Evander Holyfield has said he met with Mike Tyson “by chance” at an event in Chicago, but this time, the two former boxing heavyweight champions played friends, and no body parts were bitten off.

Holyfield was promoting his barbecue sauce on Chicago’s South Side on Saturday, while Tyson happened to be in town performing his one-man show, which is touring 36 cities.

Their last meeting in the ring – the WBA title fight in Las Vegas in 1997 – became a part of boxing history after Tyson bit off Holyfield’s ear.

The two publicly reconciled in 2009 on the Oprah Winfrey Show, and their most recent meeting was all hugs and smiles, the AP reported.

“I just wanted to see Evander,” Tyson said. “I love Evander. I’m forever linked with him for the rest of my life.”

Holyfield said he liked Tyson’s show after seeing it in Las Vegas. It documents Tyson’s meteoric rise to the world boxing throne at age 19, and his even quicker fall, which followed in the early 1990s after a series of rape scandals.

“It is showing his way of coming back, being able to come to an agreement, come to an acknowledgment of what he’d done good and what he’d done wrong and to get over it,” the AP quoted Holyfield as saying. “When people don’t get past their problems, they never come to an understanding.”

Boxer Evander Holyfield talks to reporters July 1 after a piece of his right ear had been reattached. (Reuters)

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