Benoni boy Philip Holiday has hit boxing’s big time with his recent win over Ivan Robinson
BOXING: Gavin Evans
Quiet Benoni boy Philip Holiday has suddenly emerged as one of the heavy hitters – financially speaking – among the lightweights of world boxing.
He raised the stakes in his division with his emphatic points win over his previously unbeaten and highly regarded mandatory challenger, Ivan Robinson, at Sol Kerzner’s Mohegan Sun Casino in Uncasville, Connecticut, on December 21. Over the past three weeks phones, faxes and e-mail modems have been kept warm with offers and counter-offers for his services.
Soon after his victory, Holiday stressed to me that the fight he wanted was a unification with the unbeaten World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Orzabek Nazarov – who twice whipped Dingaan Thobela. “He’s the best of the other champions, is also unbeaten and looks like remaining that way, so he’s the one to fight. We’ll examine his style, find his weaknesses and work out how to beat him,” he said.
To which his manager-trainer, Harold Volbrecht, added: “I know Nazarov is good, but I honestly believe, after watching him several times, that Philip is better. He’s the best lightweight in the world.”
Holiday’s promoters, Cedric Kushner (United States) and Rodney Berman (South Africa) say they will do their best to persuade the Home Box Office (HBO) network, which now has Holiday under contract, to put up the money for the fight immediately. Though the more likely scenario is that both fighters will be “built up” with a few more defences in the US, before meeting in a lightweight showdown. The third major champion, Jean- Baptiste Mendy of France, is regarded as the weakest and is controlled by Don King, which would make a unification more difficult.
Despite knockout victories over the previously unbeaten Columbian power merchant Miguel Julio, to take the title, and Australia’s three-time world champion Jeff Fenech, and an unbeaten record (now 30:0 – 16), Holiday was still a largely unknown commodity internationally, and certainly an underrated one at home, until he faced Robinson live on HBO and in front of a 2 000-strong capacity casino crowd which included modern “legends” like Marvin Hagler and Roy Jones.
He was up against a significantly bigger, faster, slicker, 23:0 Philadelphian who was one of the young stars of the US circuit and a 5:4 betting favourite to lift the International Boxing Federation (IBF) title. but throughout his intense US preparations, Holiday seemed completely unfazed by the ordeal facing him. When I interviewed him in his hotel bedroom the night before the fight, he was his usual relaxed, quiet, courteous self and showed no hint of doubt that he would prevail.
The result, as usual, was an extremely confident performance by the 26-year-old which delighted the moguls of the HBO cable network who had taken a significant gamble in screening the fight live in the US.
Lou DiBella, the HBO senior vice-president responsible for its boxing programme, said he did this because he had heard good things about Holiday. “I’m told he is the sleeper at 62kg so I’m eager to see him. Bob Yalen of ABC and ESPN was telling me that he thinks Holiday may be one of the most underrated fighters in the world today.” And he expressed himself well- pleased with what he witnessed.
This reaction certainly impressed the directors of the Mohegan Sun – a massive new gambling complex set on a Native American reservation (and periodically checked by radiation inspectors because of its former status as a nuclear manufacturing site). The result is that Holiday fights are virtually guaranteed the kind of site fees that only the major casinos can provide.
Holiday surprised the crowd, and pleased the viewers, with a mercurial performance which saw him throwing an unprecedented volume of punches over 12 intense rounds. The result showed a wide victory, but this does not reflect the tone of the battle, because many of the rounds were extremely close. After a clean fight, with very few clinches, the judges gave it to Holiday by eight, seven and four points.
While the faster-moving challenger more than held his own over the first seven rounds, employing an accurate jab and some spectacular combinations, Holiday gradually wore him down with his persistent body attack and then cruised through the last five rounds, winning all of them. In the end, Holiday’s greater work rate saw him through. According to the CompuBox statistics, Holiday threw 1 493 punches, connecting with 555. Of these, 1 116 were classed as “power punches” with 467 landing. Robinson threw 1 093 punches, connecting with 440 and 761 were classed as power punches, with 338 landing.
“My game plan is always to go to the body and slow the guys down and then I can do what I want,” he told me later. “He slowed down in the later rounds, but I must admit, he slowed later than I thought he would. I must take my hat off to him. There are not many guys who have been conditioned like Robinson. He really fought a good fight. I thought I caught him with some good shots, though I don’t think I followed up quick enough. A pace like this takes it out of you, but I’m extremely happy with this performance.”
What impresses me most about Holiday is his combination of modesty and absolute self- assuredness. Part of this undoubtedly comes from his fundamentalist Christian faith.
“I’ve been given a talent and I honestly believe that if the Lord wants me to box, and he has given me this talent, I must box.” he said when I interviewed him afterwards. “I’m here because I’ve got to be a shining light for Him. That’s why I’ve won the world title. It’s not because I’m suddenly so great. I’ve got to give the glory to the Lord because he’s given me the world title.”
He grew up in a close, comfortable, sporty, devoutly Christian family in Benoni, the youngest of eight children (five brothers and one sister). He did reasonably well at school, seldom got into trouble and avoided street fights.
“At high school I had one or two people who tried to cause trouble, but I think I had only one fight in school, but I was a very quiet person. My sister actually used to call me a nerd. So I wasn’t very violent and I just used to keep to myself.”
For the Robinson fight, Holiday was accompanied by a large family delegation, including his non-identical-twin brother, Paul, and his fiancee, Bree, but it is clearly his mother, Joyce, who is the backbone of the clan and the strongest influence on Holiday’s life.
She told me that after her son completed his military service and his draughtsman’s training, she prayed for days about his desire to box professionally and was finally given an affirmative answer.
A “Blourokkie” pentecostal, before each fight she makes a point of reassuring her son’s perenially nervous promoter, Rodney Berman, that Holiday will win because God has told her so.
But Holiday’s confidence is also due to his phenomenal physical conditioning and clean living. Certainly there can be few boxers in the world who can match him in the stamina department.
In addition to his twice-a-day, six-times- a-week boxing training, he is a keen amateur cyclist, canoeist and marathon runner, and participates occasionally in biathlons and triathlons as well. “I do the triathlons and the cycle races for fun, for enjoyment, but at the same time I do it to help me with the boxing. It’s really fantastic for stamina. It’s great for the cardiovascular system and general fitness, and the cycling works a lot on the legs, so when you get to the eighth, 10th round and your legs start to get tired, that’s where the cycling helps.”
An additional dimension to his sense of purpose is his steady improvement as a fighter, particularly in defence. When I watched him in his amateur days (when he was twice South African champion and won his Springbok colours, as well as in his early professional days, he used to take two to land one and rely on his hard jaw, but like Brian Mitchell, he learnt to slip, block, duck and parry his way in without absorbing an excess of leather.
“After I turned professional, Harold always used to say to me, ‘You’re early in the boxing game – you’ve got a lot to learn’. You can’t suddenly be the best bob-and- weaver in the country, and be able to slip and counter, so we were happy with my progress, even though some people complained I was taking too many punches. I’ve always worked with my defence, and even today I’m trying to improve it further, because I don’t want to be one of those guys in 10, 15 years’ time you can hardly have a conversation with. It’s been a big aim of mine to be a more defensive boxer and I think you can see the results.”
Holiday says he never consciously modelled his style on Mitchell’s, but that he absorbed a great deal from the former IBF and WBA junior lightweight champion through sparring thousands of rounds with him. “Through training with him all the time, I could only learn from that and pick up different moves from him. He was a fantastic boxer and I was wanting to learn as much as I could, so anything he did I would try in the gym and that’s how it came into my style.”
Holiday is small for his division, no great stylist and does not have the one-punch knockout power of a Jan Bergman, but his assets are nevertheless impressive. He maintains a phenomenal workrate and also has great natural strength, a solid chin, a tight bob-and-weave defence, one of the best body attacks in the game and an indomitable will to win.
His ultimate ambition is “to retire undefeated and undisputed lightweight champion of the world”. Though the likes of Nazarov and America’s Shane Mosely (who whipped Oscar de la Hoya in his amateur days) represent threats to his claim to be number one, he is a fighter who will not easily be beaten – as five title challengers have already discovered. There is no doubt that he is right up there with Vuyani Bungu and Mbulelo Botile as one of South Africa’s three best boxers.
He says he “doesn’t have a clue” how much longer he will stay in the game, but is refreshingly realistic about the subject. “I like to take one fight at a time. I’ve got my goals in the back of my mind and if those things don’t work out and I start taking too much punishment, start getting some losses, I will have to start thinking about retiring and giving it up. Today I might say to you I want another 10 fights, and tomorrow I get beaten up badly and then think it’s time to give up, and then I might say I want another two fights, and then things go very well, and then I’ll think, ‘why should I give up?'”
ENDS