As we celebrate Black Music Month here in our Madison Avenue offices at The Shadow League, we bring you the playlist of what Mike Tyson might have been listening to in his locker room before taking a nibble out of Evander Holyfield’s ear back in the day.
An empty stomach is not a good political adviser. – Albert Einstein
On this day, June 28th, 1997, I remember watching in stunned in disbelief. Mike Tyson had just been disqualified for biting off Evander Holyfield’s ear in the third round of their rematch. Holyfield lived up to his nickname of being The Real Deal in November of 1996, when he beat Tyson like the L.A.P.D. did Rodney King before that bout was stopped in the 11th round.
Tyson was recalcitrant and intransigent afterwards, claiming that his nibbles and bits were in response to Holyfield’s notorious head butts, one of which opened a nasty cut over Tyson’s right eye.
“He butted me in the second round and he butted me again,” said Tyson afterwards. “He kept butting me and nobody would help me. This is my career. What am I supposed to do?… Holyfield’s not the warrior he claims to be. He got a little nick on his ear and quit.”
Mike failed to realize that the saying is “An eye for an eye,” not, “An eye for two ears.”
In the actual fight, Holyfield caught Tyson’s attention with a right uppercut-left hook combo midway into Round 1. He bashed him lovely in the second round as well. But for folks who’ve long watched Holyfield, it was evident that one of his best weapons was that granite block of a head, which he often plunged into the dome of others with reckless abandon.
And we all know what happened in Round 3. Mike got hungry, and that’s when all hell broke loose. Here’s a list of songs that were probably going through his head right before he became a full-fledged caricature after once being known as one of the most devastating heavyweights of all time.
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