Mike Tyson vs Muhammad Ali

Man... heavyweights today are so ploddingly slow, they bore me to sleep. :lol

Muhammad Ali/Cassius Clay in his prime was so blazingly fast with his hands and quick with his feet. How I wish we could see another heavyweight boxer like him.

[QUOTE=raiderfan19]You realize that both Lewis and Holyfield are older than Tyson right???

So his era in your opinion is from 1986 to 1989????[/QUOTE]

Yeah, he went to this place called prison after that. For 4 years he was the undisputed champion of the world ...

[QUOTE=kNicKz]Yeah, he went to this place called prison after that. For 4 years he was the undisputed champion of the world ...[/QUOTE]
You know the buster Douglas fight was before he went to prison right?

[QUOTE=raiderfan19]You know the buster Douglas fight was before he went to prison right?[/QUOTE]

You're aware that Lennox Lewis was put to sleep by Hasim Rahman? LOL

We can do this all day

[QUOTE=raiderfan19]

So his era in your opinion is from 1986 to [SIZE="5"][FONT="Book Antiqua"][COLOR="Black"]1989[/COLOR][/FONT][/SIZE]????[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=knickz]yea[/QUOTE]


[quote] Mike Tyson vs. Buster Douglas February 11, [SIZE="5"]1990[/SIZE] [/quote]


[QUOTE=raiderfan19]You know the buster Douglas fight was before he went to prison right?[/QUOTE]

Pretty obvious that that was established .

Here's the issue for Tyson fans, if you discount all his losses, then you also have to discount his biggest wins. You can't count a win over a 39 year old Larry Holmes as a major victory if you discount your own losses because you were outside your prime when they started when you were 23.


Also you are aware that Tyson never had another big win after Douglas, Lewis did after losing to rock.

[QUOTE=gigantes]interesting arguments. so i'm much more of an MMA guy, but for all the accurate critique of tyson, isn't there another way of looking at him? i.e., as two separate fighters?

meaning, one guy who fought with the fury of the gods to make his surrogate father happy? and another guy, sometime after cus' death, who fought with wandering focus and little motivation from then on?

tyson #1's career had a shortish lifespan, but he did pretty much wreck everyone placed in front of him IIRC. that's all he could really do, right?

if he had merely been killed in a plane crash and not fallen apart after his father figure died, we wouldn't hold that against him, would we? we wouldn't say that tyson #2 was a disappointing fighter, therefore the greatness of tyson #1 was diminished by association?

would we?[/QUOTE]

Great point. I see too many people talk about Tyson's fights with Evander, Buster & Lewis as a reference to why he was overrated or just wouldn't stack up to former greats.

.....but he wasn't the same. He peaked way early, and fell apart mentally afterwards. Cus and to a point Rooney were his foundation as much as his actual boxing talents.

When we talk about Tyson vs. Ali and who would win.......we're suppose to debate the early Tyson vs. Ali, not the guy who lost to Buster, Lennox, etc when it was clear he wasn't the same boxer.

[QUOTE=raiderfan19]Here's the issue for Tyson fans, if you discount all his losses, then you also have to discount his biggest wins. You can't count a win over a 39 year old Larry Holmes as a major victory if you discount your own losses because you were outside your prime when they started when you were 23.


Also you are aware that Tyson never had another big win after Douglas, Lewis did after losing to rock.[/QUOTE]

except for that one time when he became heavyweight champion again after he got out of prison ...

[QUOTE=Carbine]Great point. I see too many people talk about Tyson's fights with Evander, Buster & Lewis as a reference to why he was overrated or just wouldn't stack up to former greats.

.....but he wasn't the same. He peaked way early, and fell apart mentally afterwards. Cus and to a point Rooney were his foundation as much as his actual boxing talents.

When we talk about Tyson vs. Ali and who would win.......we're suppose to debate the early Tyson vs. Ali, not the guy who lost to Buster, Lennox, etc when it was clear he wasn't the same boxer.[/QUOTE]

This is the nail that I have been trying to drive home. I don't give a **** if he lost to Lennox Lewis when he was 37 years old lol. 18 year old mike was a machine. People are talking about way past prime performances as arguments against him when the argument is prime vs. prime. Regardless of how short his prime was, it doesn't matter. 1986 Tyson is in the ring in this scenario. Using a fight that he lost 16 years after 1986 is not an argument to why he wouldn't perform well

So just for the record his prime ended before he turned 24?

[QUOTE=raiderfan19]So just for the record his prime ended before he turned 24?[/QUOTE]

He is the youngest HW champion in the history of the sport, he peaked very early. The longevity of his prime is irrelevant in this discussion. It's 1986 Tyson vs. Prime Ali in a boxing ring. Sadly it isn't the resume competition that you are currently trying to make happen.

When you compare Andre Berto to an undisputed heavyweight champion , you should probably stop watching and discussing the sport

[QUOTE=plowking]That just sums up what I said.

