Riches to rags common tale in boxing

Aug. 8, 2006
By Bernard Fernandez
Special to CBS SportsLine.com

http://www.sportsline.com/boxing/story/9591360/1

They called it "conspicuous consumption" in the 1980s during the heyday of the Reagan Administration, and it was a term meant to reflect the wealth and prosperity that an increasing number of Americans enjoyed. To wit: If you've got it, flaunt it.

And many of the nouveau riche reacted to the onset of almost unimaginable wealth as a chocoholic teenager might upon finding himself locked overnight in a candy store. The first impulse is to gorge yourself sick, and worry later about a face full of zits.

Anyone familiar with the sad path to financial ruin trod by such all-time greats as Joe Louis and Sugar Ray Robinson knows that restraint is a virtue too seldom practiced by boxers who strike it rich in a profession where one's time on top is comparatively brief. That torrent of income becomes a stream and then a trickle, and all of a sudden Mr. High Liver is almost reduced to standing on a corner and selling pencils from a tin cup.

It’s a sad story, too often repeated, but the reality is that John Q. Public has a tough time mustering sympathy for cash-strapped former multimillionaires who have gone through their fortunes at warp speed by adopting lifestyles whose hallmark is reckless splurging.

Well, a spendthrift's fall from grace and the highest tax bracket isn't likely to elicit much pity in, say, Peoria, but tending to the welfare of stricken moguls apparently is another matter in Dallas, which gave us one of television’s most unforgettable characters, the enticingly evil J.R. Ewing, who wheeled and dealed his way to power by sleeping around, shafting his business partners and exacting revenge on those who dared to cross him.

Not that four-time former heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield has that much in common with J.R., but how else to explain the surprisingly strong ticket sales for his Aug. 18 comeback bout against ham-and-egger Jeremy Bates in American Airlines Center?

I've tried to imagine the reasons for such interest in a fight that probably is best left un-fought, and I’ve come up with a few. (A) Now that the Dallas Morning News no longer has a fulltime boxing writer, sports fans in Big D have yet to be apprised that the gallant, always-find-a-way-to-win Evander Holyfield of their memories ceased to exist nearly a decade ago; (B) There is a mistaken belief that Jeremy Bates is the terrrifying, knife-wielding motel proprietor from the movie classic Psycho and not a tomato can who has been stopped by every semi-recognizable opponent he has ever faced, and (C) Ticket-holders will refuse to leave the building after the fight ends in the hope they can stage a sit-in and thus assure themselves of good seats for the home opener for the NBA Western Division champion Dallas Mavericks.

As for Holyfield … well, it should be abundantly clear to anyone why Commander Vander soldiers on when all the world outside of Dallas has urged him to retire and preserve a pristine legacy that a slow descent into Palookaville can only taint.

Holyfield's cover story, one that he has recited so often he apparently is beginning to believe himself, is that it his destiny to win the heavyweight title for a record fifth time -- and not just a version of it, but the whole shebang. He insists he wants to retire as the undisputed champion, a distinction he has not enjoyed since 1992.

Evander Holyfield was suspended from fighting in New York after his loss to Larry Donald. (Getty Images)
"They didn’t think I was going to make the Olympic team," Holyfield, who turns 44 on Oct. 19, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "They didn't think I was going to beat Dwight Muhammad Qawi. They didn't think I would beat Buster Douglas. They didn't think I would come back and beat Michael Moorer. They didn't think I would beat Mike Tyson. And I know good and well, me, being a five-time heavyweight champion of the world, they won't believe that either."

Holyfield presumably didn't sing that song about how an ant with high hopes can move a rubber tree plant, but the man does know how to pick the flimsiest of silver linings from a dark and foreboding cloudbank. Of the suspension that New York State Athletic Commission executive director Ron Scott Stevens socked him with following a noncompetitive points loss to Larry Donald on Nov. 13, 2004, in Madison Square Garden, Holyfield now regards it as a plus.

In announcing the unilateral suspension, Stevens said, "To my practiced mind, Holyfield shouldn't be fighting anymore." But Holyfield -- who is 2-5-2 in his last nine outings and hasn't won by knockout since he stopped Michael Moorer in eight rounds on Nov. 8, 1997 -- successfully appealed the suspension, correctly noting that he had passed a battery of neurological examinations and that a fighter can't be denied the opportunity to earn a living simply because he no longer performs up to some people's expectations.

"As bad as it was for (the New York commission) to do what they did, it was a blessing," Holyfield told the Journal-Constitution. "It allowed a lot of fights not to come off, but I kept training as if I was going to fight anyway. During that time, everything (nagging injuries to his legs, neck, back, shoulder) got back right. Now people will see a rejuvenation, and you'll hear them say, 'How in the world could his career jump back up to this high level?'"

Maybe, but then a lot of those same people whom Holyfield is counting on to be amazed by his professional rejuvenation had clung to the belief that an aging Mike Tyson could routinely dial up past glories against the supposedly unimposing likes of Danny Williams and Kevin McBride. And we all know how those fiascos turned out.

The greater likelihood for Holyfield, who has earned $200 million-plus in purses during his 22-year career, is that he needs a few more seven-figure paydays to temporarily keep himself from slipping from the black side of the ledger into the red.

Although Holyfield has done more good with his diminishing fortune than Tyson ever did with his even larger mountain of swag -- Evander has contributed a substantial amount to evangelical causes, started a college fund for minority students and funded a family community center -- he is on the hook for massive child support and for maintenance of a Fairburn, Ga., mansion.

