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Ears used to be fair game in the ring
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- The sort of fight that Mike Tyson waged against Evander Holyfield was so prevalent in the 18th century that laws were written to punish participants.A North Carolina law against maiming grew out of the "rough-and-tumble" fighting style that was popular in the western Carolinas, Kentucky and Tennessee in the 18th century.
"It really was a reversion to that old kind of fighting," Miami University professor Elliott Gorn said of the third round of Saturday night's heavyweight championship fight.
"He's a student of the history of the ring," he said of Tyson. "He knows about the old eye-gouging fights. I have to wonder if he didn't really know what he was doing."
In the fight in Las Vegas, Tyson was disqualified after twice biting Holyfield's ear.
North Carolina's 243-year-old law prohibits biting or cutting off ears, cutting noses or other maiming.
Nevada has a similar law calling for a penalty of up to 10 years in prison for anyone who "deprives a human being of a member of his body, or disfigure or renders it useless."
In North Carolina, violation of the law is a felony with which 11 people were charged last year. The penalty: 20 months to five years in prison, depending on the person's past criminal record.
In May, a Salisbury furniture worker was charged with maiming for biting off the end of a co-worker's nose.
Gorn wrote a book on early bare-knuckled prizefighting, as well as a 1985 article in the American Historical Review, "Gouge and Bite, Pull Hair and Scratch: The Social Significance of Fighting in the Southern Backcountry."
"The emphasis on maximum disfigurement, on severing bodily parts, made this fighting style unique," he wrote. Some fighters supposedly filed their teeth to make their bites sharper. Others "fired their fingernails hard, honed them sharp and oiled them slick."
In 1746, North Carolina's governor reacted to four deaths from the "rough-and-tumble" fights and asked for legislation against them.