Is Holyfield harming his legacy?

But you can't deny that his career will be seen different (better) if he retires now instead of continue fighting and losing against guys like Wlad Klitschko, then Calvin Brock and then Tye Fields.

 

It didnt hurt robinsons position none that he fought on and lost many when past his prime......

 

I don't think his legacy will budge much, it's his health that I'm more worried about.

I'd like him to be able to still talk about his fights 10 years from now, but increasingly worry about that. Even if he were to retire today he'd taken a lot more additional punishment than he needed to. At the absolute absolute limit, I think the Byrd fight should've been the end.

 

No.

Most great fighters fight way too long when they're shells of their former selves.

 

For once, I agree with Erratic... Holyfield presented himself in Moskow with the sufficient physical ability to compete and that writes off any and every single argument about exposing himself unnecessarily to danger... What could be a fair argument is that Evander didn't know that Sultan could take leather and fight back smart still and thus, had he been aware of it, he should have realized he had no chance in there... Problem is that he had a chance, he had the reflexes to counter shot with straight rights, was able to sneak in once in a while and land a sharp left hook, was able to control the distance and have Sultan reluctant to jab first... Look at the first 4 stanzas and make for yourself that Iggy fought smart, letting Evander's shell of his old jab float in uneffective and countering with lefts to Evander's body, taking advantage of his obvious faster footwork and counter shot stance advantage - never would Sultan have succeeded if it wasn't for Jeff Mayweather's and Miguel Diaz part. Evander is not harming his legacy with this sort of performances as yet...

 

No matter how good or bad people think the preformances are these fights have no effect on his legacy whatsoever in my book.

 

No this have no effect because we are realize this is the Holyfield that made him an ATG so it has no Bearing.

 

If you want to argue that Holyfield is overrated, that is one thing. It just shouldn't be because of what he does at the end of his career, because it's basically the norm for great fighters to fight on too long. You can bring up losing 2 of 3 to Bowe (and the 1 win being extremely close), splitting with the chinny natural LHW Moorer, losing twice (in reality) to Lewis, etc........Not losing to the likes of Donald and Sultan.