The only person who ever got under my skin like that was Lennox Lewis. He said something that bothered me," stated all-time great former undisputed heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield, who spoke candidly about the only time he ever let a fighter get under his skin. According to Holyfield, Lewis said something that got him so frustrated and riled up, it nearly made him want to quit during their first encounter.
"He said, 'How Evander Holyfield gonna be a Christian and having all of these kids out of wedlock?' That's a low blow because people don't get personal like that. He felt that he had to say that because everybody was talking about the things that I had done. I knew some of the things that I had heard he was, but I didn't want to go that route, so I said I would knock him out. And I said I was going to knock him out in the 3rd round, which was one of the worst things that I have ever said. Not that I didn't feel I could, but I knew that I was going to have to try," Holyfield explained during a recent conversation with FightHype.com.
"So when I didn't knock him out in that 3rd round, it made the fight harder for me and it made the fight difficult for me, but I didn't quit. I started to quit. If my son Evander Jr. wouldn't have been there, I would have quit. I had came to the corner and I was like, 'Man, forget this!' And I was just going to walk out of the ring. I didn't care about what nobody said. But I cared about what they were going to say about my son," he added. "They were going to tell my son, 'You're going to be like your daddy. A person hit him and he climbed right on out the ring.' And I didn't care about them saying it about me, that didn't make no difference to me, but because they were going to tease my son about that, that's the only reason I didn't leave. That's the only thing that made me stay there and not get out of that ring."
Don't miss "Chasing Tyson," the next documentary from ESPN Films' Peabody and Emmy Award-winning 30 for 30 series, premiering on Tuesday, November 10, at 8 p.m. ET on ESPN.
[ Follow Percy Crawford on Twitter @MrLouis1ana ]