Evander Holyfield has spoken of a tough battle even before he stepped in the ring ahead of one of his most famous fights.
Holyfield remains a standout star of his generation having achieved the as of yet unrepeated feat of being an undisputed cruiserweight champion who then went on to do the same at heavyweight during the three-belt era of the eighties and nineties.
He fought everyone he could from Lennox Lewis to Mike Tyson, and had three epic wars with Riddick Bowe.
It was ahead of the third and final meeting that he had a mystery illness in the final few days leading up to the fight.
Speaking to DJ Vlad, he explained what happened.
“Everything was great for me, then all of a sudden I go home to Atlanta and they had put something in the food and I wasn’t right. I was sick. 10 or so days before the championship fight.”
The financial implications of not fighting meant Holyfield had no choice but to go through with it.
“I said look I can’t afford to lose this money. I say shoot man, you mean to tell me I be in training camp for 12 weeks and these last 10 days I can’t train and can’t fight? I knew if I lost that $10m I couldn’t get another fight for $10m. My energy was up, then it would drop. I knew I was going into the fight that way.”
“The thing is I knew I gave my all. I realised I got stopped and I was mad, but how can you be mad when you clammed up in that ring and knew you were sick? I had hepatitis. The doctor told me I could have been suspended. My whole thing was I lost the fight, now I can’t tell nobody I got hepatitis cause I risked getting suspended so I didn’t say nothing about it.”
Holyfield then claimed the loss ultimately did him a favour and got him another huge fight.
“I told Bowe, it worked for me, ’cause I got the [Mike] Tyson fight as a result of what happened.”
It was later revealed that ‘The Real Deal’ was suffering from Hepatitis.