As Mike Tyson prepares to step back into the ring, the boxing world remembers one of his most infamous moments. On June 28, 1997, at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Tyson was disqualified in the third round of his WBA Heavyweight Championship fight against Evander Holyfield after biting Holyfield's ear. The incident remains one of boxing's most dramatic chapters.
Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson II, billed as The Sound and the Fury and afterwards infamously referred to as The Bite Fight, was a professional boxing match contested between the champion Evander Holyfield and the challenger Mike Tyson on June 28, 1997, for the WBA World Heavyweight Championship.
The fight achieved notoriety as one of the most bizarre fights in boxing history after Tyson bit off a part of Holyfield's ear.
Twenty three years ago today, one of the most savage moments in boxing history took place at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas. In perhaps the biggest sporting event of the 1990’s, Evander Holyfield and Mike Tyson met a second time to settle the score after “The Real Deal” had pulled off the unthinkable the previous year, stopping “Iron Mike” in an all-time great upset.
Like their first encounter, the rematch surpassed all expectations, albeit in a markedly different manner.
Read also: Mike Tyson vs. Brock Lesnar?
The Buildup to the Rematch
Tyson and Holyfield had fought seven months earlier, on November 9, 1996, at the same venue in Las Vegas. Tyson had been making his first defense of the WBA championship he had won from Bruce Seldon in a first-round knockout.
Holyfield, despite being a former champion, was a significant underdog entering that match as his performance had been rather lackluster in several fights since having returned to fighting in 1995 after a brief retirement. However, Holyfield surprised Tyson by controlling the 1996 contest and knocked him down in the sixth round.
When the 1997 fight was signed, Halpern was again assigned to be the referee. Tyson's management objected, with the official reason being that they wanted a different referee for the rematch. It was believed, though never confirmed, that the actual reason why Tyson and crew objected to Halpern's assignment was that Holyfield had clashed heads with Tyson several times during the course of the first fight and Halpern ruled them all accidental.
The fight picked up where its predecessor left off, with Holyfield bullying the bully, thwarting Tyson’s aggression, controlling the action on the inside, and even hurting “Iron Mike” before the end of round one. Not long into round two, a cut opened above Tyson’s right eye, marking the second time in two fights that an “accidental headbutt” would inflict a handicap on the former champion. And this time, one could see the visible frustration in Tyson’s eyes as he frequently looked over at referee Mills Lane, hoping he might take the kind of action Mitch Halpern had failed to take against Evander in the first fight.
Late in the round, with Holyfield pushing Tyson backwards in a clinch, Mike twisted his opponent’s arm in what appeared to be an attempt to disable the champion. But Tyson didn’t get the reaction he was looking for as Evander man-handled Mike in return, shoving him off and showing little regard for the challenger’s flagrant foul.
Read also: Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul
When the bell rang to end the round, Tyson’s body language suggested capitulation as he looked to touch gloves. But instead of capitulation and resignation, it was rage that came to the fore at the start of round three, Tyson’s demons manifesting themselves in a brief vision of vintage “Iron Mike,” the challenger charging out ferociously and firing explosive left hooks and right hands. But after two minutes, Holyfield was still on his feet, still in charge, and unfazed by Tyson’s short-term resurgence.
While all could see the visible anger and frustration in Tyson’s eyes, no one could have ever predicted what happened next.
The Infamous Bite
Holyfield won the first three rounds. At 2:19 of the first round, an overhand right punch from Holyfield stunned Tyson, but Tyson fought back, immediately pushing Holyfield backwards. At 32 seconds into the second round, Holyfield ducked under a right punch from Tyson. In doing so, he head-butted Tyson, producing a large cut over the latter's right eye (although trainer Ritchie Giachetti believed the injury happened in the first round). Tyson had repeatedly complained about head-butting in the first bout between the two fighters.
As the third round was about to begin, Tyson came out of his corner without his mouthpiece. Lane ordered Tyson back to his corner to insert it. Tyson inserted his mouthpiece, got back into position, and the match resumed. Tyson began the third round with a furious attack.
The two warriors came together in a clinch and then suddenly Holyfield was jumping up and down in shock and agony, a reaction, all would soon realize, to a bite which had torn off a piece of Evander’s right ear. It was the bite felt around the world, a desperate act from a man who had lost complete control of his mind, his emotions, and his actions.
Read also: A Look at Tyson Sausage Patties' Nutritional Value
With forty seconds remaining in the round, Holyfield got Tyson in a clinch, and Tyson rolled his head above Holyfield's shoulder and bit Holyfield on his right ear. Holyfield leapt into the air in pain and spun in a circle, bleeding profusely from the bite wound. Lane stopped the action, but Tyson managed to rush Holyfield from behind and shove him into his corner.
Lane separated the men, moved Tyson to a neutral corner, and went back to check on an enraged Holyfield. Lane called Marc Ratner, the chairman of Nevada’s athletic commission, up to the ring apron and informed him that because Tyson had bitten Holyfield’s ear, he was going to disqualify him and end the fight. Meanwhile, ringside physician Flip Homansky was performing his own check on the champion, and Lane decided to defer to him.
