Free Becoming Holyfield by Evander Holyfield

or deductions. I saw Nappy and Sanders jumping up and down a little and figured they were raising some kind of fuss aimed at the ref, urging him to do what he was supposed to do and issue a warning. Sometimes coaches do that to let their fighter know they’re supporting him, like a baseball coach going toe-to-toe with the ump even though there’s no chance of getting a call changed. It also lets the fighter know that he shouldn’t kick up a fuss himself, because somebody’s already doing it for him and he should just stay focused on fighting. It worked, too, because even though no decent ref would ever pay attention to stuff like that, it was nice to know that somebody besides me was noticing.
    At just about that point Kevin must have figured out that he was a goner unless he showed some fight, and he came up with a few decent punches. But he also got another caution, and the next time he held on to me Novicic had no choice but to order the judges to deduct another point. One more of those and Kevin was out.
    This was starting to get silly. I could have gone out for a cheeseburger and still won on points. But that’s the last thing in the world I wanted. I wanted to knock him out and now there was a real problem: If Kevin got another warning he’d be disqualified. I’d win all right, but by TKO, and that wasn’t good enough for me.
    It was time for me to let it all hang out. We were almost at the end of the second round and I didn’t want it to go to a third. I needed to put Kevin down for good, and do it right now.
    When the ref was finished issuing the warning and we started up again, I went after Kevin hard and, what do you know, he grabbed me again. This was like the opposite of that leaping antelope, Kevin practically shouting to the ref that he couldn’t fight back. He had his arm clamped down tight over the ear hole on the right side of my headgear. I couldn’t hear anything on that side and it was a little eerie, but I didn’t have time to think about that and I also wasn’t about to wait for Novicic to break us up for the thousandth time. This time I let Kevin hold me without trying to shove him away, but I kept my hands free and slammed him in the ribs with a right hook. The crowd saw it and also saw Kevin start to fall away. They started yelling, thinking maybe this was it, but Kevin managed to stay upright by hanging on to my neck. I pulled my body away and hauled off with another hook to the midsection, and this time Kevin surprised me by launching an uppercut at the exact same instant. Neither of us connected solidly but while he’d just thrown the one punch, mine was the first of a one-two combination. I’d been taught to always follow up a right with a left, and hardly ever threw just one punch. When I finished up the combination with a roundhouse left that caught him square on the jaw, it snapped his head to the side and his whole body went limp. No way was he coming back from that.
    Just as I was throwing that last punch Kevin’s arm finally left my head and uncovered my ear hole for the first time since he’d grabbed me some seconds before. I heard Novicic say something over the frenzied screaming coming from the crowd. It sounded like “Break!” and small wonder: Kevin had been hanging on to me like a bear cub to its mother. If he hadn’t crumpled to the canvas after that last punch there would have been another points deduction. The guy was defenseless by then, and the knockdown was a mercy.
    Novicic quickly jumped in between us and motioned me to a neutral corner. As I began walking away he started the count. Kevin sat up, looked around for a second and then got to his feet like a wobbly newborn deer and stumbled over to the other corner. I couldn’t believe he was able to get up, and gave him credit for it, God bless his heart. He veered drunkenly but somehow managed to face the ref, as if to say “I’m not