![]() ![]() Toney, conversely, was known as a hard partier who loved cheeseburgers and preferred sparring over other kinds of training. Holyfield would bring his own brand of relentlessness, fans thought, along with what some called world-class conditioning. Toney outlasted him, knocking “The Tiger” down late in a split-decision win.īoth Holyfield and Toney were considered outstanding fighters, but Holyfield had the better earnings and reputation after knocking out the palpably violent Tyson and nearly beating champion Lennox Lewis. ![]() Jirov, known for fighting German shepherds in a closed hallway during his amateur days, was famously dedicated to his training. When the pair met in Las Vegas, boxing’s glittering capital, Toney had just survived a punishing fight with Vassily Jirov, taking nearly 250 punches on his way to narrow victory. Even his nickname, “Lights Out,” might be mistaken for the final line of a children’s story. His bulky shimmer evoked none of the menace of pop-culture badasses. At 5’9, he was almost five inches shorter than Holyfield, his muscles lost islands in a rising sea. After eating too many of Holyfield’s headbutts in their first fight, Mike Tyson infamously bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s ear. Holyfield had effectively learned to stall, frustrate and catch breathers for himself. And he regularly employed the clinch, leading with his head as he went to hug his opponent. He’d collected an array of barfighter techniques, hitting opponents below the belt or raking their noses and cheeks with his elbow. Holyfield won fights with intellect and mental toughness more than lung capacity. But some ring observers saw a man who was naturally 190 pounds being weighed down by muscle, killing his stamina. Holyfield acquired praise through years of grueling fights, including the 15-round battle of attrition with Qawi. “Conventional wisdom is that Evander Holyfield is the best trained, best conditioned heavyweight in the sport and maybe in the history of the sport,” he exclaimed during Holyfield’s bout with Bert Cooper. His conspicuous physique fascinated commentators, including Lampley, whose stentorian proclamations would bolster the legend of Holyfield’s fitness. Those suspicions reignited when Holyfield’s name surfaced during two steroid investigations of pharmacies in 2007. Rumors swirled that Holyfield used steroids to help him gain weight. When he met Toney in 2003, he weighed 219 pounds. Holyfield packed on 12 pounds in 1988, and continued to grow until he had heaped more than 25 onto his lean frame. Extra weight only offers a marginal increase in power, if any. As the boxing truism goes, punchers are born, not made. Hallmark cautioned them: any unneeded muscle would sap much-needed energy. “And they wanted him to get up to like 220.” “They called it the Omega Project,” Hallmark recalled. “I said ‘yeah, but what do you mean by heavyweight?’” Hallmark said. After Holyfield won, Hallmark was asked to make the 190-pound fighter a heavyweight. Hallmark was first hired to help Holyfield prepare for cruiserweight champ Dwight Muhammed Qawi. To help, Holyfield’s manager, Lou Duva, sought out Tim Hallmark, a fitness guru who would forge Holyfield’s body into what some purists considered a gaudy display of the human form. Unlike Toney, he worked up to the heavyweight ranks seeking greater glory and fortune. Holyfield had also begun his career as a much smaller man. He resembled the marble statues of ancient Greece, or perhaps more notably, the copiously oiled bodybuilder bulk of Rocky Balboa. His shoulders became cannonballs and his weightlifter chest deepened and expanded like armour. As he grew older and bigger, his neck got shorter and thicker, slowly consumed by sloping trapezius muscles. By conventional standards, he didn’t look like much of a fighter.Īnd there was Evander Holyfield, the heavyweight division’s elder statesman who, at 41, was still a physical marvel. Once referred to by HBO broadcaster Jim Lampley as a “fat tub of goo,” Toney’s body was soft, with a paunch that peeked over his trunks, and a waistline that threatened to jailbreak his butt crack from his ever-lowering shorts. There was James Toney, the short guy who’d eaten his way out of the 160-pound division up to a rotund 217 pounds. ![]() An experiment to determine what a real fighter should look like. the swollen flab of the aesthetically aloof. It was a meeting of two diametric body types: the impeccably chiseled vs. ![]()
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