In a video that surfaced online Thursday, former heavyweight boxing champion Mike Tyson is seen repeatedly punching a fellow passenger on an airplane.
Tyson’s representative Joann Mignano confirmed the altercation, which took place Wednesday aboard a JetBlue flight that was on the tarmac in San Francisco before heading to Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
“Unfortunately, Mr. Tyson had an incident on a flight with an aggressive passenger who began harassing him and threw a water bottle at him while he was in his seat.”
The brief video of the incident shows a man in the seat behind Tyson standing over the boxer’s seat trying to talk to him as Tyson remains quiet.
A shot from a different angle then shows Tyson crouching over his seat, pummelling the passenger behind him. Another nearby passenger tries to stop Tyson from punching the man and audio can be heard of someone saying, “Hey Mike, Mike, hold on.”
The passenger who was beaten was left with a bloodied face. No water bottle was seen in the released footage.
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San Francisco Police were alerted to the incident and “were dispatched to a physical altercation onboard an airplane located at the Domestic Terminal of the San Francisco International Airport,” at around 10 p.m. Wednesday.
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Police said they detained two people involved in the altercation and that one of them was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
“That subject provided minimal details of the incident and refused to cooperate further with the police investigation,” the police said.
San Francisco police did not identify either of the people they detained but confirmed that both were released, “pending further investigation.”
One passenger who was on the flight, Sarah Burchfield, said she saw the man who Tyson beat up at an airport bar just before the flight. According to her, the man was loud and quarrelsome.
“When I boarded the flight, I thought, ‘Oh no, that drunk guy is on our flight,’” Burchfield told local news outlet, SF Gate.
When she boarded the flight she noticed Tyson sitting in first class.
“I’m like, ‘Oh my god, Mike Tyson is on this flight!’ He said hi and I kept walking,” she said. “The belligerent guy was sitting right behind him and I saw they were interacting.”
Tyson was in San Francisco on Wednesday to promote his cannabis brand at the 420 Hippie Hill event in Golden Gate Park.
JetBlue Airways has not yet released a statement about the altercation on their flight.
TMZ Sports was the first to obtain video of the incident.
© 2022 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
