Evander Holyfield and Frank Bruno are two of the most famous names in heavyweight boxing.
Holyfield is in the history books for having cleaned up all the belts at cruiserweight before moving up to heavyweight and doing the same. It was an unmatched feat for many years until Oleksandr Usyk repeated the double in May by beating Tyson Fury.
Bruno meanwhile is a much-loved British sporting figure who famously lifted a world title at the fourth time of asking having fought all the biggest names of his era including Mike Tyson, Tim Witherspoon and Lennox Lewis.
Speaking on Box Nation, Holyfield admitted that it was the former undisputed champion Lewis who once managed to get to him with words ahead of their first fight.
“Lennox the only person that I let get under my skin. With me, things are personal when you talk about individual things. I came out to fight Lennox and he told me ‘how you going to say you’re a Christian when you have kids out of wedlock?’ That’s personal. People don’t do them kind of shots. They told me what to say back but I didn’t want to stoop that low so I said to him ‘I’m going to knock you out.'”
On a separate occasion, Bruno told DAZN Boxing about a derogatory term Lewis aimed at his mother ahead of the two fighting in 1993.
“It was such a massive fight but he was upsetting me by saying such stupid things which I shouldn’t have let get to me. I don’t know how that two-faced rat could say someone’s an Uncle Tom when his mum comes from the same Jamaica as my mum.
I would never call my mum that I would never call someone that, but he hit that low. I don’t need to come off my pedestal and grovel to him, he’s nothing to me, that was very nasty, you may not understand it but I understand it, he can take that thank you and stuff and put it where the sun don’t shine.”
Lewis’ tactics worked – he managed to beat Bruno and, though he got a controversial draw with Holyfield in their first meeting for undisputed in 1999, he won via unanimous decision in the rematch later the same year.
