The Man that Beat Vitali Klitschko: Former 2 Time Heavyweight Champ Chris Byrd Speaks to RSR
Exclusive interview by Mike Plunkett
“I was champion, I would fight you anywhere. I’d fight you in the middle of the ring. I’d fight you in your hometown, it didn’t matter.” – Chris Byrd
There’s a time proven truism that can be applied to a multitude of scenarios in life but perhaps perfectly suited to prizefighting more than anything else; it’s not the size of the dog that counts, but rather the size of the fight in the dog that matters. Over the decades and through the various eras we have seen this play out. It’s a truism that goes way back, to a time long before the Marquess of Queensberry Rules, to the book of 1st Samuel in the Bible, when David, a lowly shepherd boy dared to embrace greatness against the odds. And like that pivotal encounter in a steep valley so long ago, the same can be applied to the prize ring today.
It’s a life lesson that has been passed down through the ages but in reality rarely manifested, even at the elite level of a sport predicated on self belief, conviction and the desire to work towards defying the odds. Chris Byrd is an example of that rare manifestation; a man once bent on facing challenges, defying the odds on slaying the giant, regardless of it taking the form as a notion of limitation or an oversized undefeated world champion looking to add yet another scalp to his championship portfolio. His self belief and personal convictions drove him to heights few men dare dream to experience, and like that lowly young shepherd boy of so long ago, a remarkable character when least expected, at a moment when it counted most. Having the opportunity to represent RSR to sit and speak with the former IBF and WBO heavyweight champion, an amiable man of particular belief and conviction, cast a telling light on a highly successful and long career of defying the odds, while underlining a certain time-proven truism.
MP: You come from a fighting family and you first took up boxing at age 5. What are your recollections of training at such a young age?
Just of training with a bunch of guys that my father trained, really looking up to everybody because I was like the youngest in the gym; learning early on, discipline, setting goals and just being focused on the sport. And that’s early on, as a little kid, watching the other guys training and trying to get to another level in boxing, reaching the nationals and stuff like that. Just wanting to be like them, especially my brothers, that’s really what I gained, learning different styles of boxing which was amazing, having so many guys in the gym. We watched so much boxing as far as international competitions, the U.S. versus whomever on CBS Sports. My older brothers were really into it, I was into it also. Learning all of that at such a young age was just priceless.
MP: You had an extensive and highly successful amateur career; Olympic trials in 1988, 1989 United States amateur light middleweight champion, 1992 United States amateur middleweight champion and middleweight Gold Medalist at the Canada Cup, culminating in a Silver medal at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics. In January 1993 you turned professional weighing 169lbs, posting a unanimous six-round decision over on Gary Smith. What do you recall of that first bout and as a professional, what were your goals?
Starting up my professional career was actually pretty weird. Boxing without headgear and no shirt, suddenly in the pro realm of things, man, and the gloves were smaller. The guy wasn’t that big but he punched pretty hard, and he had had a lot of fights also. Going into the professional ranks, of course you have a mindset of wanting to win a title later on down the road. I just wanted to get my feet wet and really the pro game at that time.
MP: Fourteen months after turning pro, and in your third ring assignment you weighed 193lbs. By the end of 1994 you typically weighed in around 207lbs. Why the jump up in weight and how did you add the functional poundage?
Really, I had contract problems, I watched the heavyweights on TV and I sparred with heavyweights as an amateur. I figured I could do this with heavyweights, my father always said I was going to be a heavyweight, and I met Evander Holyfield in Barcelona, he had always come to the national tournaments but I really talked to him in Barcelona. So I sized him up and thought that he’s really not that big. Just like most boxers, I was having contract problems, trying to get a manager and different promoters, so I was just sitting there, idle time, and thinking I was tired of losing weight so I’ll go up to heavyweight.
