{"id":217054,"date":"2025-06-26T22:57:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217054\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T22:57:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T22:57:08","slug":"evander-holyfield-didnt-hesitate-when-asked-if-he-was-better-than-muhammad-ali","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/217054\/","title":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield Didn’t Hesitate When Asked If He Was Better Than Muhammad Ali"},"content":{"rendered":"

Evander Holyfield<\/a> is one of the greatest heavyweight\u2019s of the last several decades.<\/p>\n

Holyfield, who is known by most as \u2018The Real Deal\u2019, began his professional career back in 1984, shortly after he walked away from the Olympic Games in Los Angeles with a Bronze Medal.<\/p>\n

He captured the undisputed cruiserweight championship with a victory over Carlos De Leon in 1988, stopping the Puerto Rican in the eighth round of their bout in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n

Holyfield made the move up to heavyweight a short while after his victory over De Leon, going on to capture the undisputed championship with a record-breaking win over James \u2018Buster\u2019 Douglas in October of 1990. He would secure further victories against the likes of Mike Tyson<\/a>, Hasim Rahman, Riddick Bowe<\/a> and George Foreman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Seconds Out, \u2018The Real Deal\u2019 didn\u2019t hesitate to name himself as the greatest heavyweight of all time, ranking himself even higher than the legendary Muhammad Ali<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI\u2019m the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world but they are still talking about Ali when I broke his record. I\u2019ve been the only four-time heavyweight champion of the world for 24 years.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t talk about it until you break someone\u2019s record, they don\u2019t say nothing about me. How do you cut somebody out of history? Now I didn\u2019t even know I was the first person to be undisputed in two weight divisions, until Usyk did it.<\/p>\n

They keep saying Ali is the best fighter, no I am. He was three times, I\u2019m four.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ali is often credited with being not only the best heavyweight ever<\/a>, but the greatest fighter of all time. Known more commonly as \u2018The Greatest\u2019, Ali helped shape the landscape of boxing throughout the course of his glittering career which spanned over two decades.<\/p>\n

He defeated an abundance of legendary heavyweights during his tenure, including the likes of George Foreman<\/a>, Ken Norton and Earnie Shavers amongst others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Evander Holyfield is one of the greatest heavyweight\u2019s of the last several decades. Holyfield, who is known by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":205316,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-217054","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\/114752142889520371","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217054","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=217054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/205316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}