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Before they were rivals, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield were sparring partners.
In 1984, the two men were amateur boxers, not even in the same weight class. One day, the 21-year-old Holyfield approached the 17-year-old Tyson and asked if he was interested in sparring. The younger fighter responded in the negative, for a good reason.
Even though a teenager, 'Iron' Mike used to wreck his sparring partners in training. When asked by Holyfield if he wanted to spar, Tyson declined because he didn't want to hurt Holyfield, even in sparring. However, all it did was offend 'The Real Deal', as he was older and more established between the two.
As a result, the two men donned headgear and stepped into the ring 12 years before they wound up getting paid millions to do it. Others in the gym naturally surrounded the two future champions to watch them spar.
The sparring session didn't last long, as it got so intense that the coaches separated the two men. Years later, Evander Holyfield reflected on the sparring session in an interview:
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"Olympic coach [Pat Nappi] came in and stopped it... They stopped it at about a minute and 30 seconds, they said someone was going to get hurt. At that time I had him in the corner and he couldn’t get out. The Olympic coach stopped it but I knew I wasn’t going to get hurt. There wasn’t anybody hurt but I had him in the corner.”
Did Mike Tyson defeat Evander Holyfield?
While it's not known who "won" the sparring session, we do know that Evander Holyfield won both his fights with Mike Tyson.
Six years after their famous sparring session, 'The Real Deal' and 'Iron Mike' were set to square off. However, after Buster Douglas upset Tyson, the bout was derailed. Following the knockout, the former heavyweight champion was sent to prison.
Thankfully, they finally did step into the ring six years later. In their first outing, Holyfield survived the early onslaught and knocked out Mike Tyson to claim the WBA Heavyweight Championship.
A few months later, the two rematched. After some early headbutts from Holyfield, Tyson went beserk and wound up biting his foe in the third-round to be disqualified. The scenes following the illegal fouls are some of the most memorable in boxing history. Despite talk of a trilogy bout, it never came to fruition.
