The Polar Bear Journals, Ch. 14, Famous Fights deja vu

 Background:

 November, 9, 1996, MGM Grand, Las Vegas


Holyfield is a considerable underdog in this comeback fight.  The odds against him beating Tyson are 25-1.   Tyson is one of the most unpredictable, fearsome heavyweights to ever enter the boxing ring.

Holyfield on the left; Tyson on the right.

The taller Holyfield, with a 7 inch reach advantage over Tyson, dominates the fight.  He floors Tyson for only the second time in Iron Mike's career, and wins almost every round.

Against those tremendous 25-1 odds, Holyfield wins by a TKO in the 11th round, when Referee Mitch Halpern stops the fight.  Tyson's camp complains bitterly about Holyfield's head-butting. 

Holyfield wins the heavyweight championship belt for the third time.

Seven months later.

June 28, 1997.


The MGM Grand in Las Vegas is filled to capacity and millions more around the world watch on closed circuit and pay TV.  

My living room is filled with friends, all of whom contributed to the pay per view match on TV that is billed as "The Sound and the Fury." 

Holyfield  made himself heard seven months prior when he and Iron Mike Tyson met.  Referee Mitch Halpern stopped that fight in the 11th round, giving Holyfield a TKO.    Holyfield, at 6 ft. 1 inch towers over the 5 foot 10 inch Tyson.

Round One :

(according to the Las Vegas Sun and other sources):

"The Sound and the Fury;"

On the left at 6'1" is Holyfield who made himself heard 'round the world by beating Tyson seven months prior, in the face of  25 to 1 odds against him.  Tyson is 5'10" of fury and revenge.

 The waiting is over, the talking is done, the re-match is here! Tyson lands a straight jab and is moving around. 

Holyfield wrestles Tyson to his chest. Both fighters are intense. Tyson will not back away. 

Holyfield is coming in low and picking his spots. Holyfield with a left hook and jab, then a great hook. Holyfield with a combination that hurts Tyson. 

Tyson responds with a left, but Holyfield manages to hurt Tyson a little. 

 At 2:19 of the first round, an overhand right from Holyfield stuns Tyson, but Tyson fights back immediately,  pushing Holyfield backwards.

The crowd is chanting "Holyfield, Holyfield," as Holyfield wins an action packed round.

Round 2: 

At 0:32 of round two, Holyfield ducks under a right from Tyson, in so doing head butts Tyson and opens a large cut over his right eye. 

Tyson has repeatedly complained about head-butting in the first bout between the two.

Tyson with a left hook. Tyson is showing more movement than in the previous fight. Tyson's right eye is bleeding, not the same eye that postponed the fight date.  

Holyfield is digging in with upper cuts to the body.

Cut over Tyson's eye is pretty deep. 

 
Tyson lands a nice right hand, but can't land the combination. Tyson looks frustrated.

ROUND 3:

As the third round is about to begin, Tyson comes out of his corner without his mouthpiece.

Lane orders Tyson back to his corner to insert it. Tyson inserts his mouthpiece, gets back into position, and the match resumes

 Tyson  charges Holyfield and lands several blows. Crowd is excited. 

Fighters tie up.

Holyfield throwing right after right trying to punish Tyson.  

Tyson with a straight right to the head of Holyfield that hurts him.


Tyson bites the ear of Holyfield and Holyfield's ear is bloody. 

After Mills Lane breaks the two up...

Tyson charges Holyfield and pushes him in the back.

One point is taken away from Tyson. Commissioner comes in and says, "He bit his ear, he is out." 

The doctor overrules the decision.

The fight continues with Tyson having a two point deduction.

The Holyfield camp is complaining.

Tyson bites Holyfield on the other ear.  Holyfield throws his hands around to get out of the clinch and jumps back. 

 Lane does not stop the fight.  

The two continue fighting until time expires.

The men walk back to their respective corners.

Mills Lane stops the fight.

An unbelievable occurrance of events that leaves Holyfield and his camp in shock. 

The crowd boos Tyson. 

 Lane ends the fight and disqualifies Tyson. Now a fight breaks out in the ring with Tyson trying to charge Holyfield. 

Security is holding Tyson.

  Crowd is chanting in anger. 

 Again, two sharp bites from Tyson in the ears of Holyfield ends the fight. Holyfield wins by disqualification.

Cheering crowd goes wild.

(Note:  The commentary is from that actual fight, so the photos had to fit the commentary, not the reverse.)

To enlarge photos:  Clicking on a photo brings up a line of thumbnails.  The photo you clicked on should enlarge.  Then, right click on that enlargement and click on "view image."  It will appear larger.  Left click on it again for full screen.