Holyfield has fathered 10 children with seven women, all of whom receive significant alimony and/or child-support payments. And then there's the matter of his 55,000-foot, 109-room estate which sits upon 235 of Georgia's most verdant acres. Presumably, the only folks in Atlanta who can afford to live as large as Holyfield are Ted Turner, Coca-Cola CEO Neville Isdell and maybe Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, but I'm guessing they're not looking to take Xanadu South off the ex-champ's hands.

In a way, it's hard to fault Holyfield for such conspicuous consumption; he is the eighth of eight children born into poverty in Atmore, Ala., and, before he turned pro after taking a bronze medal at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, he made only $2.65 an hour pumping gas into airplanes at DeKalb-Peachtree Airport. Years later, when Holyfield was pulling down $20 million for a single night's work, the temptation to treat himself to every good thing he had dreamed of as a child must have proven irresistible.

It certainly was irresistible to Tyson, whose $300 million nest egg disappeared so completely that the onetime "baddest man on the planet" even found himself a staggering $27 million in debt, which led to his filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002.

Among the debts listed by Tyson were $9 million in attorneys' fees, $410,000 for a birthday party, $230,000 for pagers and cell phones, $8,100 for pet care (primarily a white tiger), $78,000 for rugs, $30,000 to a Hawaii resort, $174,000 for a custom-made, 80-carat diamond-and-white-gold necklace and $308,709 to a limousine company, the last item of which is particularly egregious since Tyson at one time owned as many as 42 luxury cars.

Tax agencies also wanted their piece of Tyson and got it, with the IRS hitting him up for $13.3 million and its British equivalent for $4 million.

Tyson and Holyfield's expenditures may have soared off the charts, but they are hardly without precedent. Joe Louis, Sugar Ray Robinson and Roberto Duran all are examples of boxing royalty laid low by indebtedness.

Louis, arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time, held the championship for 11 years, 10 months. He made an all-division record 25 defenses from 1937 to '49, and he won by knockout 23 times in 27 title fights. But Louis couldn't lick his most persistent opponent, the IRS, which seized most of his assets. The "Brown Bomber" was reduced to making ends meet by working as a pro wrestler and later as a greeter at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, a gig Frank Sinatra procured for him. When Louis died in 1981, former foe Max Schmeling paid for his funeral in Arlington National Cemetery.

Robinson, widely hailed as boxing’s best pound-for-pound performer, traveled with a sizable entourage and, during the 1940s, he owned an entire block of businesses in Harlem, including a nightclub and barbershop. But taxes and unscrupulous partners devoured his enterprises and, when he died in 1989, he was virtually penniless.

Duran always lived as if the day in which he awakened was the last he'd ever see, and he spent accordingly. It was not unusual for the "Hands of Stone" to return to Panama City after a bout and stage a week-long street party. When the money was gone, he’d just schedule another fight. But in 2001, after he was involved in a serious car accident while in Argentina, the boxing paydays and mass celebrations of self finally ceased for Duran, who was 52 and had been a pro since 1968.

Successful young fighters getting their first taste of the sweet life fail to heed these and other cautionary tales of their ring predecessors who had it all and threw almost everything away. In Philadelphia, the poster child for unconscionable waste is 1984 Olympic gold medalist and two-time former world champion Meldrick Taylor, who earned $15 million-plus during his career and whose future presumably was protected by an annuity which was to have guaranteed a six-figure annual income until the end of his life. Taylor, however, spent irresponsibly, invested unwisely and cashed out the annuity against the advice of his financial handlers. By 2001, he was still trying to take fights in backwater burgs against hack opponents for as little as $2,000.

It's not only fighters whose reaction to wealth is to waste it as frantically as is humanly possible. Surly slugger Jack Clark, the primary power source for St. Louis Cardinals teams that advanced to the World Series in 1985 and '87, had such an affinity for high-end automobiles that the accumulation of his 18-car collection eventually broke him. He filed for bankruptcy in 1992, listing debts of $11,459,305.97 and assets of $4,781,780.

One of the first superstars of hip-hop, MC Hammer, in 1990 put out an album, Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em, which went diamond with sales of over 10 million. For a time, the former Stanley Kirk Burrell, who as a youth had served as a bat boy for the Oakland A's, was so popular he even had his own Saturday morning cartoon series for kids. His reaction to his newfound fame was to build a $15 million mansion in Fremont, Calif., whose high-ceilinged entrance foyer included a working waterfall.

When his recording career went cold, however, Hammer was forced to unload his sumptuous digs for pennies on the dollar.

Recently retired former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins has rubbed more than a few people the wrong way, but his resolve to hold onto what he has earned with his blood and sweat in the ring is admirable. Hopkins spent $892,000 for his very comfortable but not ostentatious home in Delaware, and he owns only three cars, one of which was a gift from a former promoter. He is a prudent investor, so much so that homeys from his old North Philadelphia neighborhood are rebuffed when they try to hit him up for a loan if they lack sufficient collateral.

"I worked too hard for what I got to just give it away," Hopkins has often said.

Just a guess, but I have to think Holyfield and Tyson now wish that, like Hopkins and the similarly resourceful Chris Byrd, they had put a little something away for a rainy day.

Because nothing -- not knockouts, not home runs, not gold records -- lasts forever.

Bernard Fernandez writes for 15rounds.com.

nice article