The lady and the champ: Evander Holyfield says God and a good wife helped him whip Tyson - boxer - Interview

Ebony, Feb, 1997 by Laura B. Randolph

The first time I called her," says Evander Holyfield, referring to his wife of four months, "we talked for eight straight hours." Actually, that's not quite true. "I probably talked 10 minutes," the heavyweight champ says, smiling at the 34-year-old physician he married last October 4, "and Janice talked the rest of the time."

That marathon phone call occurred in 1994, about a month after the couple met in Philadelphia at a Christian revival meeting held by television preacher and evangelist Benny Hinn. Not once during the entire eight-hour conversation did Holyfield express any romantic interest in his new wife. Not so much as a smidgen. "I wasn't attracted to her like that," he explains. "I didn't see her that way at all." Clearly not. In fact, when Hinn announced to the new heavyweight champion at that revival meeting that his next wife was in the room, Evander was not a happy man. "I was disappointed," he confides, "because I had just started a relationship."

It wasn't until several weeks later when Evander ran into Janice at another Hinn function, this one in California, that he asked the Chicago-born internist for her phone number. Even then, he says, his interest was purely platonic, is he made clear to the two or three Hinn assistants who wanted to fix them up. "I said, `Look, I got five kids, and I'm looking for a wife.' I thought because Janice was a doctor she wouldn't want to be a housewife."

So why ask for the phone number? "It seemed like she vas full of The Word," says the 34-year-old champion, a fact that was confirmed to him in that eight-hour phone call. "She was the first woman I had met who knew more about the Bible than I did, and that really got my attention because usually I'm the one who carries the conversation [about God]."

Impressed by her deep spirituality (Janice is also an ordained minister) and "hoping the relationship could be more," Evander invited the doctor to visit him in Atlanta the following week. She did, and while the champ says "I loved her spirit," he felt no romantic sparks. Disappointed but not yet ready to give up hope of a relationship with Janice, when Hinn invited Evander to go with him to Jerusalem, the champ was certain he had found a way to make the romantic magnets connect. He would ask Janice to go with him. Of all the places in the world, he reasoned, surely he would fall in love with her there. "I thought, this is holy land. If I go there and God wants me to marry her, then He'll put that thought in my heart." When it didn't happen, Evander resigned himself to the fact that he and Janice were not meant to be. "When I came home from Jerusalem, that's when I told her we'll just be friends," he remembers.

That was November 1994. And for two years, that's exactly what they were - just friends. They talked on the phone constantly and each discovered they could talk to the other about anything. Their hopes. (He wanted to settle down and get married, so did she.) Their dreams. (He wanted to be heavyweight champ again and tell the world about the power of God; she wanted to pastor a church and tell the world about the power of God). His family. (He has six children; she wanted six children). And most of all their faith. The more they talked, the more Evander knew that he had to find a way to persuade Janice to leave her medical practice and come live with him on his 188-acre estate. Not to be with him; he was on his way to Houston to train for the fight against Mike Tyson. No, Evander wanted Janice to come to Atlanta to take care of his children. "She was the only person I felt comfortable leaving my kids with," says Evander, referring to three of his children who live with him. And there was a second reason Evander asked Janice to live on his estate. "I wanted to bring somebody down here that I wasn't interested in," he says, and I had already made up my mind that we were only going to be good friends."

The first time Evander asked her to move to Atlanta, Janice turned him down cold, though not for the reasons you might think. She wasn't worried about taking on daily responsibility for Evander Jr. (12), Evette (11), and Ewin (6). And she had already made up her mind to take an extended leave from her medical practice in Chicago where she had carved a niche for herself as a pain management specialist. "My father had taken ill (he died of cancer in November)," she says. "This was just three months before my mother had a stroke, so I was planning to take the time off anyway." What bothered Janice about Evander's request was something far less earthly, far more ethereal. "I kept asking him `Did you pray about it? Did God tell you to ask me?"' she remembers. "He always said `yes', but I told him I was getting the feeling that it was he who wanted me to come to Atlanta, not God."

And so she did what she always does whenever she is feeling confused or uncertain. She prayed. "I said `Lord, if you really want me to go down there, then you have to tell Evander to tell me X, Y and Z. if he tells me those things, then it's okay with me,"' she says.