It’s not very common for someone like Evander Holyfield to make news for an unpleasant reason. Evander is a very calm person, laid back, wholeheartedly religious, and very rational. He has a very big family, supporting many of his children. Even when recently faced with grave financial problems, Evander was responsive to the media, and very composed when dealing with the issue. Now, just a couple of days ago, Evander made the news. Unfortunately it was not for another fight or promotion, but instead for being violent to his wife.
Mrs. Holyfield claimed the following: “I got up with the children in the middle of the night to take them to the bathroom. The heat had been cut off and the children were cold. When I returned to bed I tried to talk to Evander about this. He told me I was only thinking about myself, the children’s hearts beat faster. I pulled the covers over my head and he said I was being disrespectful. He started telling me that I needed to start putting God first in my life. He asked me if I had been tithing. He wanted me to show him the check stubs of my payments to the church. I told him I was not going to show them to him. He then hit me in the face, the back of my head twice and in my back. I tried to get up and he told me not to get out of bed. He got up and turned the light on and started looking at my face and told me he was sorry that he knew he shouldn’t have done that.”
At this point, there will be two very distinct opinions coming from the fans and the media. The first one will most likely be the fact that she is just trying to find a reason to get some money out of the champ. She made this whole thing up, and now wants to milk Evander for all he’s got. This is even more likely after one of the newspapers quoted her saying that even though she got the restraining order from Evander, she requested the use of his Mercedes S500 as well as another exotic car. Why would Holyfield do something like that? He is such a nice man, with no history of family violence, and an undivided attention to religion and its teachings.
Others, including myself, will go a different route. Holyfield, while is a nice man, is also a very proud man. He craves respect, especially from his family. With his belief in god and complete dedication (financial, moral, spiritual, and physical) to the religion, I can see how what his wife did could be the very reason to make him offended. If he got the impression that his wife was directly disrespecting god, I completely believe that he could have acted violently and done what was mentioned above.
I hope this event passes by without any serious damage to Evander and his family, and they get back on track soon. Maybe some psychiatric help may help Holyfield prioritize everything without making religion more important then family and vice versa.
