Evander Holyfield vs. Mike Tyson Analysis

While the two fights held between WBA champion Mike Tyson and number one contender Evander Holyfield won’t go down in history as two of the greatest fights to ever happen in heavyweight boxing, there is no doubt that they will both go down in history for a much worse reason. By this time in his career, Iron Mike Tyson was merely a shadow of his former self. With his beloved trainer who turned his life around, Cus D’Amato recently passing away and his marriage to actress Robin Givens in tatters, Tyson slowly turned more and more away from boxing. As his career went higher and higher, his skill inside the ring dropped considerably. Too busy partying and having fun, Tyson was no longer the trained killer Cus D’Amato had trained him to be. While he could still throw a bomb and was knocking fighters out left and right, he just wasn’t the same and it all began when it shined through in his loss to Buster Douglas, a man whom he should have beaten with ease.

Evander wasn’t no young rooster either. His career had started to come off the rails since his first loss to Riddick Bowe, he started to pick up more and more losses to fighters he really should have beaten. But there was no doubt that Evander was in much better shape than Tyson at the time, despite Tyson still having the huge star pulling power from his years of highlight reel knockouts. Going into the fight Tyson was desperate to leave the fight a champion. After losing his IBF, WBC and WBA titles in his loss to Buster Douglas, Tyson had campaigned hard to once again become the world champion. This time would finally come when Tyson would invite British bomber Frank Bruno back over to Las Vegas to defend his WBC title. Tyson would yet again knock out the paper champion for the second time and once again hold on to his world titles that he held so close to his heart. Tyson would then go on to take the WBA title from Bruce Seldon after losing his WBC title to paperwork and now he had to defend his WBA title against Evander Holyfield and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

Through their two fight war, Tyson was always deemed as the dirty fighter after the incident in the second fight but Evander had some tricks of his own. All night Evander would duck and weave into Tyson, smashing his head into the face of Tyson every time. It was clear that Evander was headbutting Tyson, but for some reason the numerous times this happened it was called “accidental” by the referee. The first wave of head buts would cut and blur Tyson who recalled thinking “What the ****” in his documentary, after taking the first headbutt and how groggy it had made him. This pattern of illegal headbutts would go on all night from the crafty Holyfield who would eventually force referee Mitch Halpern to call an end to the fight in the eleventh round after Tyson had taken a beating all night. The fight angered fans who saw the blatant cheating ways of Holyfield and made an uproar about Tyson getting a second chance to combat the headbutts, this time with a much stricter referee, world famous Mills Lane.

The fight would start off much like the first fight. Evander would wade in and clearly smash Tyson in the face with his head more than once and Tyson couldn’t believe it. He looked to referee Mills Lane for help but got none. Evander was so convincing with these headbutts he had everyone but the fans fooled. Tyson was shocked, he couldn’t believe that Evander was really pulling the same dirty moves from the first fight and it drove him to what is no one of the most infamous moves in boxing history. After taking repeated headbutts to the face without anything being done about it, Tyson grew angry and bit the ear of Holyfield who jumped back in surprise at which point the fight was paused. Tyson bit enough for his ear to start bleeding, but so rare was this occurrence that referee Mills Lane didn’t know how to deal with it. Tyson bite Evander a second time, this time taking a big chunk out of his opponents ear. The fight was not halted immediately, instead the fight would be called off once Lane was able to see just how much damage Tyson had done to the ear of Evander, at which point he disqualified Tyson and all hell broke lose. Pandemonium had erupted in the ring as Tyson try to get at Evander for his dirty tactics during the fight, his rage was far from over. At that very point dozens of people would jump into the ring and punches would start flying both in the ring and in the crowds outside the ring.

Once everything had settled down Tyson would release a statement claiming to be apologetic to Evander in a hope that the Nevada State Athletic Commission wouldn’t permanently ban him from boxing. It worked as he was banned but his licence was reinstated a year later. The damage was done, any hope of the young Tyson making a reemergence was zero. His image and career was in tatters while Evander went on to successfully defend his titles but karma would eventually catch up with him as rising star Lennox Lewis would take his world titles from him and Evander would be left to continue a terrible boxing career well into his 40’s.