Like so many boxing stories, Holmes's begins on the wrong side of the tracks; he fights himself out and up from there. Straight-ahead, hard-working, cautious at times, and free of attending glitz, Against All Odds mirrors Holmes's style in the ring and out of it. 

Its strength is its candor. Holmes never could hide his emotions, or his petulance. His autobiography makes clear his respect for Ali, his hatred of Don King, and the angers that raged around his fight with Gerry Cooney. Indeed, rage is a character in itself. "It was the part of me that always scared me a little because I never completely accepted the fact that I had it in me," Holmes writes. 

Accept it or not, he rode it to the title, and, no small feat, held that title for seven years.