Bowe vs Holyfield II, 1993: The Majority Decision and the Night the Fan Man Fell Into the Ring

On the night of 6 November 1993, Evander Holyfield took back the WBA and IBF heavyweight titles from Riddick Bowe by majority decision in the open-air arena at Caesars Palace. The result belonged to Holyfield, but the night is remembered for something else: a man under a motorised paraglider who dropped out of the dark in the seventh round and snagged himself on the ring ropes.

The First Meeting at the Thomas & Mack Center, 1992

The story starts a year earlier. On 13 November 1992, at the Thomas & Mack Center in Paradise, Nevada, Holyfield defended the undisputed heavyweight championship, the WBA, WBC and IBF belts together, against the unbeaten Bowe. The younger, bigger challenger won a unanimous decision, with scores of 117-110, 117-110 and 115-112.

The fight's reputation rests mostly on the tenth round. Bowe opened it with heavy combinations and appeared close to finishing the champion, but Holyfield survived and took over the second half of the round with flurries of his own. In the eleventh, a Bowe right hand put Holyfield on the canvas, and he got up to see the final bell. According to the punch statistics cited on Wikipedia, Bowe landed 53 percent of 248 punches thrown, while Holyfield landed 39 percent of 161. The Ring magazine named it Fight of the Year, and the tenth was its Round of the Year.

A Belt in the Bin and Two Quick Defences

Bowe did not keep all three belts for long. His manager, Rock Newman, could not agree terms for a mandatory defence against Lennox Lewis, and the purse split Newman reportedly demanded was so lopsided that it went nowhere. Bowe then held a press conference, dropped the WBC belt into a rubbish bin and gave up the title in protest at the organisation and its president, José Sulaimán.

Still holding the WBA and IBF titles, Bowe made two short defences in 1993. He knocked out Michael Dokes in the first round in February and Jesse Ferguson in the second in May. That set up the rematch with Holyfield for November.

A New Trainer and a Heavier Champion

The two camps came in very differently. For the rematch Holyfield worked with a new trainer, Emanuel Steward, and it was their first fight together. Bowe was still trained by Eddie Futch. Bowe weighed in at 246 pounds, which by Wikipedia's account was eleven pounds more than he had carried in the first fight. Sources disagree about Holyfield's weight. Wikipedia lists him at 217 pounds, while the fight record on Round By Round Boxing gives 229. Purses were reported at $11 million for Bowe and $9 million for Holyfield. Bowe brought a 34-0 record with 29 knockouts. Holyfield, at 29-1, had lost only to Bowe.

Under the Open Sky at Caesars Palace

The fight was staged in the outdoor arena at Caesars Palace, with Mills Lane as referee. Boxing News put the crowd at 14,242. Holyfield, aged 31, came in as the underdog. Boxing News later described him outboxing and outgunning the champion with a measured, disciplined plan, a big change from the brawling that had cost him the first fight.

It was not a quiet fight. Round By Round Boxing notes that at the end of the fourth round both men were still throwing punches after the bell, and Lane had to bring them under control. The fight was into its seventh round when the interruption came.

Round Seven: The Man Who Fell Out of the Night

James Miller, a 30-year-old paraglider pilot from the Las Vegas area, had been circling Caesars Palace for about ten minutes in a powered paraglider, a fabric wing pushed along by a backpack fan. In the second minute of the seventh round he came down toward the ring. His lines tangled in the overhead lighting rig, and he ended up on the top rope with his canopy still hooked to the lights above. For a few seconds he hung there by one hand and one foot. Then he fell, or was dragged, into the ringside crowd as his canopy tore loose from the rig.

What followed was ugly. Spectators and security staff piled on top of him. KTNV in Las Vegas reported that Newman and members of Bowe's entourage hit Miller with walkie-talkies because they thought it was a terrorist attack. Wikipedia's account says one of Bowe's security men knocked him unconscious. Round By Round Boxing reports that Bowe's wife fainted at ringside. Miller was carried out on a stretcher.

Twenty-One Minutes, or More

The fighters stood around while the ring was cleared and the crowd settled down. Most accounts, including Wikipedia and Round By Round Boxing, give the delay as 21 minutes. Boxing News puts it at 22 minutes and says ring announcer Michael Buffer spoke to the crowd during the wait. Wikipedia's biography of Bowe says about thirty. KTNV's retrospective quotes ringside analyst Jon Saraceno as saying the interruption may have changed the course of the fight. Nobody can prove that either way. Both men had to cool down and then warm up again halfway through a championship fight.

The Boxing News correspondent Harry Mullan, quoted in that magazine's look back at the night, called it "the most dramatic occasion in the history of boxing."

The Scorecards and a Rare Return

When the fight resumed it went the full twelve rounds, and the decision went to Holyfield by majority. One judge scored it a draw at 114-114, and the other two had Holyfield ahead. Accounts differ on one of those cards. Wikipedia gives both as 115-113, while Round By Round Boxing lists one at 115-113 and the other at 115-114. The judges were Jerry Roth, Chuck Giampa and Patricia Morse Jarman.

The win made Holyfield a two-time heavyweight champion. Boxing News noted that this put him alongside Floyd Patterson and Muhammad Ali as the only men before him to win heavyweight titles back. The Ring named the Fan Man incident its Event of the Year for 1993.

The rivalry was not finished. In November 1995 Bowe and Holyfield met a third time, and Bowe stopped him in the eighth round. He was the first man to beat Holyfield inside the distance.

What Became of the Fan Man

Miller spent a short time in hospital, was booked into the Clark County Detention Center on a charge of dangerous flying, and was released after posting $200 bail. He gave different explanations over time. He told British reporters that mechanical trouble caused the crash, and he later said he had done it on purpose as a protest against violence. Wikipedia quotes his joke about the night: "It was a heavyweight fight and I was the only guy who got knocked out."

The ring was not his last target. In January 1994 he circled over an NFL playoff game at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and flew low over an FA Cup tie between Bolton Wanderers and Arsenal. The second flight brought him a seven-day jail sentence and deportation from Britain. In February 1994 he landed on the roof of Buckingham Palace, was fined £200, was deported again and was banned from the United Kingdom for life.

Miller moved to Alaska in 1996. He later developed serious heart disease and needed several operations. He went missing in September 2002, and hunters found his body in March 2003 in the Chugach National Forest. An autopsy found that he had taken his own life. He was 38. Few people outside Alaska knew he had died until ESPN went looking for him for a tenth-anniversary feature on the night at Caesars Palace.

Sources

• Riddick Bowe vs. Evander Holyfield II, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Evander Holyfield vs. Riddick Bowe, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• Riddick Bowe, Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• James Miller (parachutist), Wikipedia, accessed October 2026
• On this day: the infamous Fan Man gatecrashed the Riddick Bowe-Evander Holyfield rematch, Boxing News, accessed October 2026
• 26 years ago: Fan Man crashes championship boxing match, KTNV Las Vegas, November 2019
• Bowe vs. Holyfield II fight record, Round By Round Boxing, accessed October 2026