With Evander Holyfield as champion, he was only like 208lbs. That was before all of the big boys came onto the scene. I could try it, I’ll do it. When I first moved up I was fat, I didn’t know anything about lifting weights and certain things you could take to get bigger. I started drinking protein shakes and I did start lifting weights, I put on a little bit of size, a little bit of muscle, but mostly it was fat. I was eating like crazy. I just wanted to be a heavyweight. The next thing you know, I became a heavyweight, but I was a small one. I just prayed about it. Really, it was prayer; Lord put this weight on me and I went from there.
MP: Fighting naturally bigger, harder hitting professional fighters, you fought with a tactical style based on defense, speed and precision. Your southpaw style was a complication for most, but what did you, Chris Byrd, bring to the equation that brought you success?
For me, it was a lot of determination but I’m a studier; I study styles. Boxing is a mental game. I was a pure boxer. I mentally broke guys down. I already learned the game. I watched so much boxing and studied every different style, I would think about every opponent before I got into the ring; what can I do to break him down to offset him, being so much smaller, giving up so much height, weight and everything else. When I was an amateur I was tall for my weight class, so I had some advantages then. When I turned pro and moved to the heavyweight division I lost all those advantages, so I had to adjust how I studied the game to figure out how to beat these guys and break them down. I really studied and learned how to break guys down with my style, mentally.
MP: May 1995. You were floored in the 1st round by ‘King’ Arthur Williams, a future IBF cruiserweight champion. You regained your composure, found your groove and posted a split ten-round decision victory. What do you recall of that bout?
Oh my goodness! That for me was the turning of the tide for my boxing career at heavyweight and he was a cruiserweight! Knowing that you can be cracked in the sport, I got really comfortable, moving up and I was beating guys on a lower level, lower scale, but they were heavyweights. I hate to say it, for heavyweights, they were just throwing, throwing at the wind and I’d make them miss and beat them with speed, but with Arthur Williams he was patient in the 1st round and then he hit me with a great right hand.That really woke me up to what can happen in a heavyweight fight, with one punch. And he wasn’t even a true big heavyweight, he was really a cruiserweight.
He made me realize I was in with the big boys. It was the first time I had ever been knocked down in my life. It made me realize that I had to stay on top of this game and really focus on what I was doing in the ring and break these guys down.
MP: By March 1999 you had amassed a perfect 26-0 record with key wins over names such as Uriah Grant, the former IBF cruiserweight champion, former heavyweight title challenger ‘Smokin’ Bert Cooper and undefeated Elieser Castillo, setting you up for a high profile clash on HBO with the undefeated Ike Ibeabuchi. What happened?
It was a few things that happened, especially with me. I had injuries going into almost every fight. With that fight, with no excuse, two weeks before the fight I had a rib injury so bad, but I wanted the fight. In the fight I was having fun, and I had told Max Kellerman I would get on the ropes with him, he can’t hit me. It was a little bit of arrogance on my part, thinking I was unhittable, not learning from the Williams fight where I had been knocked down earlier in my career. I was thinking Ike is big, he’s strong, but just like with anybody else, I would make him miss and break him down mentally and wear him out over ten rounds, but it didn’t happen like I thought it would. He was a little bit smarter than I thought, and if you ever replay that fight and listen to his corner, his trainer Curtis Cokes was smart, he said “hit him anywhere”. And he did. Ike started throwing anywhere and I just slipped right into a punch that I really didn’t see coming. That floored me for the second time in my career. It was brutal.
MP: Regaining your momentum, you posted four wins before handing Vitali Klitschko his first professional loss, winning the WBO heavyweight title. What do you recall of this moment in your career and of the elder Klitschko?
I learned that I could truly hang with the big boys, truly. I don’t care what anybody says, the brothers (Klitschko’s) are the best of our era, because they are still doing it. I don’t care what people say, until they fight them. You truly gain a certain respect for them. When I got in the ring with Vitali, I thought whoa, this guy is big. He’s huge, I’m a small guy, the German crowd laughed, actually laughed because when we got to the middle of the ring and next to him I was so small. He was 28-0 with 28 knockouts, but I took his punches and started walking him down, the German crowd starting cheering for me after the 4th round and the HBO commentators were dogging me pretty good saying I was getting whooped, this and that, but the German commentators were saying that the fight was even. It was close, so that really made me press on, having heard them when I was in the corner. It was a great feeling. I wish it had of happened in America when we fought but it was in Germany, so it was just great knowing that fight it put me into a class where I could fight the top heavyweights of the world and gain some respect.
