Holyfield dismantles Iron mike

THE repercussions of Evander Holyfield's shocking upset of Mike Tyson will extend well beyond the betting windows, where Tyson, the allegedly invincible 10 to 1 favourite, took hordes of his supporters down with him. Boxing's immediate future has been reshaped by Saturday night's events at the MGM Grand Garden.

While it would be folly to claim that things will never be the same again in a sport that has remained remarkably unchanged in a century, it is safe enough to say that promoter Don King's vision of the future of the heavyweight division vanished from the face of the earth the instant referee Mitch Halpern waded in to rescue a battered Tyson 33 seconds into the 11th round.

In a sense, this transformation began the night this fight was made two months ago. Moments after his 109 second annihilation of Bruce Seldon in the same ring on September 7th, Tyson and King had shared the dais with Holyfield. That night Tyson eyed the 34 year old once and future champion with disdain and derisively proclaimed: "I'm really going to enjoy this fight."

It didn't take long to realise that that wasn't going to happen Saturday night. At the opening bell, Holyfield charged to the centre of the ring, took a glancing rapier thrust from Tyson's right, and moments later rocked Tyson with a decent left hook of his own, setting a pattern that would endure for much of the night.

In an introspective moment two days before the bout, the deeply religious Holyfield had quietly told us: "The Lord didn't give me the spirit of fear. I know these things are not won by might and power, but won by spirit. What Tyson is not accustomed to is running into guys like me. We'll see how he responds to pressure."

No one ever doubted Holyfield's will, of course, but in the face of several off form performances and a dubious medical portfolio, there was ample reason to doubt his staying power. Even the doubters knew Holyfield was going to make a fight of it while it lasted, but the smart money questioned his endurance.

As it often is, the smart money was wrong. As the evening wore on, it was Tyson who became increasingly weary. Time and again Holyfield would wade into battle, dodging Tyson's lethal but increasingly wild punches, to deliver picturesque left hooks and short right hands.

Tyson made a fight of it, but even his best round, the lift ha only served to embolden Holyfield, who knew after absorbing one of Tyson's improbably unique combinations - two uppercuts, a hard right to the body, and another right uppercut, all delivered in rapid fire - he had taken the best the self proclaimed "baddest man on the planet" could mete out.

An inadvertent clash of heads early in the sixth brought blood from a cut above Tyson's left eye, and young Halpern briefly halted action to have Tyson examined by the ringside physician, Dr Flip Homansky. Moments after action resumed, Tyson fired with a left, and Holyfield countered with a left hook that caught him flush on the jaw, dropping Tyson on the seat of his pants.

Having taken command of the fight, Holyfield nailed Tyson with a short right in the 10th that sent him staggering backward halfway across the ring; Holyfield was unable to finish the job then only because the bell intervened.

Holyfield pressed his advantage in the penultimate round, and was pounding Tyson about the ring when Halpern intervened, setting off wild pandemonium among the 16,325 customers at the Garden, and millions more watching on television around the world.

Holyfield and Tyson had originally been scheduled to fight five years earlier. That match was derailed when Tyson was sent to prison following a rape conviction, but the lucrative potential was so inviting that King stepped outside his carefully contrived scheme to unify the heavyweight titles under Tyson's banner - a plan that now lies in shambles.

King had spent the past several years meticulously gaining control of the world's heavyweight claimants, with the intention of progressively adding belts to Tyson's collection over the next few years. (Only Tyson's WBA title was at stake Saturday night.)

In a bout that immediately preceded Tyson Holyfield, one King heavyweight, South Africa's Francois Botha, had failed in his attempt to wrest the International Boxing Federation title from Michael Moorer. Shortly after Tyson's victory over Seldon, he had been forced to relinquish the World Boxing Council championship he had won from Frank Bruno in April, and while King holds the rights to the court ordered Lennox Lewis Oliver McCall bout to fill that vacant title (King claims it will take place on January 11th in Nashville), McCall, the promoter's entry in that race, has been in and out of drug rehabilitation facilities and isn't given much chance of repeating his London upset over Lewis.

Which means that the only title claimant fully under King's control is the large but lightly regarded, Nigerian born Briton Henry Akinwande. Akinwande defended his World Boxing Organisation championship, easily stopping Russia's Alexander Zolkin on the Holyfield Tyson undercard, but does not appear to be in a class with the division's better practitioners.

King did have the foresight to leave himself with promotional options on Holyfield's next three defences, but while this leaves him in a position to share in the revenue, it does not give him the right to name the opponents, and it is a safe bet that whatever course Holyfield chooses to steer, he will not be exclusively fighting King's employees.

And that is if he chooses to fight at all. At 34, Holyfield would not appear to have many more worlds left to conquer. He fulfilled one life long dream by defeating the man who stood as his only rival as the dominant heavyweight of this age, and another by joining Muhammad Ali, the only other man to win sport's most coveted prize on three occasions.

Tyson, surprisingly contrite in defeat, voiced hope of a rematch, a possibility which was immediately endorsed by King but not, significantly, by Holyfield. Another possibility would be a second fight against Moorer, the only opponent Holyfield has never beaten.

Tyson earned $30 million for Saturday's performance, to Holyfield's $11 million. Those figures would likely be reversed by a second meeting, but it was by no means clear that Holyfield wants to fight again.