Mike Tyson's prime ended after the Spinks fight

I always took Bruno as the start of the decline. Spinks was so mentally scared he was looking for the first way out that came along, as soon as Tyson landed biv it was going to unravel for Spinks.

Bruno 1 was the first sloppy performance in my opinion.

 

Tucker was very very good that night. He did a few Roy jones-esque moves, hitting Tyson with triple left hooks and actually ducking under Tyson's hook as a 6'5 guy.

Tyson actually outjabbed him and countered his right hand with a hard left hook to the body in rounds 3 and 4


It was a very good performance, now underrated because tucker went on a 2-3 year coke binge afterwards and returned as a shot fighter with no legs

 

This is where perception comes in. There were sloppier performances than that. Bonecrusher. Tucker. Ribalta. Mitch Green. Tyson had Bruno on the floor seconds after the bell rang and stopped him in five.

Tyson didn't stop Bruno in one, like he did Spinks, and he had a new team (and HBO liked Tyson's old team, not the Don King-led team), so therefore HBO considered the Bruno fight a "lesser" performance.

If the Bruno and Willliams fights had occurred in 1987 in place of the Tyson-Smith and Tyson-Tucker fights, and Tyson fought exactly the same way (except Rooney was in his corner) nobody would've batted an eye.

Tyson looked great against Bruno and Williams. Much better than he'd looked against guys like Smith, Tucker, Green and Ribalta.

But HBO didn't like the way their relationship with Tyson was going, and they didn't like dealing with King, and they had even hired Rooney as a commentator briefly, so they weren't going to say Tyson looked JUST AS GOOD AS HE USUALLY DID.

But, basically Tyson did.

Saying Bruno 1 was his first "sloppy" performance meant he'd always looked better before. And that simply isn't true. Tyson occasionally had off-nights, regardless of who was in charge of his career. Just like he turned in stellar performances, regardless of who was in charge of his career.

 

Very much agree with this. Tyson was a fantastic fighter under Rooney, but he wasn't a supernatural being that looked amazing for every second of every fight. Like every fighter even at their very best he had moments were he could look a bit ordinary. So treading water for couple of rounds against a good fighter like Bruno doesn't tell us much. If he hadn't been able to shift gears, then yes maybe that would have been a sign of something, but he did and soon after stopped Bruno in his usual spectacular fashion.

And the performance against Williams would be lauded as one of his best if not for the subsequent loss to Douglas. He had obviously prepared well to take advantage of Williams one big flaw, dropping the right when jabbing, and did so within two minutes. The mark of a very sharp fighter imo.

 

Like lots of others made loads of money early in life .How many of Us would cope with that amount of money in our early twenties ?

 

Was it Hagler who said "it's hard to get up at 5 am to run when you're sleeping in silk sheets"?

 

There was a documentary a few years ago about Tyson's rise and fall; it might have been Bill Cayton, or someone quoting him, said the game plan was to make him the youngest, richest heavyweight in history - and the formula was gym/fight/gym/fight, etc, keeping him busy ... and accordingly, never giving him a chance to get into trouble. Even for a mentally strong, stable person, that kind of schedule and treatment creates problems; we're not machines. Given his background, of course he started going off the rails - anyone would, never mind a 20 year old kid from the streets who's suddenly become one of the most famous people on the planet. Going from being nobody to having every - EVERY - moment of your life stared at and scrutinized would make anyone wig.

 

Fair call.

 

I think it was Jack Dempsey !

 

Everyone knows he started declining the moment he got rid of Rooney. Every fight after that you saw how easy he became to hit and predictable and one dimensional he became as a boxer.

 

Being a short guy, to really make his style work, Tyson had to be pretty sharp. He had to be well prepared. He had to be in good shape. When those Bob & weave guys start standing straighter, they usually lose. The talent was there and the ability was there but he didn’t have the desire to put in the work I don’t think.

 

I agree in a way.

He had reached the summit of his personal Everest, and it is very hard for a champion to be consistent after that!

 

Think about it. He got rid of Rooney (for a stupid reason) because he was already gone mentally. He didn't want boxing people around him anymore. Rooney was just a symptom. It wasn't about boxing anymore in Tyson's world at that time. His mind was on everything but boxing.

Self fulfilling propecy.