FRANK BRUNO II
Date / site: March 16, 1996 / MGM Grand, Las Vegas
Division: Heavyweight
Records: Tyson 34-0, Bruno 40-4
At stake: Tyson’s IBF, WBA and WBC titles
Result: Tyson KO 1
Background: No one knew what to expect from Tyson after he was released in 1995 after serving three years in prison on a rape conviction. Did he still have the ability to be an elite fighter? Or had his skills eroded to a point of no return? Turns out the former was the case. Tyson made his return to boxing against underqualified Peter McNeeley in more of a farce than a fight, winning by DQ when McNeeley’s manager stepped into the ring to stop the pending slaughter. Then came a more legitimate test, against then-unbeaten Buster Mathis Jr. Tyson showed much of his old fire and speed, stopping Mathis in the third round to set up a title shot against beltholder Bruno. Tyson had stopped Bruno in five rounds in 1989. And it seems Bruno never forgot, as he crossed him repeatedly during his ring walk as if to say, “God, please don’t let this be my time.” Tyson blew out Bruno in Round 3 to regain a heavyweight title at 29 years old. Wrote Ken Jones in The Independent: “If not entirely Tyson reincarnate, he had looked a considerable heavyweight, still devastatingly quick and powerful.” Two fights later he would meet Evander Holyfield for the first of two times and was never the same.