Oscar De La Hoya out, Vitor Belfort now faces Evander Holyfield on Sept 11
As most of us have heard by now, former six-division world boxing champion Oscar De La Hoya has been forced out of his exhibition bout with former UFC champion Vitor Belfort due to a positive Covid-19 test.
However, De La Hoya’s been replaced with the man that ended Mike Tyson’s prime, former two-division champion Evander Holyfield. This late replacement bout is still set to take place on September 11, 2021.
This, like De La Hoya versus Belfort would’ve been, is a very interesting match up.
De La Hoya hasn’t fought since 2008, where he was defeated by Manny Pacquiao, while Holyfield, being a decade older, has fought as recently as 2011, where he TKO’d Brian Nielsen in round ten before calling it a career.
Belfort on the other hand has gone 1-4 in his last five, going 2-5 since TRT was banned from the UFC.
His last fight was in 2018 against fellow former UFC champion Lyoto Machida, who knocked him out with a front kick. Belfort’s always been more of a boxer however, and he appears to be in incredible shape in lead up to this encounter.
That tells us one thing, he’s allowed to take something, whether it be TRT, HGH, or a type of steroid, because he sure didn’t look that solid over his last seven fights inside the octagon.
Once Mike Tyson came back for his exhibition bout with Roy Jones Jr last year, it appeared we may get the trilogy between himself and Holyfield. That may still happen, we’ve just got to wait and see what happens this Saturday first.
This bout is to be eight-two minute rounds, as well as the co-main event between multi-time UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and multi-time UFC light-heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz, only that will not be an exhibition.
That’s a professional bout that’ll be scored with the winner announced accordingly.
Ortiz has gotten the last laugh a few times here since his prime left him, and Silva hadn’t been, until his last performance. After going 16-0 in the UFC with 11 title defenses and three first round knockouts in a weight class above, Silva then went 1-7 (1 NC) over his last nine.
However, in his last bout, a return to the boxing ring, he defeated multi-time world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in a very surprising performance. Now he gets to face another interesting test.
How do you see these two bouts going down?
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You can order and watch Vitor Belfort vs. Evander Holyfield below:
