As the November midterm elections draw near, Donald Trump is drawing into his political orbit a lineup of familiar celebrities and sports icons.
Evander Holyfield served as the guest of honor at a South Carolina rally on Wednesday night. He earned a front-row view of Trump’s MAGA crowd, but his reception didn’t always feel like VIP treatment.
The four-time heavyweight champion has maintained a friendship with Trump since the president’s days overseeing the Atlantic City casino.
Hours later, the boxing legend found himself waiting for Trump on an airport tarmac and his name was used to applaud a man who was assaulting a protester in the crowd.
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Holyfield traveled with Trump on Air Force One to a midterm rally at Clemson University’s T. Ed Garrison Arena in Pendleton, where the president was campaigning for appointed Sen. Darline Graham ahead of the Nov. 3 election.
But before the champion even reached the platform, he got a sense of where he stood in the president’s traveling party.
NewsNation White House correspondent Libbey Dean posted a photo on X around 4:29 p.m. Eastern showing Holyfield standing outside Air Force One at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland.
Trump’s helicopter didn’t touch down until 4:33 p.m., and he climbed aboard five minutes later, according to the White House pool report. Top aides like Stephen Miller and Natalie Harp rode Marine One with him.
Holyfield’s name reportedly sat at the very bottom of the passenger list the White House handed reporters.
Things grew even stranger at the rally. Protesters interrupted Trump at least four times, NBC News reported. He seemed to savor the moment when a rally-goer punched a demonstrator.
Rather than calming the scene, Trump seemed to marvel as he watched from the stage.
“That was incredible,” he said. “Who threw that punch?”
The president then compared the assailant to Holyfield, who sat to his right, and he declared into the mic that a protester in the crowd “got whacked.”
When Trump finally gave his guest a proper shout-out, the crowd numbers started to slip away from him.
“Evander Holyfield is here. Look at him,” Trump said in a rally clip shared on X. “He became the heavyweight champion of the world at 217 pounds, and he would fight guys that were 30, 40, 50 lbs.”
Trump seemed to mean that Holyfield routinely faced men much larger than him, and the record appears to support that claim.
The former boxer weighed 208 pounds when he knocked out a 246-pound Buster Douglas for the title in 1990. That’s not how it actually played out, though.
Holyfield later joined Trump at the podium and returned the favor. “I thank Donald Trump. I have a great relationship with him,” he said. “Every time I fought, I fought to win, and he gave me the opportunity, and I’m so happy for him to be our president.”
Online, the president’s arithmetic stole the show.
“People who are 30, 40, or 50 pounds are called children,” one person wrote. Another put it more bluntly: “Holyfield was fighting infants.” A third quipped, “My dog is 60lbs. Man doesn’t understand numbers.”
Others zeroed in on a detail they share.
“They share an ear injury history together,” one user noted, nodding to the 1997 fight in which Mike Tyson bit off part of Holyfield’s ear and the wound Trump sustained during the 2024 assassination attempt.
“Why is half of Evander’s ear missing, but there’s no sign of injury to Trump? Asking for a prosecutor,” said one observer.
That ear has become a running gag in Trump’s orbit.
When Tyson visited the White House on Oct. 9, communications director Steven Cheung posted a photo of the boxer pretending to chomp on his ear with the caption, “No ears were safe!”
Tyson’s visit also offers the clearest contrast to Holyfield’s day. Iron Mike walked out of the White House at Trump’s side, rode Marine One with him and flew on Air Force One to a rally in Syracuse, New York, where he praised the president onstage, prompting critics to label him a political prop.
Earlier this month, Dennis Rodman also joined Trump’s entourage for stops in Texas and Oklahoma. That makes Holyfield at least the third Black sports legend Trump has paraded on the campaign trail this month.
All three trace back to his days of celebrity, with Tyson and Holyfield boxing at his Atlantic City casinos and Rodman appearing on “The Celebrity Apprentice.”
The two boxers share something less glamorous as well. Tyson filed for bankruptcy in 2003, and Holyfield lost his foreclosed Georgia mansion — now owned by Rick Ross — in 2012, while owing more than $14 million on it.
Even Holyfield’s “opportunity” came with strings. Trump Plaza had been the site promoter for his 1991 defense against George Foreman, and Trump threatened to postpone or cancel the bout while trying to slash his $11 million site fee by citing the Persian Gulf War.
None of that came up on Wednesday. The punch, the tarmac, and the president’s math did all the talking.
