Holyfield-Belfort PPV event was a sad spectacle shrouded in deception

Sep 12, 2021

The two top bouts on the Triller Fight Club card Saturday night lasted a grand total of 3 minutes, 10 seconds on a pay-per-view for which the term “buyer beware” turned out to never be more appropriate.

Former MMA star Vitor Belfort crossed over to boxing and stopped the extremely diminished, but legendary 58-year-old four-time heavyweight titleholder Evander Holyfield in 1 minute, 49 seconds in what turned out to be even more of a dumpster fire main event than even the most cynical among us would have thought.

In the co-feature at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida, matching MMA legends Anderson Silva and Tito Ortiz, Silva, who still has a little something left and some boxing experience, put the dramatically faded boxing novice Ortiz to sleep face first with one shot in 81 seconds.

This was not boxing’s finest hour. It was one of its worst.

The pay-per-view was $49.99 and you got hoodwinked if you bought it, because three of the four bouts Triller promoted as real fights — Holyfield-Belfort, Silva-Ortiz and unretiring former heavyweight titlist David Haye’s eight-round shutout over his good friend and novice boxer Joe Fournier — were, in fact, not official bouts like they were marketed as.

Holyfield-Belfort was marketed as a real fight even though Triller knew damn well that the deal it had (including with the venue) said it was an exhibition. That’s called lying. Or fraud. Or deception. Pick a term.

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