I don't consider Tyson one of the best ever, and I don't ever put him anywhere near the top. And I never said anything about your previous post, or that calling him the 3rd best of his time was underrating him. I'm talking in general, your opinions about him.

Once again, he was a very special fighter, and a great young champion. I couldn't give a damn what happened in the Evander fights. If you actually believe Holyfield would stand a chance against Mike back in his prime, then good for you, but you need to reevaluate your passion and knowledge of boxing. I have no doubt Lennox beats Tyson at any point in his career, but Evander vs Tyson, both at their best, its not close.

And speaking of overrated fighters, Evander is very close to the top of that list.[/QUOTE]

Somehow, for all the talk about how unfair I am to Tyson, is this being fair to Evander Holyfield? Yes, I think the version of Holyfield that knocked Buster Douglas silly in under a round would beat any version of Tyson.

Here's the thing not often talked about when it comes to Mike. He exited prison and immediately got back to doing what he was doing in the mid-80s against inferior competition. I was deep into the sport at the time and the hype around Tyson going into that Holyfield fight was enormous. No one was talking about him being washed up or past his prime. He was a HEAVY favorite and few people were giving Holyfield a chance in hell.

Tyson was coming off of early stoppages against Bruce Seldon and Frank Bruno, two guys who maybe weren't great, but were comparable to many of the guys he was fighting early in his career, particularly Bruno. I mean, Bruno had beaten Oliver McCall the fight prior and Tyson just completely destroyed Bruno in under three rounds.

Until he fought Holyfield, no one had lasted three rounds with Tyson post-prison.

Then, suddenly, as soon as he's beaten, it means he is washed up and clearly not the same guy as he was in the 1980s and we shouldn't judge anything that happened after 1989.

It is not debatable that Holyfield was the best fighter Tyson had faced in his career up to that point. I guess it's just happenstance that his sudden decline from unbeatable to just very good happened at such a young age and became so crystal clear as soon as he fought another great fighter from his own era.

This is the selective reasoning I'm talking about when it comes to Tyson. There is no athlete who has ever lived that receives the amount of leeway as Tyson. And, if those excuses happen to come at the expense of another great fighter, so be it.


I feel like I rate Tyson exactly where he should be... A very good, ferocious fighter who was one of the hardest punchers to ever live, but not a guy who was going to be able to turn a fight around if it was going south. Often times when two great fighters go against each other, one will have to outwit the other by adapting during the fight. Tyson was never that guy. In fact, I saw him lose hope in several fights after falling behind early, despite his great natural gift of being a deadly puncher.

He was a modern day Sonny Liston (that would be a fight I'd love to see, Tyson-Liston). The kind of guy who will knock you into next week if you allow him to bully you and dictate the fight. However, a bit lost when a guy matched him.

The biggest difference is Tyson didn't beat a Floyd Patterson level champion in his career. For a guy as highly rated by many people as Tyson, he doesn't have the kind of wins to justify it. It's almost completely based on these "what if" scenarios.

We'll just have to agree to disagree if you don't see it that way.

[QUOTE=Carbine]For those of you saying Mike was in his prime when he lost to Douglas, that's really not anywhere near the truth. He very clearly was not.[/QUOTE]


That was only 2 years after he knocked out Spinks in 91 seconds. He was still in his 20s.

He would have had trouble with Douglas at any time because of Douglas' reach and lack of fear. Douglas didn't just win the fight, he punk'd Tyson.

Meanwhile Ali's loss against Frazier was after his 3+ year ban for refusing military service.

[QUOTE=RedBlackAttack]... This is the selective reasoning I'm talking about when it comes to Tyson. There is no athlete who has ever lived that receives the amount of leeway as Tyson. And, if those excuses happen to come at the expense of another great fighter, so be it. ...[/QUOTE]
well-said, sir, but it seems you are also using a date of your choosing to make your big judgement of tyson. i.e. his first loss, i.e. when he went from a potential great to 3rd-best of his generation.

but i was trying to say earlier that his will had been departing earlier for various reasons. this also explains how someone that young could be washed up so quickly. and sure............ it's an unusual reason among athletes, but it does happen... like with shawn kemp and such. so isn't that just reality, and in the attempt to be fair, we call a spade a spade and make an exception in our ruleset?

i'll ask it again-- don't you think it's unfair to blame prime tyson for not beating better HW's? i mean, he DID knock off everyone placed in front of him, including all the precious belt-holders and such. tony tucker... pinklon thomas on top of the ones already mentioned.

another thing- few fighters indeed made a career out of dismantling top-level competition like a predator tearing apart its prey. not even ali, lewis or the oldies were quite that good AFAIK.

i mean, the 'cans' may be a bit of a factor, but overall i would think the majority (or all) of his opponents were still top-5 / top-10 material.

so this is kind of an X-factor that you can't measure by numbers, but i don't think it should be left out of the discussion. nobody, but nobody, in sports doesn't have a measure of 'greatness' for owning this fairly rare quality.