Mike Tyson and Casio QV-10A Controversy: When the internet accused a fan of 'Iron Mike' at a 1995 fight of being a time traveler
Mike Tyson fought Peter McNeeley in August 1995 and won the fight via disqualification in the first round after McNeeley's manager stepped inside the ring.
However, something else happened during the fight that kept the internet talking for many years, even though the bout itself was quite uneventful.
Several eagle-eyed fans, who went through the video of the fight minutely, spotted someone among the spectators seated behind Mike Tyson holding up what looked like a smartphone.
You can see the device in the first few seconds of the video below:
A video uploaded in September 2015 by YouTube user Jammy Bantam was among the very first posts to make the claim.
The internet started to wonder how someone got their hands on a smartphone that looked pretty advanced for the 1990s.
As it often happens, the discussion led to a certain sect of conspiracy theorists arriving at the conclusion that the person holding up the device must be a 'time traveler' who had come from the future.
The conspiracy theory took rounds of the internet for years. Multiple fans pointed out that the device from the Mike Tyson fight looked awfully close to the Samsung Galaxy S3 smartphone, a model that was launched in 2012.
Time traveler present at a Mike Tyson fight - myth busted
Snopes published a myth-busting article a year later, dismissing the possibility of the spectator being a time traveler or of any supernatural nature.
The report noted that their research led them to a number of hand-held cameras that were similar to what was seen in the video, and that the resolution and size of the original video was not that clear to begin with.
Casio QV-10A, the Casio QV-100 and the Logitech Fotoman were the three cameras that the report zeroed down to, suggesting any of them could have possibly been used by the man during the Mike Tyson fight.
Here is a comparison between the three cameras, originally posted by Snopes:
The report also noted that that the advent of the first camera smartphone was around 2000, so the technology, if it was a smartphone at all, would not be drastically ahead of its time.
Several fans did point out online that given the poor resolution of the video and the lack of surprise among fellow spectators, there is a high possibility of the device being something contemporary rather than futuristic.