Byrd and Rahman on the State of the Game.

NEW YORK. The scene was the living room of Chris Byrd’s Las Vegas home, and the subject was the state of the heavyweight division. On one couch was Byrd, the IBF heavyweight champion. Across from him was Hasim Rahman, who wants to be champion once again. Both fight Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. Not surprisingly,

both are offended by the notion that the fractured heavyweight division isn’t what it used to be. “I think the fighters now are just as good but they just don’t have the names that boxing used to have,” Byrd said. “Everybody can fight, but we’re not getting the publicity. People may think the division is weak, but I don’t think so.” Neither does Rahman, who blames promoters and television networks for not making today’s heavyweights the household names they should be. “Promoters are playing keep away,” Rahman said. “They’re really hurting the heavyweight division by not letting their fighters fight anyone who might beat them. There’s no reason why the top ten fighters shouldn’t be fighting each other.”

Some of them will Saturday when Byrd defends his title against his good friend, Jameel McCline, and John Ruiz risks his WBA crown against Andrew Golota. Rahman fights Kali Meehan, with the winner in line for a title shot against WBC champion Vitali Klitschko, and forty-two-year-old Evander Holyfield battles on against Larry Donald. In all, it’s nearly a ton of heavyweights with aspirations but very little following from anyone other than the most die-hard of boxing fans. On a truck axle scale together at Thursday’s weigh-in, they totaled 1,872 pounds. The Don King card isn’t likely to jump-start a heavyweight division muddled since the retirement of Lennox Lewis, but at least it will give some work to fighters such as Byrd and Ruiz who haven’t always been given their due.

“Maybe we don’t have a Mike Tyson or that one dominant guy, but when everybody gets in line there will be some good fights,” Byrd said. “Just like it was in the seventies, when those guys fought everybody.” Byrd is a headliner of sorts on the heavyweight card, though the Ruiz-Golota fight is attracting interest mainly because no one knows how Golota will behave in the ring against a boxer who can be very frustrating to fight. Outside the ring, Byrd and McCline are close friends, and their wives even closer. But business is business, and McCline is the mandatory challenger for the IBF belt Byrd kept in April with a draw against Golota. “We tried to avoid this for a long time,” Byrd said. “But McCline is the mandatory for me. I had no other choice.”