Once Homansky cleared Holyfield to continue the fight, Lane decided to allow the bout to continue, but not before penalizing Tyson with a two-point deduction for the bite, as per rules regarding any intentional foul causing an injury. As Lane explained the decision to Tyson and his cornermen, Tyson asserted that the injury to Holyfield's ear was the result of a punch.
During another clinch, Tyson bit Holyfield's left ear. Holyfield threw his hands around to escape the clinch and jumped back. Tyson's second bite just scarred Holyfield's ear. At the time of the second bite, Lane failed to notice it and did not stop the match, and both combatants continued fighting until time expired.
Mills Lane, a normally decisive referee, had to consult with the ringside doctor and the state athletic commissioner before deciding his next move.
The round ended and Lane, having determined that a second bite did in fact happen, finally disqualified Tyson, which only fanned the flames of the rage of “Iron Mike.”
With the ring full of security personnel, Tyson began attacking everyone in his way in a bizarre attempt to get at Holyfield, inciting an unprecedented scene of bedlam with guards and police struggling to restrain Tyson, some of them taking heavy leather for their efforts.
Referee Lane Mills stopped the fight as Holyfield held his injured ear in shock, and Holyfield secured the victory by disqualification.
Mike Tyson (USA) vs Evander Holyfield (USA) 2 | Ear's Story, BOXING fight, HD
Aftermath and Legacy
After the match was stopped, Tyson went on a rampage at Holyfield and his trainer Brooks while they were still in their corner. Lane told Tyson's corner that he was disqualifying Tyson for biting Holyfield. To protect Holyfield, security surrounded him in his corner, and Tyson was taken back to his corner by security. Lane was interviewed and said that the bites were intentional. He had told Tyson not to bite anymore, and said Tyson asked to be disqualified by disobeying that order. Holyfield left the ring seconds after the interview, which gave the fans and audience the hint that the match was over. Reporters then interviewed Tyson's instructor, John Horne, who was upset about Lane's decision. Horne said, "They will have to explain that. I do not agree with it but it is what it is ...
Twenty-five minutes after the brawl ended, announcer Jimmy Lennon Jr. read the decision: "Ladies and gentlemen, this bout has been stopped at the end of round number three.
Later, during post-match interviews, Tyson was walking back to his locker room when a fan from the venue tossed a bottle of water in his direction. Tyson, his instructor, and a pain manager climbed over a temporary railing and up into the stands, made obscene gestures to the crowd, and made their way up the side of a stairway. Tyson had to be restrained as he was led off.
The commentators for the Sky Sports broadcast of the bout, Ian Darke and Glenn McCrory, noted that no one had been disqualified in a title bout for more than 50 years, correctly estimating that the last disqualification was during a bout between Joe Louis and Buddy Baer in 1941, where Baer was disqualified after his cornermen refused to leave the ring in protest of what they believed was a late hit.
As a result of biting Holyfield on both ears and other behavior, Tyson's boxing license was revoked by the Nevada State Athletic Commission and he was fined $3 million plus legal fees.
The defeat brought to an end the post-prison phase of Tyson’s career, when he had recaptured his image as “The Baddest Man On The Planet” and appeared to once again be, arguably, the best heavyweight in the world. But it also marked a new beginning.
After Tyson served a one year suspension, he returned to the ring in 1999 a bigger attraction then ever, the “Bite Fight” only bolstering his image as a must-see mainstream attraction. And make no mistake, Tyson’s undeniable appeal now had little to do with his past ring brilliance, with his once being the knockout machine that electrified venues in the late eighties.
A caricature of himself, “Iron Mike” became a boxing purist’s worst nightmare, a cash cow standing for everything that detractors of the fight game love to criticize, an ironic turn for a man tutored by Cus D’Amato to be a boxing purist himself.
Was Tyson’s bite attack on Evander Holyfield really more “primitive” or “depraved” than say Duk-Koo Kim being taken from the ring on a stretcher on live television only to die in hospital a few days later? Was it more savage, more repulsive, than Nigel Benn inflicting permanent brain damage on Gerald McClellan, or Ray Mercer landing flush power shots on an unconscious Tommy Morrison?
More than two decades later, the “Bite Fight” is still more conversation-worthy with the guy on the next bar stool than some of boxing’s prouder moments of the last twenty years such as Corrales vs Castillo I, or the Barrera vs Morales and Gatti vs Ward trilogies.
But apart from its tabloid appeal, the significance of Holyfield vs Tyson II should not be overlooked; it was certainly more than just “The Bite Fight.” It was a call for some serious reflection on the spectacle of boxing, on Mike Tyson, and on the toll this sport takes on human lives.
And above all, it’s a reminder that boxing exists in a moral grey zone. Whether it’s “The Sweet Science” to you, or something closer to barbarism, the fight game is not going anywhere. As Kris Kristofferson might put it, boxing is “partly truth, partly fiction, a walking contradiction.”
But make no mistake, Holyfield vs Tyson II, “The Bite Fight,” was no contradiction.
