A three-year-old video of Mike Tyson’s podcast Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson is doing rounds again. While revisiting an old bout against Peter McNeeley, the guests broached a topic which, not surprisingly, has a habit of popping out like Medusa’s head.

The clip from Hotboxin’ with Mike Tyson sprang up in a two-month-old tweet. Aired in 2019, Iron Mike and his co-host Eben Britton had musicians Fredro Starr, Sticky Fingaz, and Johnny Vulgar as guests in the eighteenth episode.

As their conversation progresses, Johnny informs Mike about a conspiracy theory that involves the latter. Taken aback, Mike probably suspected whether it had anything to do with some of his past indiscretions.

Read More: ‘Nobody Will Ever Know…’: Mike Tyson Vows to Take These Secrets to His Grave

Johnny then shares, “No, it was at one of your fights, and there’s someone in the crowd with a camera phone.”  

When asked how he felt, Mike confessed, “That freaked me out.”

Mike Tyson versus Peter McNeeley – Cocoon of Horrors

On August 29th, 1995, twenty-nine-year-old Mike Tyson took on Peter McNeeley at Nevada’s MGM Grand Arena. The six feet two inches tall McNeely had promised to suit up the former in a ‘cocoon of horror.’

An expedient alarm on the trepidation he was about to face might have eased some of the pain. Tyson knocked him down not once but twice within a round. Sensing the futility if his ward continued, McNeeley’s coach Vinnie Vecchione jumped inside the ring to stop the fight. It resulted in an immediate disqualification for the Massachusetts-born boxer.

Was there really a time traveller at Mike Tyson’s Bout?

Several videos of the fight show a person sitting among the audience with what is purported to be a camera phone in his hands. Take care; this is happening in an era when the internet was still in its infancy. Smartphones, as we know them today with their eclectic usage, may or may not have been a part of someone’s imagination during the early 90s.

Even though it was hazy, it was enough to convince the netizens of the existence of a time traveler who went back to watch Iron Mike’s bout.

The Spoilsports that debunked the myth

But the fact-checking portal Snopes proved itself an old grouch. In an article published on April 30th, 2016, it shared its findings, “Although the photographic device seen here does resemble a type of camera phone not sold until several years after 1995, it also resembles any one of a number of handheld cameras that were in fact widely available in 1995. The resolution and size of the original video make it difficult to determine specific features of the device glimpsed here, but we found a number of cameras that are both similar to what’s seen in the video and were commonly available in 1995, most notably the Casio QV-10A, the Casio QV-100, and the Logitech Fotoman.”

The final party po*per from the gloom merchants follows. A person possessing a camera phone in 1995 will not be able to, in a true sense, brag about being “far ahead” in terms of technology. After all, the difference in time in the development of the first camera to Mike Tyson’s fight wasn’t monumental.

It isn’t the first time a time-traveler theory has taken the net by storm. On second thoughts, precisely ten years before the fight at MGM Grand, director Robert Zemeckis’ Back to Future was released. The story of the protagonist traversing the crisscrossing time zones with the help of his scientist friend became a critical and commercial success.

Probably the cult classic’s hangover still overshoots the popular imagination. Hope you enjoyed it when we took you back in time!

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