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Yes, the Evander Holyfield/Mitt Romney fight is already on YouTube

Technically Incorrect: The battle of wills between Evander Holyfield and Mitt Romney appears the day after the experience. I did say Mitt Romney.

Chris Matyszczyk
2 min read

Technically Incorrect offers a slightly twisted take on the tech that's taken over our lives.


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And Holyfield goes down. Holy Moses. Trace Staker/YouTube screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET

This was perfect timing.

After the cynical debacle of people paying $100 to watch, from their own sofas, Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao not fight in Las Vegas, Utah came to the world's rescue.

It laid on a boxing match between former world heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

The two battled it out on Friday night in Salt Lake City, with all proceeds going to Charity Vision, an organization that allows blind people to have important surgeries.


Neither HBO nor Showtime chose to show this brutal affair, nor to charge people hundreds to see it. I'm delighted, however, that someone called Trace Staker has chosen (as have others) to upload the fight to YouTube.

It was a feisty event. Two men in their advanced years gave their all. One whose ear had seen better days, and the other someone whom critics accused of turning a deaf ear to the needy.

Romney looked astonishingly trim for a man of 68. He took the fight to Holyfield, who's only 52. He showed him who was boss. He knocked Holyfield down with a viciously soft right hand.

This was shortly before discretion performed a hostile takeover on valor. Romney decided that the moral victory was his and that, if he continued, a mighty concussion might be his too. He threw in the towel in the second round.

How moving, though, that in an era when bad boxing bouts are tightly controlled, so that the protagonists can make a fortune, the world can witness something far more exalted and pugnacious. And all by just going to YouTube.

I can only hope that Mayweather doesn't make some trollish copyright claim on the basis that, say, he owns boxing.