Becoming Holyfield by Evander Holyfield Page A

about just dollars.”
    So I told Mrs. Abercrombie how much I appreciated her faith in me, but I couldn’t make a big decision like that without having all the facts in my hand. Her face kind of clouded over a little and she said, “I’m not negotiating, Evander. Those are the numbers I’m offering, and they won’t change.”
    That surprised me a little. I wasn’t maneuvering, I was just stating a fact. It was pretty much how I would handle all my negotiations in the coming years, without all the usual posturing and mind games. Once people figured that out about me, it saved a lot of time and made things go much smoother. On several occasions I had to walk away from huge deals because I’d already gone on record saying I wouldn’t accept them as offered, but in the long run it worked in my favor. Of course, most of the time there were people who negotiated on my behalf, but the final decision was always mine.
    Right now, Mrs. Abercrombie didn’t know any of that about me—neither did I, yet—so she saw my hesitation as some kind of ploy. I assured her it wasn’t, and she seemed to believe me. She wasn’t happy, but she believed me.
    The other key player was Main Events, which was owned by Lou Duva and his son Dan. Lou was one of the all-time legendary trainers and managers. He’d begun instructing fighters while stationed at Camp Hood in Texas during World War II. He kept doing it after he was discharged, but had a number of other businesses besides. In 1978 he started staging fights in New Jersey, and he’d do all kinds of crazy things to build some buzz for his events, like getting a truck driver friend of his to pose as a prince from Zaire. Three years later Main Events promoted the first bout between Sugar Ray Leonard and Thomas Hearns, which set a record of $40 million for the largest gross for a nonheavyweight bout.
    Nineteen-eighty-four was a good year for Lou. He’d already signed my Olympic teammates Mark Breland, Pernell Whitaker, Meldrick Taylor and Tyrell Biggs, although I was hearing rumors that Mark had switched to Josephine Abercrombie’s Houston Boxing Association. Middleweight gold medalist Frank Tate had gone with her as well.
    Lou only offered me $250,000 to sign, and said I’d probably make $1.2 million over the next two years, which was less than what I could make with Abercrombie. To me that was the end of the decision-making process, but Ken said I should give it some more thought. I asked him why.
    â€œBecause you need to take a hard look at what’s important to you,” he said. “I want you to understand that there’s more to this decision than you might think.”
    I asked him what he meant.
    â€œIf what you want is to get as much money as you can up front,” he said, “then go with Mrs. Abercrombie. But if you believe that you could be the champion, and if that’s what’s important to you, then go with the Duvas. Because Mrs. Abercrombie can dump a lot of money on you, but she doesn’t have any champions and never has. She’s too new in the business.”
    He went on to tell me that it was kind of a crapshoot. If it turned out I didn’t really have championship potential, I’d be better off going for the early big bucks. Nobody could really say either way, so I had to roll those dice myself, based on my own feelings about how good I could be. “If you do become champion, you’ll make more money than you ever dreamed of,” he said, “but if you don’t…”
    There was something else, too. Abercrombie wanted to both manage and promote me, which meant Ken would be out of the picture if I signed with her. “So what I’m going to do,” he said, “I’m going to get as much for you out of her as I possibly can up front.” He thought he should go to her right away and find out what that deal might look like, because until we did,