Getty Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson biting Evander Holyfield's ear is one of the infamous fight moments.
It’s the moment millions of people watched happened live on Pay-Per-View: Former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson bit off the tip of Evander Holyfield’s ear, one of the most infamous sports moments of all time. Though his ear has now healed from 1997 at The MGM Grand in Las Vegas, it’s permanently scarred.
More than 20 years after the incident, Holyfield reflected on the unforgettable moment during an interview with “The Pat McAfee Show” in May 2020.
Tyson was coming off of a loss to Holyfield, and the boxer’s team warned Holyfield before the fight that Tyson could be up to no good.
“My only first thought was to bite him back,” Holyfield told McAfree. “When he bit me on the ear I jumped up and, man, I was so mad. I told Tyson, ‘You know those big cheeks you got, I’m gonna bite you right there.’
“In our neighborhoods, if anybody do anything to you, you got to do it worse,” he continued. “I realized if you act like you’re scared then people think they got you.”
Holyfield made a similar proclamation while on Joe Rogan’s podcast.
“I was getting ready to bite the daylights out of him and I was going to bite his face!” he said, per Talk Sports. “When you’re from the ghetto, they say that when you have something done to you, you’ve got to do it worse back.”
Two People Helped Holyfield Remain Calm After He Was Bitten
Holyfield said he probably would have bit Tyson back if it wasn’t for his, corner guy Tim Hallmark.
Hallmark told him:
‘Something bad is gonna happen in this fight because this is the only way this guy can win.’ He said, ‘It’s going to happen somewhere in your face area.’ And I thought it was going to be an elbow or a headbutt… Never ever in my life did I think I was gonna get bit.
Hallmark tried to keep Holyfield calm by yelling at him from the corner of the ring. Between Hallmark and remember his grandmother, Holyfield stayed away from Tyson’s face.
“My mind kept thinking about what my grandmama would tell me,” Holyfield said on “The Pat McAfee Show.” He remembered being a child and getting in trouble for retaliating, while the person who instigated got away.
Tyson Was Fined $3 Million
Biting Holyfield’s ear didn’t come cheap for Tyson. He was fined $3 million for the shocking incident, but it didn’t put a dent in the fighter’s bank account. He quickly made the money back by taking pictures with fans.
Tyson opened up about the incident on his podcast in May 2020, as noted by Talk Sports.
“Iron Mike” says he doesn’t even think about the notorious bite anymore. “However, I think about how much money that I made from taking pictures of biting people that it supersedes the $3 million that I lost,” he said. “I look at, after three or four years, and think ‘whoa, that’s how much I made?’
“That’s what it makes it funny for me. Yes, I bit his ear but I made that back from taking pictures,” he continued. “So I can never beat myself up about it.”
While Tyson might not be worried about it, Holyfield is still scarred. The missing a piece of his ear was discovered after the fight by an employee at the MGM Grand and brought to Holyfield’s locker room.
The quarter-to-half-inch long piece of his ear was wrapped in Latex and placed on ice, but it disappeared while being transported to the hospital, SportsCasting noted. It took surgeons 90 minutes to repair Holyfield’s ear.
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