MASHANTUCKET, Conn. – Cowboy Luttrell did it for Jack Dempsey. Denny Moyer and Paul Pender served the purpose for Sugar Ray Robinson. Leon Spinks and Trevor Berbick did it for Muhammad Ali, and if Terry Norris hadn’t fully convinced Ray Leonard, then Hector Camacho certainly did.
They all served as doormen for once-great fighters, opponents whose main claim to fame was not beating those former champions, but showing them that it was time to get out of boxing.
Now, John Ruiz is serving as Evander Holyfield’s doorman, only Holyfield doesn’t realize it yet.
Technically, Ruiz holds the WBA heavyweight title belt, and he gets to keep it after a draw that was every bit as outrageous as the one Holyfield escaped with in his first bout with Lennox Lewis.
But in truth, Ruiz is little more than a club fighter who, over the course of 36 rounds now, has been able to fight one of the heavyweight division’s all-time greats to a virtual standstill.
That is the important thing to emerge from Saturday night’s bout at the Foxwoods Resort Casino and Bingo Hall.
The decision was surely an outrage, every bit as bad – and suspect – as the one that deprived Lewis of a victory over Holyfield in 1999.
Before that one, Holyfield was promoter Don King’s heavyweight champion, and accordingly, he received protection from the judges, namely Jean Williams and Larry O’Connell.
This time, it was Ruiz who was keeping King in the heavyweight hunt, and, coincidentally, he received the kindness of a judge named Don O’Neill, a former Boston Globe reporter who reportedly knew Ruiz, and Tom Kaczmarek.
King and the judging were investigated after the Lewis debacle and they probably should be, again, after this one.
But at the same time, there is the conflict of not wanting to fight too intense a battle on the part of a man who probably shouldn’t be fighting anymore himself.
That would be Holyfield, who at 39, is stripped of everything but his heart, guts and determination.
It is scary to think of what a Holyfield, in his prime, would have done to the Ruiz he fought Saturday night, or to the Lewis he fought in 1999, or to the Mike Tyson he knocked out, while already past his prime in 1996.
But it is even more scary to think of what Lewis or Tyson might do to Holyfield now.
The same goes for Kirk Johnson, the WBA’s No. 1 contender, and Hasim Rahman, the former IBF/WBC champ recently dethroned by Lewis, or either of the wild and crazy Klitschko Bros.
And it even goes for Ruiz, if anyone is stupid, or sadistic, enough to make a Ruiz-Holyfield IV.
Before the bout, I had considered Ruiz an honest, if not especially talented heavyweight, but I was mistaken.
He is terrible.
And yet, in three fights over the past 16 months, Evander Holyfield has not been able to knock him out or even down (officially), and he has yet to score a clear-cut victory over him.
Holyfield got the decision in their first fight but he probably deserved to lose.
The second fight was a life-and-death battle until Holyfield dropped Ruiz with a body shot in the 11th round that, thanks to some effective acting by Ruiz and his corner, was ruled a low blow.
That bought Ruiz five minutes of rest, after which he decked a spent Holyfield to earn a narrow victory.
Ironically, the third Holyfield-Ruiz fight was the most one-sided of all and yet it is the only one in which neither man’s hand was raised in victory. I gave Holyfield eight of the 12 rounds, and I wasn’t so sure about one of the rounds I gave to Ruiz.
But you didn’t have to look at the scorecards to know who the winner was. You just had to look at the faces.
Holyfield had a slight nick at the corner of his left eye and a small mouse above his right.
Ruiz looked as if he had been worked over by the cast of The Sopranos.
“I thought I fought better this time,” Holyfield said, and he was right.
But he still didn’t fight well enough to beat any of the top heavyweights, or well enough to ensure that, against a better fighter than Ruiz, he will not get hurt badly, and soon.
“I thought I dominated the fight, but when you leave it to the judges, anything can happen,” he said. “My goal is to retire as the undisputed heavyweight champion. Now I just gotta get back in line.”
“I’m not fighting Evander again,” Ruiz said, before leaving the building in an ambulance. “It’s time to move on.”
For his own sake, Holyfield ought to listen to what Ruiz has been trying to tell him.
Because the next doorman may not usher him out quite so gently.