MP: You lost the WBO title in your next bout to Wladimir Klitschko. You demonstrated tremendous heart, rising from knockdowns in the 9th and 11th rounds. What happened in that bout?
Man! You know going in to fight Wladimir off of Vitali I’m thinking the same thing. I had trained so hard for the bout, I think I really over trained. I was spent before I even left America, thinking about that fight. I knew it was going to be hard trying to fight Wladimir in Germany after defeating his brother, so I had all odds against me. I got into the fight, he’s just as big as his brother but stronger, and I was thinking, man, this is going to be a hard fight. I wasn’t feeling 100%, but that’s no excuse. He beat me cleanly, but I wasn’t going to quit. If anybody ever talked about my career, calling me safety-first or saying that I didn’t want to engage, hey, I took a whooping in that fight but I tried to stay up and be a man about it and not give up. I fought to the end. The experience, every experience is great, especially fighting guys 5, 6 inches taller, and you’re outweighed by 20, 30 pounds or more, it was a learning experience to get me closer to the title that I really wanted. It was a learning experience.
MP: In 2001 you hit your stride thoroughly out-boxing spoiler Maurice Harris and dominating top-rated contender and former world title challenger David Tua. In December 2002, almost nine years and 37 bouts after turning professional as a super middleweight, you defeated former four-time World heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield to win the vacant IBF heavyweight title. Were you at your very best and what do you recall of that moment?
That was just great. Coming off the David Tua fight I really felt at that time in my career I peaked. I truly felt that I was the best heavyweight in the world, that’s why I wanted to fight Lennox Lewis. We went into negotiations with Lewis thinking we were going to make the match but my lawyer kept telling me he’s not going to fight you. We’d go for the build-up but he’d come back with some excuse. He was the heavyweight champ, recognized as the #1 overall world champion. I wanted to fight Lennox Lewis. I didn’t care about anyone else. That’s who I wanted to fight. Evander Holyfield was then sitting at #2, so we fought for the vacant IBF belt. I knew before the fight was even made that he wasn’t going to beat me. I felt that, like I just said, nobody could whip me at that time. Going into that fight I felt great, it was just my time. I won a pretty easy 12-round unanimous decision.
Evander is a great guy, a great champion for years, but it was just my time. When they announced me as the new IBF heavyweight champion, man, I’m telling you, out of all my years as a heavyweight, after all my ups and downs, people doubting me, it really proved the heart, determination, skill and my trust and faith in the Lord that I could reach that point, it was all at that moment. It turned out to be great and it was a major highlight of my career.
MP: You made four high profile title defenses over three years; wins over quality contenders Fres Oquendo, Andrew Golota, Jameel McCline and DaVarryl Williamson. You became the aggressor with Oquendo, exchanged frequently with the much bigger Golota and took the fight to McCline, a huge man that outweighed you by 56lbs. What made Chris Byrd so competitive, if not dominant against far bigger, naturally stronger men?
I’m a motivational speaker and I have a motto, my wife used to yell it at me all the time; how bad do you want it? It was about how bad I wanted to be not only a world champion but to stay champion. At the same time, I had a lot of close fights while I was champion, and truly not realizing until I was in the fight, these other guys wanted just as much to win the title as I wanted it when I was coming up, so it was tough. The Lord blessed me to win close fights, but also to even fight these guys in the trenches. I was outweighed in each and every fight. It was great going through those fights as champion, and to fight those guys. I didn’t run away from not one opponent. I fought every single one of them in the trenches. I didn’t try to be safety-first, and I think if I had of fought that way, safety-first, I think I would have won each fight pretty easy, but they would have been fairly boring. I tried to give something back to the fans. I was champion, I would fight you anywhere. I’d fight you in the middle of the ring. I’d fight you in your hometown, it didn’t matter. That’s what champions do, so I tried to prove that when I was champion.
