No Redemption In America: Evander Holyfield Tanks Fight With Sherman Williams

Heavyweights Evander "The Real Deal" Holyfield and Sherman "The Tank" Williams fought to a three-round no-contest before a disgruntled, booing black-tie audience in White Sulphur Springs, WV Saturday night.

The card was tagged as "Redemption In America," but it was hard to see anything but disappointment in this outing for the Real Deal and his fans.

Holyfield, 48, as he has often done in the past, was leading with his head in Round 2, and this time he caught the brunt of the damage from a collision of skulls as he suffered a small cut near his left eye.

Round 3 saw the 38-year-old Williams badly stagger Holyfield twice with heavy right hands, and it appeared that this was the actual impetus for the fight being called more than the cut—which didn't appear too serious.

Between rounds, Holyfield's corner claimed blood was clouding their fighter's vision, and suddenly the fight was over, much to the displeasure of the black-tie audience at the Greenbrier Resort.

The farcical main event topped a bizarre PPV card that featured some cheesy entertainment, including go-go girls and a Ray Charles imitator backed by Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street band.

Ex-champions Larry Holmes and Lennox Lewis were also in attendance for some reason—the latter yet again sounding extremely defensive on the topic of his career-ending fight with Vitali Klitschko during a ringside interview.   

In other notable heavyweight action, Monte "Two Gunz" Barrett, who was coming off an inspiring draw against David Tua last summer (when Barrett became the first man to knock Tua down), looked just plain awful in drawing once again, this time in an eight-round embarrassment with journeyman Charles Davis, who is now 19-21-3.

Barrett looked like he wished he were anywhere other than West Virginia, and the lefty Davis actually won the fight on one of the judges' scorecards, 77-75.  The other scores of 76-76 possibly saved Barrett from blowing his proposed rematch with Tua in New Zealand later this year.

Kevin "Kingpin" Johnson, who was humiliated by WBC champ Vitali Klitschko in 2009, scored a lopsided win over journeyman Julius Long, who he knocked down twice in the eighth and final round.

As for Holyfield, based on this sad performance, any aspirations on his part to meeting and defeating a Klitschko brother or David Haye must be classified as purely delusional thinking.