Were Evander Holyfield's Headbutts Intentional?

No, just as his use of steroids wasn’t accidental!

 

You kinda have to take the whole package as a Holyfield fan.

 

Buttncut

 

Yes

 

Is it really a big deal? Tyson was notorious for stuffing an elbow into an opponent's face, Larry Holmes' apparently used his thumb quite freely, Riddick Bowe was a serial offender when it came to low blows. Floyd fought dirty against Hatton by thrusting his elbow into Hatton's throat to make punching room. As Hatton himself said 'it is not a tickling contest'. Fights are rough and unfortunately getting butted, kidney punched or rabbit punched is part of the game. Should it happen? No, but it does because it is a fight.

 

It is a big deal because there are supposed to be rules that both fighters have agreed to abide by. It's one of the reasons I really like Usyk: he fights clean and with honour. I mean yeah, I get that fighters have always bent the rules but just as Wlad gets rightly called out for his Dr Octopus tactics, as Golota got panned for his nut shots, Ward for his takedowns, Bowe for rabbit punches ... Holyfield is diminished by his use of headbutts and frankly should have had a DQ or two along the way.

 

Well Holyfield was about 3 inches taller than Tyson and managed to headbutt him with his head rising upwards. Definitely not unintentional.

 

The clashing of heads or accidental Butts are part of the sport so yes they tend to happen. Holyfield on the other hand perfected headbutts before adding it to his tool box so he can defeat his opponents. This should have been unacceptable considering this obvious pattern of cheating.
Holy had ill will intended and this speaks the truth of him as a sportsman. Headbutts is the worst kind of foul out of all of them imo.
I like Holyfield but when this point is brought up sadly there is no defense that he was indeed a cheater.

 

He used to have a tyre on his heavybag around head/shoulder height to perfect his headbutt timing. I remember seeing a picture or video of it years ago. Believe Lennox mentions it in an interview too.

 

I'd say more often than not, yes.

 

The tire was probably for uppercuts, but no doubt some/a lot of them were intentional, in some slow motion replays you can clearly see he literally launches upwards

 

Were Holyfield’s head butts intentional?

Is the Pope a Catholic?

More broadly, Evander’s a Christian and he used his head religiously.

He canonised more than a few of his opponents with that shiny head of his which he clearly viewed as a just instrument in execution of God’s wishes.

Gee, God clearly had big issues with poor Hasim Rahman.