A SLICE OF BOXING
my eyelid. When I woke up the morning after the fight, the pillow was stuck to my face because of all the blood.” In 1986, Evander Holyfield outwilled Dwight Muhammad Qawi over 15 brutal rounds to claim the WBA cruiserweight crown. After the fight – bruised, battered and badly dehydrated – Holyfield was taken to the hospital for overnight observation. “I lay in that bed,” he later remembered. “And even though I won, I said out loud, ‘Oh, Lord, I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.’” I recently asked a half-dozen fighters about the day after a fight. Their thoughts follow: BERNARD HOPKINS “The punishment starts
more pain you feel. The body reminds you that you aren’t in your twenties anymore. But I never asked myself after a fight if it was worth it. Once I signed the contract, that decision was made.” GERRY COONEY “Physically, I usually felt
part of the process and my progress. “Psychologically, my loss to Amir Khan was very difficult. I was undefeated. It was a world title fight. And it ended in the first round. I was knocked down three times. It was hard to pick myself up after that. I questioned myself and what I was doing, not just the day after the fight but for a long time. Finally, I asked myself, ‘What can I learn from this that makes me a better fighter and a better person?’ But it took a while for me to get there.” TIM BRADLEY “Usually, the
my condition got better. Some of that was from therapy and doctors, and some of it was healing through time.” CHUCK WEPNER “I’m the only man who
those days. I wish he’d let it go on so I could have gone the distance, but he didn’t. The exhaustion lasted for a day or two. But after that, I was all right. “Liston was the worst afterward. I always fought aggressively without much defense. Against Liston, my corner wanted me to stick and move and box, but that wasn’t my style. The referee stopped it on cuts after the ninth round. I needed 72 stitches, which was my personal record. The stitches inside my mouth were especially painful and the rest of me didn’t feel so good either. To be honest with you, I took a beating. I was in bed for a week after that fight. I thought seriously about retiring. But then I decided to keep fighting. And you know the rest. I wound up fighting Ali, and that led to Rocky .” RAY MANCINI “If it’s a physical fight,
you feel the pain more. The pain when you lose goes deep into your soul. “The most physical pain I had after a fight was after the Arguello fight. That was my first loss, so there was a lot of emotional pain too. “Duk-Koo Kim was more physically taxing than any fight I ever had except Arguello. [Author note: Mancini defended his WBA lightweight title against Kim on November 13, 1982. It was a brutal back-and-forth slugfest that ended when Mancini knocked Kim down at the start of the 14th round. The challenger rose to his feet but was ruled unable to continue. He died five days later.] “I didn’t know Kim was in that kind of trouble. I caught him at the beginning of the 14th round and he went down. He got up. They stopped the fight. I went to his corner to congratulate him on a great fight. The ring was a madhouse. When they interviewed me on television, I didn’t know he’d been carried out on a stretcher. Later that afternoon, I was in my hotel room, holding an ice pack under my eye. My mother and father were with me. Murphy Griffith
fought Muhammad Ali, George Foreman and Sonny Liston. I’m very proud of that. “The Foreman fight
pretty good the day after a fight. Most of my fights didn’t go that long and, for most of my career, I was in good shape. Even
wasn’t bad the day after, because he didn’t hit me that much. It was one punch around the eye in Round 3 that cut me down to the bone. And that was it. They stopped it. I needed 53 stitches, but the rest of me didn’t feel so bad. “With Ali, I had a lot of nicks and cuts. But the big thing was I was completely exhausted. [Referee] Tony Perez stopped it after I got knocked down with 19 seconds left in the last round. Championship fights were 15 rounds in
after I lost to Larry [Holmes], I felt OK physically the next day. And mentally, I told myself, ‘Hey, I was in with a great champion who was just better than me last night.’ “The worst day after a fight for me was when I fought Michael Spinks. I was disappointed after I lost to Larry. I was ashamed after I lost to Spinks. I’d been drinking and drugging and got knocked out by a guy who shouldn’t have beaten me. But it happened. Then I bottomed out and got the help I needed. My life is so much better now than the life I had when I was boxing. I think about the Spinks fight now and what might have been. But what makes me sadder is I see Michael from time to time and he’s not in good shape. Whatever the event is, he just stares into space.” DMITRIY SALITA “Physically, when I was
psychological pain comes with a loss. But for me, psychologically, the hardest time after a fight was a fight I won –
in the gym when you’re preparing for the fight. The training is the beginning of the trauma. There’s weeks of sparring and
the first Pacquiao fight. They announced that I was the winner. I was on top of the world. And then the world caved in on me. I was attacked in the media. I got death threats. People treated me like I stole something. I wound up in the darkest place I’ve ever been in. “My next fight was against [Ruslan] Provodnikov. And because I’d been abused by the media and the public as badly as I was after Pacquiao, I fought recklessly against Provodnikov. I could have outboxed him. But I felt I had something to prove, so I chose to stand and punch with him. In some ways, it was one of the most glorious moments of my career because of the way the world accepted me afterward. But as the fight went on, I could feel the physical damage to me mounting. You have to ignore the pain. But believe me; I felt it. I knew the punishment I was taking would shorten my career and maybe worse. “I had symptoms for months after that fight. My speech was slurred. I had headaches and nightmares. My balance was off. And all of the support I had before the fight was gone. The fans were gone. My manager and promoter weren’t there. It was just me and my wife and the rest of my family. Finally,
your body is very sore. But if you’re young and you win, it’s a good sore. You’re worn out, but it’s a good hurt. When you lose,
getting hit. When you’re in the locker room after sparring six, eight rounds in the gym, it doesn’t matter how old you are; trust me, you feel pain. “The climax of the trauma is the fight. If it was a fight that went into the late rounds against a talented guy, I felt it more. The fight that took the most out of me was my first fight against Segundo Mercado. It was in Ecuador at high altitude. I got knocked down twice. I was hurt bad, completely out of gas, and they scored it a draw. The next time we fought, I knocked him out. But whether you win or lose doesn’t affect the physical trauma. Your mind knows whether you won or lost a fight. Your body doesn’t. “There were times the day after a fight when I felt like I’d played running back and carried the ball 20 times with no blocking and eight or nine people trying to tackle me on every play. And it gets harder as you get older because your body responds differently. To wake up the morning after a fight when you’re in your twenties is different from your thirties or forties. The older you get, the
Wepner received 72 stitches after doing battle with Sonny Liston.
(Mancini’s trainer) came in and said, ‘Something bad happened. It don’t look good.’ That was the first time I knew there was a serious problem. Right then, I went from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. When he died, I hit rock bottom. As a fighter, you know the possibilities. But when you have to deal with it, when the worst thing happens…”
young and fighting four-round fights, the level of competition wasn’t as high as I’d fought in the amateurs. So the day after a fight
Thomas Hauser’s email address is
wasn’t that different than the day after a sparring session. Then the fights got harder. After a fight, I’d take three arnica pills in the dressing room to bring down the swelling. And there were mornings after a fight when my hands were so swollen that I couldn’t pick up a cup of coffee. But it’s a great high psychologically when you win, so I’d tell myself that the aches and pains were just
thomashauserwriter@gmail. com. His most recent book is The Most Honest Sport: Two More Years Inside Boxing . In 2019, Hauser was selected for boxing’s highest honor – induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
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