to people. “Even though they just know my name, people in Atlanta they feel that they know me. And they want me to stop every 10 seconds. But this is a job for me. If I lose the fight, you won’t like me anymore.”

Being liked is important to Holyfield. Indeed, it is key to understanding him. Many boxers, Tyson, for example (who Holyfield fought in title matches in 1996 and 1997), are believed to take up fighting because they were picked on, had a hard time growing up, and are angry. “I don’t compare myself to Mike Tyson,” Holyfield says. “Mike Tyson was beating people up and taking their money. Then somebody came along and taught him how to box. So what did they do? Did they really rescue him? They didn’t teach him how to be a man.” (I’m happy to report, by the way, that Holyfield’s ear bears no noticeable evidence of contact with Tyson’s teeth.) Holyfield says his first promoter, Main Events, grouped all fighters the same. “You’re a fighter and deep down something’s just mean in you.” But that is not what drives Evander Holyfield. Along with being liked, the freedom to make his own choices, to live life on his terms, is a strong motivating force for the boxer.

When he first signed with Main Events in 1984, right after receiving the bronze medal at the Olympics that year, they sent him to train in the Catskills, N.Y. This was one of the classic training camps where boxing greats like Sugar Ray Robinson, Rocky Marciano and Muhammad Ali trained. But Holyfield wasn’t crazy about it. It was cold and dreary, very different from what he was accustomed to in the South. He had to eat a kosher diet. Put politely, this was not something Holyfield took pleasure in. The cold Borscht Belt environment was “a culture [Holyfield] didn’t understand” and he wanted out. Main Events told him that if he won a championship, he could train anywhere he wanted. In 1986, he got his first title shot, trained extremely hard and won the world cruiserweight crown. He immediately moved to Houston, which “felt like home.”

Home for Holyfield was first in Atmore, Ala., where he was born in 1962. He lived briefly in the small mill town with his family until his mother moved them to Atlanta. Holyfield doesn’t miss a beat when asked what makes him a champion. “My mother,” he says. “Success starts at home.” The influence of Holyfield’s mother on his life cannot be overstated. He describes her, Annie Laura Holyfield, a woman with a sixth-grade education, as “very structured, very on time.” He says she taught him the values that made him the man he is today. As the youngest of nine children, Holyfield was often told by his mother, “Keep up! Learn to keep up! Life is about making adjustments.” He credits his ability to “make adjustments” and learn as central to his success in boxing, as well as in life: “We don’t choose our skin color. We don’t choose what part of town we gonna be born in. But you can choose to make adjustments.” Holyfield leans in close to me, ignoring his cell phone, tossing it aside. He is deeply impassioned about this and wants to make sure I get it. “I did not choose the ghetto, but this is where I started from. I don’t live in the ghetto now because I made some adjustments. There was a price I had to pay.” Holyfield seems to want this price he paid to mean more than just a 54,000-square-foot house and financial success. He tells me, “If you get yourself right, then you can be an example.” Holyfield wants to be this example, I believe. He wants to “give back,” which is why he started his own foundation for underprivileged kids. He wants to win, yes; but he also wants his success to mean something to others.

Holyfield was raised without a father. He never even met the man until he was 21. He did have a relationship with him after that point because Holyfield was “able to forgive,” something it sounds like his mother, in this situation, was not quite able to do.

However, Holyfield did have father figures that were, and still are, instrumental in making him who he is. He says that one of the reasons he worked so hard in sports was not just because he loved it, but also because it made the coaches happy, and “all the men would say, ‘I wish I had a son like that.’” Holyfield smiles as he remembers this, recalling that these men would also buy him hot dogs and hamburgers and this made him feel loved. In many ways, God is also a father figure in Holyfield’s life, one that still remains very strong. When asked about what motivates him in the ring, he says, “The Bible says you got to do everything as you doing unto God. If God is your father, then you know God is looking down on you. You want God to be proud of you.”

As I stand in the gym the next day, holding hands with the men before Holyfield trains, I hear the prayers and see the faces of these fighters and trainers, and it all begins to make sense to me. Holyfield fights not for money. “If you are the very best, the money will find you,” he told me. He fights not because of ego, or because he has some chip on his shoulder. Holyfield continues to want his mother, his coaches, God, to all be proud of him. He wants his hard work to stand for something, to be an example for others.

And at the end of the day, for Evander Holyfield, it’s really all about love. Love of the boxing. Love of his family. Love of his fellow boxers and trainers, and those in his corner. “Love is the key to being successful at anything,” he says. “And what people don’t understand is that a big part of love is patience. If you quit, you never win. If you do it to the end, you get a chance to see whose hand they gonna raise. And there’s a great chance they may raise your hand. But you never know if you don’t get to the end. So my whole thing is that whatever I do, I gotta at least get to the end.”

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