Precisely. He's made out to be this monster based on highly exaggerated stats and absolutely god-awful opposition. Try producing Vitalis top ten wins without having Danny Williams in there.
I love how Vitali becomes this monster who could clean out all of Tysons resume when he got TKO6d by Lewis (in his prime I may add) while a shot to **** Tyson fought a much better prepared Lewis and went 8. Not much to brag about. But that shows the quality between the two. One is an ATG and the other is a good/very good fighter.
Try telling me which Tyson victims would beat Vitali during his reign, I'll be in for a long wait I guess......
Yes of course, and I asked you to name me the top 5 ranked fighters that Tyson fought during his reign that would beat Vitali, I'll be in for a long wait.
30 seconds do? oh easy. but in no order. Spinks. way better than the LHW who beat Vits Holyman, without a shadow of a doubt. Tucker Pinklon The you can pick a weaker one from Douglas, Bruno, old Holmes or even Biggs. Are we there yet? Easily. Much quicker than I thought too.
Yeah, an eternal. BECAUSE WE CAN'T EVER KNOW. That's what I've been arguing until my fingers bleed (not really, though ). Vitaly looked great against guys in the top 20-30, in best case lower top 10. And he looked good in losing efforts against his best opponents: Byrd and Lewis. But that doesn't automatically mean that he'd looked consistently taking on the best out there. Foreman also looked great against fringe contenders plus actually top fighters like Frazier and Norton. And had he continued facing cans after Norton, we'd be saying today that he was absolutely unstoppable. But he stepped up against Ali, and then took on tough contenders like Lyle and Young. And guess what? Even in his comeback he looked great against the top 20 type, but every time he stepped up against better competition he was decidedly less dominant. Cooeny was another that looked great against the top 20 comp, as did Shavers. Perhaps Vitaly would have looked great also against world class fighters. I'm not ruling that out. I'm just saying that we don't know, since he just met two that can be classed as such. He lost to both, even though the Byrd loss can be seen as somewhat of a fluke one. But even if we're generous enough to give him that one as a win, that would be his sole one against that level of comp.
How many would you pick to go through Tyson's actual 1986-'89 opponents in perhaps slightly less convincing manner but then actually beat Buster Douglas ? That's the question a lot of you seem to want to avoid.
Vitali turned pro in 96, he fought Byrd in 2000 and had 28 fights within that 4 year period. The late 90s was packed with top guys. Vitali didn't face a single one. But he did try to face Razor Ruddock in 2000, why is any bodies guess considering the amount of active guys that were available at the time. Sorry but that's something hard to ignore.
Aside from Lewis, there's almost shockingly few quality opponents for someone who's been at or around the top for so long. You'd think that a fighter and management with a lot of confidence in the fighter's abilities would look for bigger challenges.