Boxing · 1993 · Las Vegas, USA
The Fan Man Fight
Seven rounds into a heavyweight title rematch, a man on a motorised paraglider crash-lands into the ring ropes, and the fight stops for 21 minutes.
Holyfield def. Bowe, majority decision
Result
21 minutes
Fight delay
Holyfield regained heavyweight title
Outcome
Evander Holyfield was in the seventh round of his rematch with Riddick Bowe, who had beaten him for the title the previous year, at an outdoor arena at Caesars Palace on 6 November 1993, when a parachutist known as 'Fan Man' descended out of the night sky on a motorised paraglider and crash-landed directly into the ring's lighting rig and ropes.
Security personnel and furious spectators, members of both fighters' camps among them, set upon the intruder where he landed, and Bowe's pregnant wife had to be helped away from her ringside seat amid the commotion. The fight was halted for 21 minutes while officials cleared the ring and the parachutist was treated, then restarted from the same round.
Holyfield won a majority decision once it resumed, reclaiming the heavyweight title he had lost to Bowe a year earlier. Hardly anybody remembers that part.
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