Plus a few other pictures of time travelers through the ages.
Someone was recently watching footage of a Mike Tyson boxing match from 1995 against a guy named Peter McNeeley. Who, if you’d asked me 15 minutes ago, I would’ve misidentified as the squirrely dude from Ally McBeal. But the question of WHY someone would seek out and rewatch that fight is not the only mystery here.
No, the larger story surrounds something fascinating this person spotted in the crowd: A modern time traveler.
You can see it quite vividly. Someone in the crowd appears to be holding up a modern smartphone to take a picture — a solid 10 to 12 years before such a thing came into existence.
It’s safe to say this is the most excited I’ve been about a camera flash at a Mike Tyson fight since someone figured out the Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out! glitch that lets you dodge the Bald Bull bull charge if you time it with a camera flash in the audience.
Of course, the anti-hoaxers were quick to point out that it probably isn’t a time traveler with a smartphone, but rather someone on the cutting edge of 1995 technology with one of these two non-anachronistic devices:
Even so, the mere requirement for debunking means this time traveler joins the pantheon of these other time travelers:
This fellow in a modern t-shirt and Oakley-type sunglasses, carrying a small portable camera, at a bridge opening in Canada in 1941.
A guy with out-of-place floppy hair, a t-shirt and shorts (possibly holding another man’s hand) at San Josef Bay in Canada (hey time travelers, stop going to Canada) in 1917.
And this woman, walking and apparently talking on a cell phone, in the 1928 Charlie Chaplin movie The Circus.
And while all of these have been more or less debunked, it’s that tiny shred of “What if…?” and 0.0001 percent chance it’s real that will always be exciting. So keep that in mind — and take a picture — next time you see someone walking down the street wearing Eddie Bauer.
