Evander Holyfield has had his share of questionable performances, but one was so bad that Holyfield quit the fight entirely.
Evander Holyfield retired after a win over an aged Brian Nielsen in 2011. Despite his legendary status, Holyfield did have numerous fights that garnered much criticism.
From Holyfield’s boring slugfest with Nikolai Valuev to the fight that saw Holyfield perform so badly his license was suspended against Larry Donald.
But there was one fight, perhaps the worst of his entire career, that happened just one fight before his retirement.
Evander Holyfield quit against Sherman Williams after terrible showing
In January 2011, Holyfield faced Sherman Williams in West Virginia, USA. Holyfield was 43-10-2 at the time, whilst Williams was 34-11-2.
Dan Rafael of ESPN said of the fight: “In the main event of an excruciatingly bad pay-per-view — perhaps the worst ever (for real) — the 48-year-old Holyfield looked every bit his age.”
The fight went just three rounds, with Williams up on all three scorecards at the end of the third. Perhaps owing to his dreadful performance, Holyfield quit on his stool, claiming a cut sustained in the second round made him unable to see.
As Rafael puts it: “The only problem with the stoppage was that the cut did not look bad at all and there was very little sign of any blood dripping. Holyfield just seemed to not want to continue.”
The referee took Holyfield’s side, though, and halted the contest one round before a technical decision was possible, likely robbing Williams of his chance at beating a legend.
Evander Holyfield won just six of his last 12 fights
In his final 12 fights, Holyfield received extremely mixed results, winning six and losing five, with the Williams no-contest on top.
Holyfield beat Vinny Maddalone, who Tyson Fury beat later on, as well as Lou Savarese who shared the ring with George Foreman and Mike Tyson, and Frans Botha, who Joseph Parker KO’d.
He lost to Sultan Ibragimov and Valuev back to back, as well as suffering three consecutive defeats to Chris Byrd, James Toney, and Larry Donald.