Former two-weight world champion Evander Holyfield has been in the ring with some of the best, biggest, and most powerful athletes to have ever competed in the squared circle.
From Mike Tyson and James Toney to Lennox Lewis and Larry Holmes – it’s safe to say that ‘The Real Deal’ has faced a who’s who of elite power-punchers, but who hit Evander Holyfield the hardest?
Evander Holyfield names the three hardest punchers he ever faced in boxing
Earlier this week, legendary boxing champion Evander Holyfield sat down for a fascinating conversation with basketball icon Shaquille O’Neal on ‘The Big Podcast with Shaq’ YouTube channel.
The 47-minute interview is well worth a listen-through in full, with arguably the most interesting question of the bunch being when Holyfield was asked to name the three hardest punchers he’d ever faced.
“Of course, George Foreman,” stated Holyfield for #3, explaining how ‘Big George’s’ punch felt “like something fell on me, like when something’s fallen on your toe like ‘Bam’ and you feel it.
“But here I am trying to act like it wasn’t nothing and so my people were telling me ‘Come on, come on back’ – the bell rung but my leg had stopped [working]. I knew if I moved then I would just fall on my face; like this is going to make George kill me.
“So, you know, I always tried not to let the guy know that he hurt me… You know, if a person’s hurt you, you can’t act like you hurt, you [got to] play it off.”
Holyfield would name long-term rival Riddick Bowe as his second-most powerful opponent, before teasing that there is “another fight that I fought that was super tough,” – his iconic first showdown with American star, Dwight Muhammad Qawi.
“They threw me in that fight, and I had to go 15 rounds, I’d never been passed eight rounds,” noted Holyfield, before revealing that Qawi hit so hard, that he doesn’t even remember rounds four through fourteen.
“I jumped out there and for the first three rounds, I was on him… The fourth round, he started hitting me with them big shots and all of a sudden, man he hit me so damn hard, all I remember, the 15th round – all them other rounds slipped [out of my mind].
“I looked up and [it was the] 15th round, I didn’t know how the fight was [going]… When they raised my hand, they had to take me to the hospital, and I lost 15lbs in all this. When I seen it on TV, I said ‘I did good – This guy cracked me in the fourth round and I ain’t remember it until the 15th [round].”
Holyfield wouldn’t make the same mistake the second time that he faced Qawi just one year later; improving from a split-decision win to a vicious TKO, which ironically also came in the fourth round.