I don't get why people think a 70's Foreman beats a prime Tyson

No one's knocking down Tyson early. A prolonged beating is the only way he ever went down. I'm sorry, but odds are, if a man who as a washed up fighter stood up to Lewis best shots for 8 rounds fought a guy who in or close to his prime went down in round 3 or 4 from Ron Lyle, the man who withstood punishment from Lennox Lewis for 8 rounds is likely to be the one who doesn't go down early. That's as plain as I can put it.

 

I've seen the fight and Douglas utilized his reach by jabbing, moving and throwing combinations. Always trying to get his shots off first while staying out of range for Tyson to hit him back. He didn't offer his chin on a platter. The one time Tyson caught him cold on the chin, it nearly threw Douglas masterful performance out the window. And luckily, for Douglas, it came right as the round ended.

Maybe Douglas wasn't a better fighter than Foreman, but he certainly was a better boxer.

 

I'm not going into the Tucker fight. I saw him throw power shots, you didn't. So I know we'll never agree. Except for the odd fact that Tyson was hard to land clean on and had a habit of countering his opponents missed shots which discouraged them and made them go into survival mode and excessively clinch and grab and hold. It wasn't like this only happened with Tony Tucker.

 

I think he's just saying that the human body can adapt. Kind of like, if you work with your hands, they form callouses and the skin gets rougher. In this context, he's just saying the body can adapt to take punches. I'll go one step further, scientists have found that even vividly imagining yourself doing something can activate the same neural pathways that doing it in real life does, so just imagining yourself doing something long enough can make you better at it as practicing it in real life.

In Ali's case, regarding his chin, it did seem to get better with age up to a point. At 18 or 19, he was floored by Sonny Banks at 21 floored by Henry Cooper. At 32, he took monstrous punishment from Foreman and was never knocked down, was taking Frazier's best shots at 33 and wasn't knocked down and was decked by Shavers at 35 and didn't go down. Those same shots may have turned out the lights of a 18-21 year old Ali.

 

Tyson/Ruddock....guess it depends on how you're defining the word "brawl".

 

Tyson's style was built to get around jabs. Foreman's jab was powerful, but not terribly speedy. Plus Tyson had top end KO power as well. Foreman isn't walking through Tyson's power either.