Where’s the Fight in Words?

LAS VEGAS â€”  They should release this fight film as a silent movie. It’s the quietest heavyweight championship since they fought on barges.

The problem is the fighters--Evander Holyfield and Michael Moorer. They act more as if they’re running for office than a title. They do everything but kiss babies.

You know what we’ve come to expect in pre-fight buildups. Muhammad Ali, a student of the Gorgeous George-Freddy Blassie pro-wrestler hype, in which you call your opponent everything short of the guy who shot Jesse James. Blassie used to call his adversaries “pencil-necked geeks.�

Ali would call a George Chuvalo “a washerwoman.� He would sneer at Floyd Patterson as “a guy who should apologize if he even dreamed of beating me.� Mike Tyson would snarl that his opponent should wear a skirt.

Moorer and Patterson, on the other hand, project more friendliness than a guy selling vacuum cleaners. They profess to have only the highest respect for each other. You’d never guess they were going to fight each other at Caesars Palace on Friday night. Going to the craps table together, perhaps.

What this fight needs is an injection of incivility. These guys need to study films of old Ali news conferences or even Sonny Liston interviews: “If he run, I cripple him. If he come to me, I kill him.�

Enough of this “I know he’s a great fighter. I just hope I can be as great a champion as he is, if I win.� A mutual admiration society. A friendly exchange of views. Bah, humbug!

What we need is a little bared-teeth schoolyard invective. A little of what the fighters call “dissing.� Something to make the public think its going to see a grudge match not a love-in.

Rather than this runaway politesse, I would rather have from the two fighters something of the following:

Holyfield: “What makes this guy think he belongs in the ring with me? Let me tell you something, he shouldn’t be a fighter, he should be a janitor. He should be carrying a mop and pail into the ring, not gloves.�

Moorer: “A janitor? What about Holyfield? The only reason he’s champ is that Mike Tyson’s in prison and Riddick Bowe couldn’t pass a McDonald’s or a Pizza Hut. The phrase ‘fast food’ was invented by a guy watching Bowe eat a 20-egg breakfast with pancakes one morning. Holyfield didn’t beat him; the great chefs of Europe and the fry cooks of Maryland did.�

Holyfield: Let me tell you about Moorer. Under his chin resides one of the greatest collections of Spode china this side of the British Isles. When he gets hit on the jaw, there’s a sound like a tray full of cups and saucers being dropped. He has to be careful not to knock himself out shaving. Talk about a glass jaw, you can see yourself in his.�

Moorer: “I don’t know why Holyfield’s concerned about anybody’s jaw. He can’t hit hard enough to break a raw egg. I mean, here’s a guy who fought Larry Holmes and George Foreman and, between them, their ages totaled 84 years and Holyfield couldn’t even make them blink. They were in more danger getting bumped into in a subway than they were getting hit by Holyfield. I expect a tougher fight from the heavy bag.�

Holyfield: “He ought to expect a tough fight from the heavy bag. The way he moves he’d have trouble getting out of the way of a glacier. This guy has been on more floors than a mop. He should sell ads on the soles of his shoes. He goes down in a high wind. I may not have to hit him, just blow on him.�

Moorer: “Holyfield says he can ‘take it.’ Well, why not? That’s all he ever does in the ring. Who’s he ever fought? His record reads like a motel registry in Dubuque. I’ve seen more famous names in a Warsaw phone book.�

That, ideally, is what you wish pugs would say on the eve of fisticuffs. I mean, these guys are going to try to kill or maim each other. Shouldn’t they at least try to work up a little detestation?

Oh, Joe Louis used to leave his opponents a measure of respect. “Another lucky night,� Joe would croon soothingly just after he had left a guy bloodied and beaten on the floor after two minutes of fighting in the first round. Rocky Marciano used to look across the ring sorrowfully at some guy whose rib cage he was going to cave in.

But, Ali taught us the proper protocol in matters of this kind. Make your opponent so furious that he’d fight a stupid, reckless fight, completely outsmart himself. Or getting him to doubt himself or to think that you were crazy.

Alas! These protagonists do none of these things. Listen now to the champion, Evander Holyfield, on the eve of the weigh-in. Someone asks him if he respects Moorer.

“I respect anyone who climbs into a ring,� says Evander evenly. “I have a lot of respect for anyone who is No. 1 contender. I was once No. 1, and I was glad of the opportunity to fight for the title and I can feel what he’s feeling.�

(This answer should have been: “Respect? For this bum? Let him fight somebody first, and earn that respect!�)

Someone wants to know if Holyfield feels that the pressure is getting to Moorer. Holyfield shakes his head. “Not at all,� he says. “There’s a lot of talk about fear but let me tell you, I still got to go in the ring, I got to do my thing otherwise it don’t matter what he’d be feeling.�

(Holyfield should have said, “You bet he’s feeling pressure! But not the pressure he’ll be feeling when the bell rings and I land one on that glass chin of his!�)

Finally, someone wanted to know of Holyfield, “Aren’t you impressed with all the KOs on his record?� and Holyfield allowed, “That might be fine for the press but it’s not impressive to another boxer. It’s who you KO. It’s not like he’s KOd quality fighters. I’m not calling nobody a stiff, but when you get guys who are great or who are trying to be great, along the way they’ll take a lot of punishment while another fighter who’s going nowhere won’t.�

Now that’s more like it. Because the simple English translation of that is, “Am I impressed because he knocked out a bunch of stiffs? No! He’s just knocked out a lot of guys who were just looking for the floor anyway and an excuse to dive there and were damned if they were going to take a lot of punishment going there. When he knocks out Ramzi Hassan, I don’t even look up. When he knocks out somebody like Riddick Bowe, we’ll talk.�

You have to say Holyfield is getting there. He shows promise. Ali could take him in hand.