‘I was blacking out, but adrenaline jolted me back and I wanted to kill him’ – Inside the mind of Mike Tyson when he bit Evander Holyfield’s ear in one of boxing’s most iconic heavyweight rematches

Heavyweight boxing’s most infamous rematch occurred 25 years ago – but what was really going through Mike Tyson’s mind when he bit chunks out of rival Evander Holyfield’s ears in front of a disbelieving MGM Grand?

The clash, which broke pay-per-view records on 28 June 1997, was billed as ‘The Sound and the Fury’ but is now better known as ‘The Bite Fight’.

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The third round saw Tyson sink his teeth into Holyfield’s right ear, tear off a piece of cartilage and spit it into the ring. An enraged ‘Iron Mike’ then shoved Holyfield as he danced around the ring in agony.

Remarkably, with Las Vegas commissioners not wanting such a huge fight to end in a DQ, Tyson was allowed to continue with a two-point deduction.

That is until he turned his attention to Evander’s left ear and was disqualified, leading to a mass in-ring brawl as Tyson tried to fight his way to Holyfield again.

Tyson explained his actions as being retaliation for Holyfield’s continual headbutts (a head clash had caused a cut over Tyson’s eye in round two), which referee Mills Lane ignored.

Critics suggested Tyson simply knew he was on his way to being stopped by Holyfield once again and was searching for a way out.

The truth is more complex and goes back beyond the first fight, to Tyson’s incarceration in 1992.

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In his autobiography, Undisputed Truth, Tyson states: “If I fought him [Holyfield] in 1991 when I was supposed to fight him originally, I would have knocked him out. He knows that, everybody in his camp knows that. The best thing that ever happened to him was that I went to prison. That’s when I lost all my timing.”

Tyson had four fights in 13 months after his release from jail, picking up two versions of the world title, with none of the bouts going beyond round three.

Great on paper, but the opposition was no test: two no-hopers followed by Frank Bruno, the gutsy Brit who looked frozen during his ring walk, and Bruce Seldon, who seemed happy to throw himself to the canvas inside two minutes.

‘Iron Mike’ knew he was still rusty and not ready for a tough old warrior like Holyfield. But Don King was eager to make the fight, Tyson needed the payday and, after Holyfield struggled with former middleweight Bobby Czyz, the view was that Evander was shot.

So much so that Tyson opened as a 25-1 favourite and barely trained for their first contest, assuming Holyfield would collapse after the first bomb was landed. Instead, Holyfield bullied the bully, scoring a memorable 11th-round KO. 

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Yet Tyson had no excuses with the rematch, claiming he trained twice as hard as he did for fight one. Also, despite the result of the first contest – and the outrageous outcome of the second – there was no bad blood between the pair. Tyson knew Holyfield from their junior amateur days and the pair were always on friendly terms.

That wouldn’t stop Holyfield from taking every advantage, however. The bible-thumping former cruiserweight king was not adverse to the rough stuff: low blows, wrestling inside and, yes, charging in with his big bald dome lowered.

Tyson’s stated plan for the rematch was to be even more aggressive the second time out. However, it was Holyfield who edged the first two rounds, before Tyson emerged for round three without his gumshield.

Many observers have taken this as a sign that Tyson’s actions were premeditated – that he was planning the bite right then and there.

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Tyson later labelled this theory ‘bulls***’, explaining that throughout his career he never looked for a way out.

“In any fight anybody ever saw me lose, I took my beating like a man, I never sat down,” Tyson said, adding that the reason for the sudden desire to chomp Holyfield's ears was: “I was angry, I was mad, I lost my composure.”

Undoubtedly Tyson saw the world against him by round three. He was cut, felt as though he was being ‘butted senseless’ and would get no help from referee Lane.

Tyson, the ‘Baddest Man on the Planet’, was also tired of playing the pantomime villain, claiming it was unfair that everyone viewed Holyfield as the good guy no matter what. “It didn’t make huge headlines when he was later implicated in a steroid ring,” Tyson noted.

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Curiously, Tyson was actually having his best round in the third pre-bite, answering Holyfield’s hooks with some of his own power shots.

“I was blacking out a little,” Tyson said of the impact of the head clashes, “but my anger and adrenaline jolted me back. I just wanted to kill him. Anybody watching could see the headbutts were so overt. I was furious, an undisciplined soldier and I lost my composure. So I bit him in the ear.”

Whether consciously or subconsciously, Tyson was certainly looking for a way out of the contest. Beating Holyfield was not impossible but he was such a rugged, granite-chinned gladiator that it was almost always a long war of attrition to get the better of him. A post-prison Tyson simply didn’t have this in him.

The truth about the Tyson-Holyfield rivalry is that only one man wanted to be in it. Holyfield was a boxing addict; he couldn’t get enough of training and fighting, in the end to his detriment as his career went on far too long. But any addictions Tyson had by this stage of his life had nothing to do with boxing – he was only stepping in the ring for one reason.

“My heart wasn’t in boxing but I needed the money,” he reflected. “Once I left prison, the fun really died.”

That told in Tyson’s preparation for the rematch. He got himself into better physical condition, but where was the plan to deal with what the ‘Real Deal’ would bring?

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If Tyson was seriously motivated for revenge, he’d have surrounded himself with a training team who’d come up with a set of tactics to cope with Holyfield leading with his head.

Tyson had known it was coming – and was the shorter man, so could, in theory, duck under an incoming Evander. Why was there no strategy to handle the rough stuff that bothered Tyson in the first fight?

Mainly because Tyson’s desire to fight had ebbed away at this point. Tyson said he bit Holyfield because: “I didn’t care about fighting no more by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.”

True in the moment, but also true of his outlook on the sport as a whole. Tyson, who’d been boxing since age 13 and been exploited by managers and promoters in the decades since, had long since lost his love for the fight game.

We're unlikely to see the smaller Oleksandr Usyk revert to these tactics on Saturday night against the larger Anthony Joshua, but boxing fans know to expect the unexpected.

When Tyson bit Holyfield’s ear, he wasn’t just trying to get thrown out of one fight, he was expressing how he felt about boxing altogether – a sport that had chewed him up and spat him out like so much bloody cartilage.