Who has the better singular win, Chris Byrd or Mike Tyson?

There's that overrating of Vitali Klitschko again, and not even the 2003 version, now we're going back to 2000 ...

Klitschko was very unproven at that point. He had a win over Herbie Hide to his credit, and not much else.

Tony Tucker, Trevor Berbick, to name but two, are better opponents.

 

True. Vitali is severly overrated. This guy os mentioned as top ten or on some occasisons as the GOAT.

Try to form a top 10, wait, top 5 best wins of his and keep a straight face.

Corrie Sanders, Herbie Hide, Sam Peters, Tomas Adamek.

Laugh all you want, but Bruno was winning against Lewis too, until he was stopped, Bruno too has a high ko percebtage, Bruno also won the Wbc title just like Vitali.

Infact, apart from the Tyson fights, i think Bruno was ahead in all of his losses too until he was stopped.

You don't see anyone calling Bruno a top ten atg.

 

Vitali quit because of a shoulder injury, not because Byrd was beating him.

Im not going to credit Byrd with a victory which he simply doesn't deserve.

 

A win is a win and at the end of the day thats all that matters.

But Byrd hardly beat him into submission.

 

A win is a win, but when your comparing wins and debating about which win is better, you have to take into account that one guy knocked his opponent out whereas the other only got the W because his opponent pulled out with injury.

 

Vitali is a single better win.

Old Holyfield is on par with Old Holmes and semi-retired Spinks.

But Tyson has the edge in overall resume. Byrd's resume starts to thin out dramatically after those top few guys, while Tyson's is much more rich with Tua, McCline, Tucker, Berbick, Bruno, and Ruddock being on par. Than Tyson can go even deeper with Bonecrusher, Tillis, Biggs, Stewart, Botha, Golota..etc..

 

That's the nature of Byrd's style though, he isn't an aggressive knock out artist. He was making Vitali miss in bunches, causing him to injure himself and than get frustrated into quitting. In Rounds 7,8,9 he's landing with the better punches and clearly took Round 9. But again, lots of fighters have one or even two really great individual wins. Douglas has a better single win than Larry Holmes for instance, you still can't rate Douglas anywhere close to him.

 

So Leonard never really beat Duran in their 2nd fight??:huh

Leonard ONLY WON because Duran pulled out with stomach cramps??

 

The difference is, regardless of the cramps, Leonard would have won. The same cannot be said for Byrd who would NOT have won had Vitali not got injured.

 

So making a guy quit only counts if someone "assumes you would have still won without the injury?" That makes no sense.

 

, How do you know Leonard would have won? it was ONLY the 8th round of a 15 round fight??

Duran was in his fighting prime in 1980 and a lot can happen in 7 rounds, and he already beat Leonard once...

And Vitali was injured by the actions of Byrd, Byrd's win shouldn't be tainted just because VK has a low tolerance for pain and decided to tank the fight and quit just because of an injured shoulder:-(, ..

Hell Ali fought Norton for 10 rounds with a busted jaw, guess we know who the tough guy's are huh??:huh

 

I'm baffled as to how Byrd's win over Vitali is better than Tyson's wins over title-holders Tucker, Berbick or Smith, all of whom were rated highly and coming off some very good form.
Regardless of the debate over the manner in which Byrd beat him, Vitali certainly wasn't rated as highly as those titlist or anywhere near as proven against real contenders.

 

I think it was at least comparable to some of those wins.. Tucker had a very thin resume which truthfully looked a lot like Vitali's. Berbick had that huge win over Thomas but had also been exposed a few times before. Smith.. Well.. He was smith.. not saying that Byrd's win over Vitali was better than wins over those guys, but probably no worse. The manner in which he won is a different story.

 

It's difficult to praise Byrd's two "biggest" wins - against Klitschko and Holyfield - considering BOTH fighters suffered torn rotator cuffs in the fight that required surgery afterward.

The only difference was Evander suffered his in the first or second round and didn't call off the fight.

Byrd's best "actual" wins probably came against Tua - who Chris cleanly outpointed - and against Jameel McCline - who was far bigger and stronger than Byrd, and who had Byrd down early in the fight.

Byrd proved himself against both Tua and McCline. Those were both solid wins. And there's a question of whether Tyson did beat anyone as good as Tua. Tyson certainly never even considered a fight with Tua when Mike returned to the ring. King never brought that match up -- even though fans would've loved it.

But saying Klitschko and Holyfield are Byrd's big "wins" is kind of weak (and even the person who brought it up knows that) because BOTH suffered freak injuries during the fight (that Byrd didn't cause) that required surgeries afterward - especially considering Klitschko was dominating Byrd until he suffered his injury (again ... which Byrd didn't cause).

Is Marcel Cerdan considered one of Jake LaMotta's two greatest wins? Or do people always say Cerdan injured his shoulder and had to quit?

 

I like this post.