Tyson said it to the Associated Press on 19 August 1987, brushing off the plan Tyrell Biggs had announced for beating him — the wire report transcribes the sentence in exactly this wording, and Quote Investigator ↗ finds no earlier instance. This is the real line; the famous “punched in the mouth” version is a later rewrite by other people.
“Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time” Mike Tyson, on Tyrell Biggs's pre-fight strategy — "Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time." Associated Press wire report, 19 August 1987; earliest attestation traced by Quote Investigator. The popular "punched in the mouth" wording is a later variant.
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In context
Evoking the world of Mike Tyson — American heavyweight boxing champion. Theme: "Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
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Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The source
Source
“Tall Man Tyrell Biggs Thinks His Height Will Add New Dimension to Fight” — Associated Press wire report by Rick Warner
Published
19 August 1987, in The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, SC); the same-day dispatch also ran as “Biggs Has Plans for Tyson” in the Oroville Mercury-Register
Occasion
Tyson's reply when reporters put Tyrell Biggs's stated plan to him, ahead of their 16 October 1987 title fight in Atlantic City
Earliest attestation
Quote Investigator finds no instance before this AP report and ascribes the saying to Tyson
Tyrell Biggs says he has a plan to beat heavyweight champion Mike Tyson. But the man they call ‘Iron Mike’ is not impressed. ‘Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time,’ Tyson said.
Associated Press, 19 August 1987
As transcribed by Quote Investigator ↗ from the Associated Press report of 19 August 1987. The original newspaper pages sit behind a subscription archive, so this dossier relies on the specialists' transcription rather than a scan we could open ourselves.
The same report, independently cited.Wikiquote lists the line in its sourced section ↗, crediting AP writer Rick Warner in The Orangeburg Times and Democrat of 19 August 1987, and noting the popular variant and the Joe Louis error.
November 1987 – February 1988 — it starts moving. The Washington Post has Walter Payton passing it on as “everybody has a game plan, until he gets hit”; Mike Lupica prints “Everybody has a plan until they're hit” in Esquire. Both are in the chronology ↗.
16 October 1987 — the test. Tyson stopped Biggs in the seventh round at Convention Hall, Atlantic City. Fight record ↗.
This is a 1987 remark, first published in an Associated Press wire report that same August — more than half a century after the 1930 US public-domain cutoff, so neither Tyson's words nor the report that carried them is public domain. Quoting a single sentence with attribution is ordinary practice, but nothing on this page should be treated as free to reprint at length.
Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.
Fact-check
What gets it wrong
The attribution to Tyson is sound — unusually so for a line this famous. What travels wrongly is the wording, and occasionally the boxer.
Wrong wording“punched in the mouth” / “punched in the face” Later variant
The version on most posters is not what the AP printed. Quote Investigator dates “punched in the face” to a 2003 Lansing State Journal piece that offered it as anonymous boxing wisdom, and “punched in the mouth” to a 2004 Dayton Daily News column — both are in its chronology ↗, well after 1987.
~
Wrong centuryHelmuth von Moltke the Elder Precursor, not source
The military maxim is a separate saying with its own paper trail: Quote Investigator credits Moltke for what he wrote in German in 1871, rendered as “No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the main enemy forces” — see its dedicated investigation ↗. Tyson's sentence is tracked as a distinct quotation, not a translation or a borrowing.
✓Tyson said it, in August 1987, in these words: “Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time.” Quote Investigator's conclusion ↗ is that the saying should be ascribed to Mike Tyson and that the August 1987 phrasing appears to be the earliest.
Context
Why it mattered
Tyrell Biggs had a plan, and he had said so out loud. The 1984 Olympic gold medallist was six foot five, a stylist, and he intended to move, jab and outbox the champion rather than stand in front of him — “He's strong, but his strength will not hurt me,” he told reporters in the buildup. A wire reporter carried the plan to Tyson and asked what he made of it. Tyson gave back one sentence, and the Associated Press printed it on 19 August 1987.
On 16 October 1987 the two men met at Convention Hall in Atlantic City. Biggs boxed early, exactly as advertised. Tyson stopped him in the seventh. The line survived because it is not really about boxing: it is the cheapest possible statement of the gap between a strategy on paper and a strategy under contact, which is why it has since been recycled by generals, product managers and safety trainers who have never thrown a punch.
Tyson said it about a man who had a plan. That October, in the seventh round, the plan ran out.
How the sentence changed shape
The drift started almost immediately. In November 1987 the Washington Post had Walter Payton relaying it as “everybody has a game plan, until he gets hit”; in February 1988 Mike Lupica wrote it in Esquire as “Everybody has a plan until they're hit.” By 2003 the Lansing State Journal was printing “everyone has a plan – until they get punched in the face” as anonymous boxing wisdom, with no Tyson anywhere near it, and in 2004 a Dayton Daily News columnist used the now-standard “punched in the mouth.” All five stages are documented in Quote Investigator's chronology ↗.
Tyson himself has retold it in the shortened form. Quote Investigator records a November 2012 South Florida Sun Sentinel interview in which he explained the origin and gave the line as “Everybody has a plan until they get hit. Then, like a rat, they stop in fear and freeze” — a speaker paraphrasing his own younger self, twenty-five years on, which is one reason the wording is now impossible to standardise.
Explore
Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
Michael Gerard Tyson, born in Brooklyn on 30 June 1966, took the world heavyweight title from Trevor Berbick on 22 November 1986 at 20 years old — the youngest heavyweight champion in history. By the summer of 1987 he was the most feared man in the sport, the fighter every opponent built a plan around, and he would finish with 50 wins, 44 of them by knockout. The sentence that outlived the boxing was not a slogan he set out to write: it was a shrug in answer to a reporter's question.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Cite this source
Rick Warner, “Tall Man Tyrell Biggs Thinks His Height Will Add New Dimension to Fight” (Associated Press), The Times and Democrat (Orangeburg, SC), 19 August 1987. Quote Investigator cites the same-day AP dispatch as “Biggs Has Plans for Tyson,” Oroville Mercury-Register (Oroville, CA), 19 August 1987, 1B. Chronology: Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: Everybody Has Plans Until They Get Hit for the First Time,” 25 August 2021.
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Everybody has plans until they get hit for the first time’?” Last verified 7 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/everybody-has-plans-until-they-get-hit-for-the-first-time/