25 years after the night Mike Tyson mutilated Evander Holyfield: where is the piece of his ear he bit?

sport offers unforgettable moments in our lives. So unforgettable that we can be transported to those magical or less magical places where we live, live and direct, from a gallery or from the Magic from the television, centimeters or thousands of kilometers away, those events that we talk about throughout our lives.

All of us, or almost all, remember where and with whom we saw Diego Maradona’s goals against the English in Mexico 1986. The one with the hand and the one with the gambeta that still cannot be explained beyond the fact that millions have been explained of times in these 36 years.

Everyone, or almost, of course, remembers the moment when Horace Grant passed it to John Paxson so much so that the point guard with the face of an employee hit the triple that gave the first “three peat” to Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls in the NBA.

The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on, now that you can see almost everything that happens by paying for your cable subscription or via some streaming (legal ones, of course). That is why it is logical that everyone, or almost everyone, who is reading this note has seen – or at least knows – what happened on June 28, 1997.. Although not everyone may have the faintest idea what happened after that historic moment in the history of sport.

Second part…

We are talking about Holyfield-Tyson II – although you already know it from the title that you clicked to enter the note and reach this fifth paragraph -, the fight that was held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Paradise, in the state of Nevada. It was the rematch of the fight that had taken place for seven months on the same stage where the boxer from Atlanta, Georgia beat the resilient world champion from the depths of New York. It was an unquestionable victory by TKO in the eleventh round.

That, of course, hadn’t been the only battle between Tyson and Holyfield. The two had known each other for more than a decade, when they were trying on gloves to get to Los Angeles in 1984. The real dealwho in that event would have won a bronze medal as light heavyweight, had shown he was not afraid of that inveterate knockout who dropped the dolls relentlessly but failed to make it to the Olympic event because of Henry Tillman despite being been the owner of the prestigious Golden Gloves (Golden Gloves) among the heavy.

The paths of the two, fist sports legends, forked until they met again in Nevada in 1996. Holyfield worked his way through the cruisers until he decided to make the heavyweight jump later. that James Buster Douglas hit Tokyo and snatched the title from a Tyson who, due to his licentious and scandalous life, including three years in prison for raping Desiree Washington in 1990, began to drift to the point of losing his invincible gift .

Iron Mike, like thousands of times, started all over again and that’s how he regained his belt while Holyfield regained his license after leaving behind heart problems that came to light after his defeat to Michael Moorer.

So, coming out of his mazes, Holyfield beat Tyson in the eleventh round – on cards he also lost badly – when the referee stopped the fight. Thus, Evander became the second man in history, behind Muhammad Ali, to be three-time world heavyweight champion.

The fight (the bite)

With this hasty and inaccurate summary, we arrive at that unforgettable day, the revenge between the two monsters that paralyzed sports fans. Tyson received $ 30 million as a scholarship and Holyfield took another five million for the fight that bore the pretentious slogan. “The noise and the fury”, citing William Faulkner’s novel. To understand the expectation: nearly two million people paid in the United States to see the struggle for the system pay per viewa record for the time – only surpassed by the 2007 De la Hoya-Mayweather competition -.

Holyfield-Tyson II went down in history for a word that hadn’t been written until now. Ear. Holyfield’s ear. Actually, the piece of Holyfield’s ear that Tyson mutilated with a bite. It was after The real deal He boxed at the limit of the rules and chased from the head a Tyson who in the third round let himself be carried away by that little devil that we all have on our shoulders.

Tired of Holyfield’s mind games (and warheads), Tyson, cut, came out to do justice with his own bite. He found his challenger’s right ear. And with the sharp blades and the same incisors as his, she ripped off part of it. Then he spat out the chunk of lower cartilage that was stuck between his teeth as if it were the toughest of tough roasts. And history has become even more history.

Referee Milles Lane, once that fateful third round was over, disqualified Iron Mike in the third round. That would be the beginning of the end of him. Holyfield was supposed to pay him three million dollars for the blood he shed.

Tyson was never Tyson again.

And Holyfield, since then, has two centimeters less humanity.

After what matters next

“It was the drugs. I only thought about drugs. I thought I was God, I felt like God, but what was done was done. I wasn’t thinking about boxing when I bit it. I wasn’t worried about boxing. What I have done is wrong, very wrong. I’m crazy “acknowledged Tyson, in an interview he gave Guardian in 2020 by self-criticizing your bad behaviors and bad habits.

Around those same days, in dialogue with Fox Newshe contradicted himself. “Sometimes I think, ‘No, I would never do it again.’ But actually I could do it again.”. While it’s best not to read this note due to this typist’s power of punching and cowardice, it’s worth reflecting: Where are we, Mike?

It’s known: Tyson always pushes the boundaries of what it should be. It is their way of life. While Holyfield unnecessarily stretched his career into the late 1950s, Iron Mike became a showman with half his face tattooed as he toured doing cabaret shows and recording lysergic podcasts. He found another way to live and survive in the growing cannabis industry in the United States. He militates the cause. And he also designed cannabis gummy candies in the shape of a bitten ear.

What did you call them? Mike bites. In Spanish, Mike’s bites.

What do they taste like? magnate of sarcasm? Tires, of course. They won’t like the ears …

But what did Holyfield’s ear taste like?

“Evander Holyfield’s ear tastes like ass”summarized a Iron Mike without labyrinths and that did not give much publicity for its creation.

Holyfield, after years of justified indignation, I had already forgiven Tyson away in 2004. Nine years later, while still fantasizing about a third episode between the two in the ring, Foot Locker, a sportswear company, brought them together in an advertisement. The sequence begins with NBA star Kyrie Irving. But the story that stands out the most is the reunion between Tyson and Holyfield. After going to look for him in his mansion, Mike begs his forgiveness and gives him a box containing the piece of ear he ripped off that fateful night in Nevada.

Was it true?

No.

The myth says it that piece of Holyfield is stored in a formalin jarsince someone visualized the term deal that night in Nevada and held it to sell to a collector and blow it up a morbid auction on a special date like the 25th anniversary of June 28, 2022.

But that’s a lie. That little piece of ear was lost, they say, in the ambulance where Holyfield was being transported through the streets of Heaven. An ending with little charm for one of the unforgettable moments in the history of sport. What we have all seen. Or almost everything. And we’ll meet again …