Mike Tyson vs Evander Holyfield - Full Fight - 11-9-1996
Bout Summary:
yson and Holyfield met in the center of the ring at the opening bell and engaged in the kind of furious combat that no heavyweight fight fan had seen in years. They swung wildly and then collapsed into clinches, shoved each other away and finally resumed battle as the cycle began again. It was breathtaking, especially when it became clear that Holyfield would not be flattened by Tyson's straight-ahead fusillades. Suddenly Holyfield, the built-up cruiserweight, seemed formidable at 215 pounds, his 77 1/2-inch reach putting him out of range of Tyson's 71 inches.
In the second round Holyfield, who is not known as a big puncher, hit Tyson with a left hand that seemed to stagger him. At the end of the round Tyson paused on his way to his corner and looked at Holyfield as if puzzled. In fact he was, as he admitted later, "blacked out." The fight went eight more rounds, until referee Mitch Halpern stopped it less than a minute into the 11th, but afterward Tyson could recall none of them. For everyone else the bout was unforgettable. Holyfield's constant pressure was a welcome sight after the weak-kneed efforts of Tyson's previous opponents, but the challenger was providing something more than action. By crowding in, he was taking away Tyson's hook, which is more effective from outside, and generally he was keeping Tyson too occupied to put together more than two punches.
Tyson was always a threat, of course, and in the fifth round he unleashed a right to Holyfield's body and an uppercut to his chin, reminding everyone of his power. But Tyson was plainly befuddled, strangely ineffective. The two fighters would clash, tie up and get broken apart by the referee, and there Holyfield would be, still standing in front of Tyson.
Later Tyson would say he remembered nothing from the third round on. Not the sixth round, when Holyfield opened a small cut above Tyson's left eye with an unintentional head butt and then decked him with a left hand to the shoulder as 16,325 people chanted Holyfield's name. Tyson was definitely in trouble. In the seventh he kept looking to Halpern, complaining about head-butting. And later in that round he rushed Holyfield face-first and inadvertently smashed his left eye into Holyfield's shaved head. Tyson gasped in pain, stood straight up and appealed to the ref again.
A sense that Holyfield really could win swept the crowd, and chants of "Let's go, Mike!" were squashed by choruses of "Holy-field!" Tyson tried trading punches with Holyfield in the 10th, but that turned ugly for him when Holyfield hit him with a powerful combination, followed shortly by a right to the head and, with eight unanswered punches, backed him into the ropes. In all, Holyfield hit Tyson 23 times in the 10th. It had been a long time since anyone had seen Tyson saved by the bell.
The fight was effectively over, but it went 37 seconds into the 11th round, when a big right to Tyson's head slammed him into the ropes again and Halpern embraced him in protection. "I don't remember that round," Tyson would say. "I got caught in something strange."
Match Date: November 9, 1996
Mike Tyson's Amateur and Pro Record: www.sportenote.com/vedi_dettag...