Hoverboards have been getting a lot of bad press since reports started surfacing that theycatch fire without warning.
If hoverboard companies can make one that definitely doesn’t explode (though that seems like something that should be on all product manufacturers’ to-do list long before they start printing the shipping labels), they’re going to need a serious PR adjustment. Perhaps a celebrity endorsement deal could turn things around and give them a more positive image.
Should they ever decide to take that route, however, you can bet former professional boxer Mike Tyson won’t be returning their calls.
Tyson took a nasty spill on his daughter Milan’s hoverboard at his home and posted a video of the accident to his Twitter account on Tuesday. The video features Tyson taking a little spin on the self-balancing scooter in what appears to be his living room. He takes a couple of 360-degree turns and then attempts to move forward but he loses his footing and falls flat on his back with a loud thud.
Check out Tyson’s loss with gravity below in the embedded tweet.
Seemed like a good idea to ride my daughter #milantyson#cyboard#hoverboard but guess not…pic.twitter.com/Cjn4s22E5l
— Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) December 29, 2015
Naturally, Tyson’s funniest home video went viral on social media and picked up over 45,000 retweets. So it was only a matter of time before some of the Internet’s more clever users came up with ways to make an already hilarious fall even more hilarious.
The most popular remake of Tyson’s great fall comes from a Vine user named Ry Ry. His video features Little Mac, the playable hero from the classic NES boxing game Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, scoring one last knockout against the champ.
The pixelated version of Tyson seems to be just as clumsy on a clumsy piece of transportation as his real-world counterpart, according to this Vine from an account for a meme-making app called Spun.
You might not know this, but Tyson is also an avid pigeon racer and lover of the urban world’s most populous avian. He has his own reality show on Animal Planet dedicated to his favorite hobby and also wrote a column in 2011 for The New York Times that explains his love for this scorned urban creature. So keep that nugget of wisdom in mind as you watch the Vine below created by Evan Zugin.
No celebrity is officially a celebrity meme until one of their videos or sound bites has been turned into some form of repetitive house music or an auto-tuned remix. This Vine by Antiski helps Tyson’s video fulfill that requirement with his blending of Tyson’s fall with the booming bass line from a song by The Black Eyed Peas.
Finally, the folks behind the YouTube channel Game Worm found a way to mix Tyson’s latest meme with one of the boxer’s other memes by mashing up the hoverboard video with footage from one of his most infamous post-bout interviews.
Tyson isn’t the only parent to take a spill on their kids’ hoverboard this holiday season. A report that aired on CNET sister site CBS This Morning Tuesday showed that hoverboard fails are trending on YouTube and Twitter, as well as throughout hospital emergency rooms. The US Product Safety Commission announced just before Christmas that it noticed a 35 percent increase in injuries caused by hoverboards.
The Sun-Sentinel newspaper, headquartered in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, reported Wednesday that it alone found “at least 40 [hospital] visits due to hoverboards” to hospitals located in Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties in South Florida. US Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida was one of those 40 names that showed up on hospital records. He posted a picture of himself with his injured arm on his Twitter account with a Tweet that read, “Confirmed – #hoverboard is for kids. My daughter got it. I ended up in #BaptistHealthSF #ER.”
I never thought I’d say this, but after seeing Tyson’s nasty fall and reading about all these accidents, I’m actually very happy jetpacks aren’t commercially available to the public yet.
Mike Tyson gets knocked out by a hoverboard, Internet counterpunches