Why Mayweather-Pacquiao reminds Evander Holyfield of his first Mike Tyson fight

LAS VEGAS – Nearly two decades ago, Evander Holyfield was in an eerily similar position as the one Manny Pacquiao finds himself in now.

Holyfield was a great, highly accomplished fighter, but on Nov. 9, 1996, he was facing Mike Tyson, a man at the top of the sport and one many experts felt was invincible at that stage.

A battalion of reporters were asked for their prediction on the outcome. All but one chose Tyson. Bookmakers set the betting line at 25-1.

The Nevada Athletic Commission had ordered Holyfield to undergo an exhaustive series of physical examinations, just to be sure he was fine.

Through it all, Holyfield exuded confidence. He politely answered the doubters and smiled at the numerous outrageous questions.

On Saturday, Pacquiao will meet Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the very ring inside the MGM Grand Garden where Holyfield came through as a 25-1 underdog and stopped Tyson in the 11th round to become the heavyweight champion of the world.

Pacquiao is now widely regarded as the second-best fighter in the world, but Mayweather is an almost-unanimous pick as the best. A poll of current and former boxing journalists came out so overwhelmingly in Mayweather's favor that the public relations team decided not to release it.

Like Holyfield so many years before him, Pacquiao appears totally at peace with himself. He told a gathering of about 1,000 fans who came to cheer him at a pep rally at Mandalay Bay not to worry.

"Relax," he said. "I'm going to win this fight."

Holyfield can relate to Pacquiao's confidence and said he suspects it comes from his past. Holyfield credited his mother, Annie Laura Holyfield, with making him the self-assured man he became.

"I was the youngest of nine in my family, and, man, I got ridiculed a lot," said Holyfield, the former undisputed heavyweight champion who has written several insightful pieces for The Players' Tribune. "I lived in the ghetto, but I wasn't of the ghetto. My mama had these principles, these biblical principles, about how we were supposed to live.

"People would dump trash right by the dumpster instead of putting it in. So she had us out, picking up the trash and making the area clean. I got ridiculed and all, but my mama taught me to believe in myself and to do the right thing and if I was doing the right thing, don't worry nothing about what no one else thinks."

Holyfield said he idolized former heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali, and baseball icon Jackie Robinson. His mother would show him examples of African-Americans who had risen from difficult circumstances to get an education and become successful.

"My mama made me look at all these great people, who had all this education and stuff, and she told me to strive for that," he said. "She didn't have an education. She just went to the sixth grade. My daddy, he didn't go to school at all. And he said, 'We ain't going nowhere. We ain't smart enough.' But my mama, she was a strong-willed person, and she taught us to work as hard as we could and to chase our dreams. No matter what anyone says, we could make it and become something if we did that."

Much like Holyfield, Pacquiao grew up in extreme poverty. He doesn't drink cold beverages now because his family didn't have electricity and he became used to drinking room-temperature drinks.

Annie Laura Holyfield remained a strong figure in her son's life even after he won the heavyweight title.

When he signed to meet Tyson, she made a prediction. While veteran reporters were openly fearing for Holyfield's safety against the powerful and menacing Tyson, his mother was confident he'd win.

"I knew when I signed to fight him that Tyson was a good fighter," Holyfield said. "I knew what he'd done. But the only thing he hadn't proven was what he'd do when someone stood up to him. My mama said to me, 'Of all the fights you've had, this one is going to be the easiest. He's a bully and when you stand up to him, he won't know what to do.' And I was like that my whole career."

Pacquiao's mother, Dionisia Pacquiao, told Yahoo Sports last month at a news conference in Los Angeles that she felt her son would win in spectacular fashion.

"He's going to get him – really get him," Dionisia Pacquiao said. "Manny is going to do it for the fans around the world. He works so hard and he always does his best to make the people happy."

Holyfield, who wouldn't pick a winner, said the toughest time the fighters will face will be after the weigh-in on Friday until the bell rings on Saturday.

Those 24 hours or so can seem interminable and how they handle that and the pressure that builds will be key.

Holyfield said he was naturally aggressive and went for the knockout even when he was ahead because he wanted to take the judges out of the equation.

"If that last bell rings, then the fight is out of your hands and it don't matter no more about you," Holyfield said. "I wanted to get that fight over because I didn't want to be in a situation where I couldn't control how it finished. So I was aggressive and even when I was way ahead, I'd be going for the knockout and people would say to me, 'Evander, why you being crazy and going for a knockout when you got this thing won?' I might have thought I did enough to win, but I didn't know what those three people were going to think.

"My mama always told me not to rely on someone else to do my job for me. So I went for it. When you hit Manny hard, he gets aggressive and goes for it. Floyd is the only fighter I've ever seen who never gets out of his plan, whether the people were cheering or booing or clapping or stomping their feet."

His advice to Pacquiao as the underdog, he said, was simple: Believe.

"I always believed in the work I'd done and the preparation I had gone through," he said. "I didn't care nothing about what no one else said, because it was up to me, not them. Pacquiao knows he did the work and he knows he's gotten ready the right way, so he just has to believe in himself and don't pay no attention to anyone telling him different."

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