The Polar Bear Journals, Ch. 13, Living with Bears

Mike looked at the bedside clock and wondered what had awakened him at 3 AM.  Usually he slept through the night, so this was odd.  He lay in bed, listening for any clue, anything out of the ordinary noises in his home.

All seemed well.  No sirens, no smoke alarm, nothing.  He rolled over, facing the window, to go back to sleep.

Staring at him through thin, breakable glass was a huge polar bear.

Such is life in Churchill, Manitoba, on the western shore of Hudson Bay, where some 900 polar bears are known to live.  Changing weather has brought change for the great white bears.  The ice goes out sooner in summer and forms later in winter, leaving the bears increasingly shore-bound and without access to the ringed seals that are their primary diet.

It also gives them more opportunities to wander into town in search of food, which is not a good thing for the people who live in Churchill as the polar bear is the largest land-dwelling carnivore known to stalk humans.  Adult male bears can weigh three-quarters of a ton.

Mike’s story didn’t end with the bear strolling away from his bedroom window.  As does everyone in Churchill who encounters a bear, Mike immediately phoned the 24-hour hot line and reported a bear in town.  After convincing the responding officer that there really was a bear outside his house, Mike eventually went back to sleep, confident the patrol would chase the bear back onto to the tundra.

The next morning Mike stopped by the local café.

“Seen any more pink bears?” someone asked.  At first Mike thought they were teasing him about seeing “pink bears,” a Churchill equivalent to pink elephants.  Then he heard the rest of the story.

When the peeping bear left Mike’s, it wandered across town near the grain terminal.  Along the way, it wrenched a fire extinguisher off its wall mount, puncturing the hose in the process.  When conservation officers tracked the bear’s path, they came across the result—the wall where the extinguisher had been mounted was covered in the pink contents of the extinguisher, perfectly outlining the polar bear.

And pink tracks led revealed the bear’s route out of town.

“Mike” is Mike Goodyear, the executive director of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre located a few miles out of Churchill proper.  He is also a fine ambassador on behalf of the bears.  When asked if he isn’t concerned about running into bears when he jogs or bikes out of town, which is patrolled constantly for bears, Mike responds, “I’m more concerned about stroke and heart attack being the number one cause of death in men over 35.”

And so it is with people who live in bear country.  They are always aware of the possibility of sudden bear encounters.  They go about their lives as normally as anyone else, but always aware, always adapted to living with bears.

The last fatal bear encounter in Churchill was more than 25 years ago when a man walking home one night rummaged through the ruins of a hotel that had recently burned.  He found still edible meat in the restaurant’s freezers, and loaded up his pockets.

Shortly afterwards, his cries were heard and residents rushed out and killed the polar bear that was savaging the victim.  It was, unfortunately, not in time to save the man who had filled his pockets with meat.  The bear’s tracks showed it had stalked the man through town and then attacked.

For now, the people of Churchill have a tenuous working relationship with the bears.  They are, after all, what brings the influx of tourism to that part of the country, and tourism means jobs.  During the summer, the mouth of the Churchill River can be filled with thousands of beluga whales gathering there to calve, and the tundra is covered with wildflowers.

While spotting polar bears in the summer is “iffy” because they tend to roam far inland, it isn’t impossible to encounter the occasional bear.  It’s during late October and early to mid-November that the animals gather along the shore of Hudson Bay near Churchill, the place where ice usually forms first.

Arctic fox.

At these times, the tundra in the Wapusk National Park can seem like a vast wildlife theme park.  Snowy owls, white Arctic fox, caribou, game birds and birds of prey also live on the sparsely-treed land.  These creatures are perfectly suited for the harsh conditions of subsisting in the north, as are the bears.

Polar bear print cast.

Bear's hind foot.

Huge feet act like snowshoes, spreading the bear’s weight and enabling it to walk on barely frozen ice, the same ice that Mike attempted to walk on and found himself in cold water up to his knees.  Small ears prevent freezing, and the bears’ profiles are perfect for reaching into a seal’s breathing hole in thick ice and grabbing it.  

Powerful jaws kill the seal immediately and enable it to pull the fat, rotund seal through the small breathing hole.  So well insulating is the bear’s thick fur that infra-red monitoring of a bear picks up only the heat transferred to the surface where the bear stepped.  It cannot detect heat escaping from the rest of the bear.

This is fine when the bear is on the Arctic ice, yet with warming conditions forcing the bears onto land for longer periods, further stresses the animals.

But it takes only one look into the eyes of a hungry white bear to dispel any notions of Disneyland.  Cute, white, and fuzzy aside, these are hungry predators, with tourists and residents alike below them on the food chain.