{"id":181065,"date":"2025-06-13T12:28:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T12:28:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/181065\/"},"modified":"2025-06-13T12:28:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T12:28:08","slug":"evander-holyfield-says-heavyweight-legend-was-hardest-puncher-he-faced-what-did-he-hit-me-with","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/181065\/","title":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield Says Heavyweight Legend Was Hardest Puncher He Faced: “What Did He Hit Me With”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evander Holyfield<\/a> has named who hit him the hardest during his legendary boxing career.<\/p>\n

Holyfield was the first fighter to become undisputed at both cruiserweight and heavyweight until Oleksandr Usyk<\/a> repeated the feat in 2024, but \u2018The Real Deal\u2019 remains the only four-time world heavyweight champion in history.<\/a><\/p>\n

He shared the ring with icons like Mike Tyson<\/a>, George Foreman<\/a>, Larry Holmes and Lennox Lewis during his time in the ring, but one stands out when it comes to naming the biggest puncher.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Dontaes Boxing Nation<\/a>, Holyfield said that Foreman was who hit hardest, resulting in him having to hold on in the final round to try and survive.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThe guy that hit me the hardest was George Foreman. He hit me one time in the 11th round, and I came back to the corner and I said, \u2018did he knock all my teeth out?\u2019 \u2013 They told me, \u2018you alright,\u2019 I knew in the game of boxing they will tell you anything!<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought I lost my teeth. When I went back I asked them, \u2018what did he hit me with?\u2019 They said, \u2018he hit you with a looping right,\u2019 a looping right means you don\u2019t see it because he threw it wide and it came down, bam. My hands were up and it came between them so I didn\u2019t see it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo in the 12th round, I held him a lot, and in the press conference, they said \u2018you had to hold on..\u2019 But I beat him left and right so l ain\u2019t going to let him knock me out.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt I had to hold him. I ain\u2019t going to let a guy win in one round. He came out in that 12th round, he was trying to get me so l grabbed him and held him.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Foreman is widely regarded as one of the greatest heavyweights of all time, having been involved in epic clashes such as the \u2018Rumble In The Jungle\u2019 against Muhammad Ali<\/a> in 1974.<\/p>\n

After 10 years away from the sport, Foreman returned in the late 1980s, and while he may have come up short against Holyfield, he knocked out Michael Moorer in 1994 to become the oldest world heavyweight champion in history, a record that still stands today.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield has named who hit him the hardest during his legendary boxing career. Holyfield was the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":181066,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-181065","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114676059619487837","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181065","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181065"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181065\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/181066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181065"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181065"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181065"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}