16.05.05 – By Scoop Malinowski: “They left Andrew (Golota) on the curb, they put us on the curb for garbage to pick up,” says manager Ziggy Rozalski of how Main Events reacted after the disastrous Tyson fight in 2000. “Andrew actually wanted to fight again, about 5-6 months later. But nobody would help us,” revealed Rozalski. “I think what actually got him depressed was a week after the (Tyson) fight, Main Events released him. I looked at his face, he was like shocked, depressed.. I couldn’t believe it either. Kathy Duva is a nice lady, but what she did to Andrew was not right. Andrew screwed up, it happened. Yeah, he messed up. But after eight years you just don’t throw the guy in the street. Andrew made Main Events a lot of money. The poor guy was shocked. That’s what put him down. The only guy that stuck with him was me. Andrew Golota’s name was poison in boxing.”
Still, Team Golota attempted to get Andrew a shot on the undercard of Gatti-Ward in Atlantic City. “The closest we came to getting a fight was because of Arturo Gatti. I asked Arturo, my personal friend, to do me a favor. I know Arturo for many years, we’re both from Jersey City. Arturo told Main Events that, “Andrew had to be on my undercard.”
“They were gonna give us $5,000. Then Pat English, the lawyer for Main Events, called me, and said I had to get some kind of papers from three psychologists. I said **** it. That was the only guy that gave us a shot – Arturo Gatti.”
Golota did not fight for three years. Needless to say, those weren’t the most wonderful years of his life.
But Andrew still aspired to redeem himself and show the world his best, not his rockbottom worst. He did not want to leave his departure from the ring in Detroit against Tyson as his lasting image to the sport of boxing. So eventually Rozalski staged two small but successful promotions in 2003 – against Brian Nix in Dover, Delaware and vs. Terrance Lewis in Verona, New York. Golota won both and again showed those flashes of brilliance which had made him such an intriguing factor in the heavyweight division.
Early in 2004, Rozalski made a visit to Don King. “I was shocked that he accepted us with open arms. I went to meet King once before, after the first Bowe fight – I didn’t like Main Events. Somehow I like him. Everybody talked **** about him but he’s the most successful. Somehow I like him. I always respect him. He’s like a hero, he’s a poor black guy that made it big. He pays the most for any fighter. I guess God sent him to us, he’s the only guy that gave us a shot.”
Don King was one of the tiny minority who actually still believed in Golota. “I think Golota is one of the best fighters in the world today,” King told me in March of last year. “He had a fetish for hitting people below the belt. That really cost him greatly. I found out he’s like everyone else – he needs forgiveness for some of the things, it’s a redemptive moment for him. And I want to give that opportunity, just as I would do one of the black guys out there, I’m gonna do it for the white guy. I talk that talk, I walk that walk, so I’m taking a lot of heat for it, but the heat is just part of it. That goes with the flow. I think Andrew is gonna shock and amaze a lot of people.”
King was having a hard time finding fights for Chris Byrd so he offered Golota a title shot against the slick, left-handed IBF champ, though at the time it was a very unpopular decision. The critics came out in full force, mercilessly attacking King and Golota. The reasoning was that – against Byrd – Golota was facing perhaps the most frustrating style he had ever seen. They all figured it was recipe for another disaster. Based on past performance, the experts’ pessimism was certainly justified. But empathy…and the compassion to give a man another opportunity at redemption are two of humanity’s greatest qualities.
King was able to detect something in Golota that few others did and he firmly maintained his faith in the misunderstood Pole. “I don’t think he was with the right people,” opined King of Golota’s previous failures. “See, you’ve got to be able to talk to these kinds of guys. These guys are like what Henry David Thoreau said – they march to a different drummer. You’ve got to be able to show them some love, respect and understanding. The mere fact that he came to my door, being a white guy, coming to a black guy, that’s a major step. Because it’s a demonstration of showing that, given an opportunity, blacks can rise to the occasion and they can be seeked and sought out and can be dealt with equitable and redeeming social value. So what I think is, what happened is, (Andrew) told me that everybody that he was with who horrified him, and tried to get him to not come to me, all of them left him out in the cold without anybody. This is the thing that shows the difference. It took a long time to get to this point, but we’re moving towards a better America, you can see it now with black and white alike. I think it’s a special mission for me to have Andrew Golota because I can carry a special message. I can tell those who are the extremists in one direction or the other, that working together works. It doesn’t matter about what the pigmentation of your skin is. It’s the content of your heart and character. I’m going to help Andrew Golota.”
As we know now, Andrew Golota came through when it counted most. With everything on the line – his career, his reputation, his legacy in the sport, Golota fought a superb fight against Byrd, throwing more punches, landing more punches, as well as controlling where the battle was contested. Lennox Lewis, Kassim Ouma, Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson, Felix Trinidad, Jameel McCline and even Chris Byrd himself all had funny looks on their faces when the decision of “draw” was announced.
But maybe, just maybe, the unjust verdict was a poetic justice. The man who had become known for cheating and illegal tactics had himself now been cheated out of his heavyweight championship. Maybe karma had intervened and now everything would be fair and square.
Even though Golota did not win the title that he had trained and sacrificed so hard for, he did win back his respect and reputation. And that’s something no amount of money or titles can buy. “I knew, deep down in my mind Andrew could do what he did. That was a dream come true for us,” Rozalski said. “Don King is the only guy that did it for us. Anybody can talk **** about Mr. King but he’s the best promoter in the world and the best-hearted.”
Since the exciting bout on April 17th of 2004, King tried for months to make the much-anticipated Byrd-Golota rematch, but Byrd wanted no part of it. Eventually WBA champ John Ruiz decided to defend his title against Golota last November.
Ruiz openly bragged that he’d attack Golota and that Golota would fall apart from the Quiet Man’s pressure. But when Ruiz tried to execute his aggressive ideas, Golota decked him twice. Ruiz quickly realized what he was in for and resorted to his jab and grab tactics of survival. On top of the two knockdowns, Golota also threw and landed more punches than Ruiz in 9 of the 12 rounds. But once again, Golota got “robbed” of the decision by the three judges, although such boxing experts as Mike Tyson, Hasim Rahman, Vitali Klitschko, Danny Williams, Angelo Dundee, Lamon Brewster and Lennox Lewis all believed Golota should have been awarded the WBA Heavyweight title that night.
Don King has come through again and arranged this Saturday’s interesting WBO Heavyweight title matchup of Golota with champ Lamon Brewster.
It’s a fascinating match for so many reasons. Can Golota come full circle in his career – from the lowest abyss of failure after the Bowe, Tyson, Grant and Lewis fights all the way to champion of the world? Can he overcome the age of 37 to defeat the underrated and highly motivated Brewster? Was meeting the Pope in Italy four years ago a turning point experience in Golota’s life and career?
“Everybody put us in the garbage, nobody wanted us,” Rozalski says. “Only in America the black man gives the white man a chance.”
Scoop Malinowski is a Boxinginsider.com contributor.