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Holyfield wins in return fight
By Zach Arnold | August 18, 2006
By Zach Arnold
Fox Sports Net had a live telecast of the Evander Holyfield vs. Jeremy Bates fight from Dallas, Texas at the American Airlines Arena on Friday night. Holyfield defeated Jeremy Bates by TKO (referee stoppage) at the end of R2. The crowd was very large at the Arena and strongly supportive of Holyfield, chanting his name very early on in the fight. Whenever Holyfield managed to get a spurt of punches going, the crowd really erupted. Holyfield looked OK — just as you would expect, nothing more or nothing less. Rich Marotta & Sean O’Grady tried their best to put over Holyfield on TV commentary.
With short-term vision, it clearly seems that boxing is hardly dead on a mainstream level. HBO PPV is doing very well in terms of buyrates and it seems that there is some real steam in 2006 for various high-quality boxing matches.
Meanwhile, ESPN2 ran head-to-head against FSN’s telecast of the Holyfield fight (featuring a heavyweight main event of Damian Wills vs. Cisse Salif from Temecula, California promoted by Goossen-Tutor Promotions).
Gerry Fraley in The Dallas Morning News was not so kind:
Maybe Holyfield craves the attention and adulation that goes with the fight game. Maybe he sees the carpenters getting chances and fantasizes that even a 43-year-old who had not been in the ring in nearly two years can have a chance at a fifth championship.
The hope is that it is not for the money. Holyfield, who has made millions in purses through his career, picked up about $500,000 for an exaggerated sparring session.
That’s better than Bates did. He took a beating for $20,000 and has to be back in the office Monday.
Fraley claims the attendance at the building was 9,000.
Topics: All Topics, Boxing, Media, Zach Arnold | 5 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
I just have to preface what I’m about to say by saying that I really like this site. I am a regular browser and I find it very informative.
HOWEVER, the issue of spoilers is one that we are all familiar with, and while nothing about this Holyfield article is technically a spoiler and made in bad faith, it nonetheless spoiled the fight for me personally. OK, while I dont really care that this fight got spoiled (holyfield should be retired), the extremely intermittent reporting of boxing makes takes me off guard. MMA (and sometimes K1) is usually all that gets on here. Having not seen this fight yet, I came on here not expecting to read reports of boxing.
While I am not trying to be overly critical, I think the sometimes boxing reporting and sometimes no boxing (for months at a time) is a problem. I think it should be one way or the other. Otherwise, it just seems so arbitrary and silly. I mean you dont report on a meaningful heavyweight fight last weekend, Maskaev vs. Rahman, but you feel the need to report on an absolutely meaningless fight with Evander Holyfield. In fact, I cant recall when this site has ever reported on a meaningful boxing match. I think the site is having an idnentify crisis. I think it should be one thing or another. Just a thought.
Sam, too bad bro. The fight was live on TV, not pre-taped. But yeah, if Zach wants to talk boxing, he should stay a little more consistent with what he writes about. I thought Holyfield looked really good for a damn near punch-drunk 43 year old.
I apologize for putting a “spoiler heading” for the title of the post.
The reason I wrote about the Holyfield fight is that I saw it. Whereas I didn’t watch Maskaev vs. Rahman, and apparently neither did anyone else.
I write about what I watch or cover, not on items that I don’t see or don’t know any information about. I would gladly give some posting accounts to people who want to write about other boxing, MMA, or even pro-wrestling matches.
Didnt mean to come off so harsh. You really didnt do anything wrong. It was just an observation.
And I’m not surprised that fight failed as a PPV. Anyone could have told them that. But it was a decent fight, with a good ending. It does, however, represent the extremely low level of heavyweight boxing these days. Which makes the holyfield fight even that much further from being noteworthy. But, again, no apologies necessary Zach, keep up the good work. If I had more free time, I’d probably take you up on your offer.
Zach covers a pretty decent amount of boxing. Couple weeks ago there was a big discsussion of Sultan Igmabrov’s ESPN2 Friday Night Fight.