Evander Holyfield, who lost a piece of his ear in a Mike Tyson outburst two years ago, defended his beleaguered arch-rival for hitting Orlin Norris after the bell last Saturday.

"As a fighter we always somehow try to get the last blow at the end of the bell because it sends a message back to that person," Holyfield said on Tuesday.

"When somebody hits you after the bell you gotta go sit back down for that whole minute, and you're thinking how hard he hits. That's the reason why a guy likes to get that last shot.

"It's not that someone fouls you to get you out of there, it's that last shot gets you thinking," said Holyfield, in Houston training for his November 13th Las Vegas rematch against Lennox Lewis for the undisputed heavyweight title.

Besides, Holyfield said, Norris looked like he could have continued instead of refusing to leave his stool for the second round, saying he had twisted his right knee when Tyson's late punch dropped him to the canvas.

"Tyson hurt the guy with the shot but I don't think it was a devastating shot," said Holyfield. "It surprised the guy and he fell. When the guy got up he wasn't wobbly or anything like that, his eyes weren't rolled back up in his head or anything like that," said Holyfield, whose career is testimony that he would have had to be carried out on a stretcher to concede anything in the ring.

"There used to be a rule that, shoot, you can't lose on a disqualification. You gotta get up, and people used to get up and fight. They changed the rules. I still think shoot you can't lose on a disqualification. You got to get up and fight."

Holyfield said he believed that Norris was told by his cornermen to stay on his stool as an easy pay-day. "It's kinda sad. If he was a champion, you know, shoot, you're not giving up your belts. This guy not one time was hollering that he can't go on," Holyfield said.

Holyfield, however, may not have had the benefit of repeated replays of the punch, which clearly showed that Norris fell awkwardly with much of his weight on a twisted knee. And a ringside doctor examined Norris and said his knee definitely had been injured.

Tyson got frustrated because "people are not fighting him back so he really has to work to win," added Holyfield, who has not had cosmetic surgery to repair the top of his right ear that Tyson bit off in their rematch.