MP: You appeared to be slowing down by the time you faced Wladimir Klitschko in an April 2006 rematch, losing the IBF heavyweight title by 7th round TKO. Give us your thoughts on that bout.
I can honestly tell you I had the best training camp of my whole life, pro or amateur. I was on point for the fight. My father was so confident, I was very confident but my father was very confident also, he was my trainer. Everybody that watched me spar figured I was going to beat Wladimir Klitschko pretty easily. When I got in the fight, the first time in my whole career, the moment got the best of me. I ran down the walkway, I jumped into the ring. I never stared my opponents down in the middle of the ring but in that one I stared Wladimir Klitschko down; and I’m like it’s on!
I started trying to be the aggressor in the ring against this humungous, talented guy, and I blew it. I mean I really blew it! It was just a time when people said maybe I was slowing down, yeah maybe, but that was me. I just blew it. I got into the ring and self-destructed and fought a dumb fight. Later, both Vitali and Wladimir came into my locker room after the fight and asked me what I was doing, telling me that’s not how you box. I could really say was I know. I just wanted to get revenge on a guy who beat me really bad the first time and the moment got the best of me.
MP: Over the course of your career you’ve been very outspoken of your belief in God and Jesus Christ as your personal savior. Have you ever had difficulty equating your beliefs with a sport as brutal as boxing?
No, not at all. People always ask how I could be a boxer and a Christian at the same time, inflicting pain. I never viewed it like that. This is my job, boxing. I separated the two, but at the same time I brought them together. This is my job and it’s my mission field; a mission field to reach people for Jesus Christ. I didn’t hit them over the head with it or push them or force anybody into believing what I believe. I would just outwardly express that I was a believer in Jesus Christ, and I want the world to know that. You can love me or hate for it, but if the Lord is pleased by it, that’s all that matters.
MP: Have you ever been afraid going into a bout or did your faith in your abilities and in God carry you through regardless of how much bigger your opponent was?
I can honestly say I’ve never been scared, and I’ve faced some heavy hitters. And truly to say that my faith in the Lord was so strong and powerful in my life, just reading scripture, and the Lord directing me to certain scriptures before fights, if God could deliver souls with this or help them with that, he would do the same with me. In this sport it wasn’t always a victory for me. Victory may have come afterwards, people coming to Christ or really recognizing that this Jesus Christ might be real. In the fight I may not have got the victory but God did. I never was scared. I always came to fight the bigger guy. I thought after I beat Wladimir Klitschko, I wanted to fight the seven-footer, Nikolay Valuev, he’s even bigger. I wanted to conquer the biggest guy out there and not be scared. I just wanted to be the best heavyweight in the world. I never backed down from anybody. If you brought them, I’d fight them.
MP: The Klitschko brothers and Ike Ibeabuchi. Who hit the hardest?
A lot of guys hit hard but among those guys, all of them hit really hard. I think Wladimir hits harder than Vitali but equal with Ike. They each punched really hard and I was blessed to get into the ring with those guys and actually have the chance to fight them.
MP: What is Chris Byrd doing today?
Today I’m a motivational speaker, speaking in churches, sports groups, and companies, whatever. I talk about boxing, the Lord, how he has protected me and what he has done for me in my career and my life now after boxing. As for the motivational part of my speaking, I talk about my motto; how bad do you want it. That’s the thing. My wife really labeled me with it and always said to me, how bad do you want it? I always told her, Tracy I want this bad, throughout my whole career. Starting out my professional boxing career in a night club, an Olympic Silver medalist in a night club, I always wanted it bad. When I think about all of the training, certain things I did in Michigan in the winter, training and running in the cold weather and all that stuff, that’s what I’m doing now, a lot of speaking.
MP: Is there anything you’d like to say to your fans around the world in closing?
I would love to say, thank you for being a fan through the good times, which were a lot of great times in this sport, and even the bad times, where people would stick with me. To those fans, thank you for your support, it meant a lot to me, big time. It carried me through a lot of fights and it helped me through a lot of fights, especially during those disappointing times. So for the fans out there that backed me and supported me, I hopefully made your day when I boxed, and represented and carried myself well through everything I went through. Thank you.
