Deontay Wilder stands on the scale during a weigh-in for his WBC heavyweight championship boxing match against Tyson Fury, of England, Friday, Feb. 21, 2020, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/Isaac Brekken)
Styles make fights, leading a lot of people in boxing to think the second heavyweight title fight between Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury will be like the first.
That wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, because Wilder and Fury put on a show the first time they met in a dramatic fight that ended in a draw.
But heavyweight title fights usually stand on their own. And rematches can go awry, as a trio of heavyweight contests in the 1990′s demonstrated.
Evander Holyfield and Riddick Bowe put on great fight when they met in November 1992, the first of what would be three fights between the two heavyweights. Bowe came on strong in the late rounds to take the title from Holyfield in a bruising 12-round fight of two boxers in their prime.
When they met a year later, the fight was good enough. But then the so-called Fan Man, flying in a motorized paraglider, swooped into the outdoor arena at Caesars Palace, landing in the ring ropes during the seventh round.
It took 21 minutes to restore order and resume the fight. When it was over, Holyfield had a narrow win, though Bowe would complain that the Fan Man sapped his momentum and cost him the bout.
The next year, Oliver McCall knocked out Lennox Lewis in the second round in a stunning upset at Wembley Stadium in London. By the time they got together in 1997 for a second title fight, McCall started behaving bizarrely, refusing to go back to his corner at the end of the third round and throwing only two punches in the fourth round.
McCall had tears streaming down his face, finally prompting the referee to step in and stop the fight and award the win to Lewis.
Perhaps the most famous of recent heavyweight rematches took place the same year, when Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield met for the second time in what became the infamous “Bite Fight.”
Holyfield had stopped Tyson in the 11th round of their first fight, and Tyson was upset because he thought he was being head butted. When he and Holyfield went at it in the rematch, Tyson thought the same thing and retaliated by biting Holyfield’s ear.
Referee Mills Lane allowed the fight to go on but Tyson then bit Holyfield’s other ear, forcing Lane to disqualify him in a bizarre finish to one of the biggest fights ever.