Chris Byrd
Nickname: “Rapid Fire”
Division: Heavyweight
Professional Record: 41-5-1, 22 KO’s
Date Opponent Location Result
2009-03-21 Matthias Sandow Stuttgart, DE W TKO 4
2008-05-16 Shaun George Las Vegas, US L TKO 9
2007-10-27 Alexander Povetkin Erfurt, DE L TKO 11
2007-04-18 Paul Marinaccio Nassau, BS W RTD 7
2006-04-22 Wladimir Klitschko Mannheim, DE L TKO 7
IBF Heavyweight Title
vacant International Boxing Organization Heavyweight Title
2005-10-01 DaVarryl Williamson Reno, US W UD 12
IBF Heavyweight Title
2004-11-13 Jameel McCline New York, US W SD 12
IBF Heavyweight Title
2004-04-17 Andrew Golota New York, US D PTS 12
IBF Heavyweight Title
2003-09-20 Fres Oquendo Uncasville, US W UD 12
IBF Heavyweight Title
2002-12-14 Evander Holyfield Atlantic City, US W UD 12
vacant IBF Heavyweight Title
2002-06-08 Jeff Pegues Mount Pleasant, US W TKO 3
2001-08-18 David Tua Las Vegas, US W UD 12
USBA Heavyweight Title
2001-05-12 Maurice Harris New York, US W UD 12
vacant USBA Heavyweight Title
2001-01-19 David Vedder Mount Pleasant, US W UD 10
2000-10-14 Wladimir Klitschko Cologne, DE L UD 12
WBO Heavyweight Title
2000-04-01 Vitali Klitschko Neukoelln, DE W RTD 9
WBO Heavyweight Title
2000-01-19 David Washington Mount Pleasant, US W TKO 10
1999-10-22 Val Smith Detroit, US W KO 2
1999-06-03 Jose Ribalta Mount Pleasant, US W TKO 4
1999-05-08 John Sargent Philadelphia, US W TKO 2
1999-03-20 Ike Ibeabuchi Tacoma, US L TKO 5
1998-07-14 Ross Puritty Bay Saint Louis, US W UD 10
1998-05-30 Elieser Castillo Atlantic City, US W UD 10
1998-03-28 Derek Amos Atlantic City, US W TKO 6
1997-12-13 Jimmy Thunder Mashantucket, US W TKO 9
1997-06-20 Frankie Swindell Atlantic City, US W UD 10
1997-03-18 Bert Cooper Flint, US W UD 10
1997-01-28 Craig Petersen Auburn Hills, US W TKO 6
1996-10-08 Levi Billups Flint, US W UD 10
1996-08-06 Uriah Grant Flint, US W UD 10
1996-05-17 Biko Botowamungu Monroe, US W UD 10
1996-04-23 Lionel Butler Auburn Hills, US W TKO 8
1996-01-30 Jeff Wooden Auburn Hills, US W UD 10
1995-11-21 Phil Jackson Auburn Hills, US W UD 12
1995-10-03 Nathaniel Fitch Flint, US W KO 7
1995-07-18 Tim Puller Flint, US W TKO 5
1995-05-23 Arthur Williams Auburn Hills, US W SD 10
1995-04-26 Joel Humm Auburn Hills, US W RTD 4
1995-03-28 Mike Rouse Flint, US W TKO 6
vacant USBA Heavyweight Title
1995-01-06 Frankie Hines Virginia Beach, US W TKO 2
1994-11-01 Ron Gullette Flint, US W TKO 5
1994-10-04 Waxxen Fikes Auburn Hills, US W TKO 4
1994-08-30 Max Key Flint, US W KO 1
1994-06-07 Gerard O’Neal Flint, US W TKO 2
1994-03-22 Exum Speight Flint, US W UD 6
1993-05-15 Mike Sullivan Flint, US W TKO 1
1993-01-28 Gary Smith Flint, US W UD 6