Not sure I've ever read this one. Most interesting. Mustafa the most skilled light heavyweight he ever fought. No surprise there. https://www.ringtv.com/597330-best-i-faced-michael-spinks/ Spinks agreed to speak about the best fighters he fought in 10 categories. FASTEST HANDS Mike Tyson: He had good hand speed. That was one of his biggest assets. He had power and hand speed and that was hard to beat. FASTEST FEET Tyson: He knew how to get in real fast. That was one of his strengths too. He’d slide up on you real quick and get in the punches. BEST CHIN Luis Rodriguez: I fought him in my second pro fight, in St. Louis, and I hit him with everything and he kept hitting me back (laughs) and I was like, “Damn! Am I hitting hard enough?” STRONGEST Tyson: He was very strong. I don’t know what made him so strong. SMARTEST Larry Holmes: Holmes was one of the smartest because he was very hard to hit, had a real wicked defense where you’d try to hit him, he’d throw his hands out and pull you to the side. So it was very hard to hit him. BEST JAB Holmes: Nobody outjabbed me. I knew just how to put the right pepper on it, to make it real fast and bring it right back. So I think I had the best jab of all the guys I fought. Larry Holmes had a good jab but he didn’t land it. He didn’t use it on me. My jab was working on him more than his jab on me and I won, two times. BEST PUNCHER Tyson: Oh, Mike Tyson, most definitely the biggest puncher I ever fought. BEST DEFENSE Dwight Muhammad Qawi: Maybe Dwight. He was so close to the ground (at 5 feet 5 inches). When he bobbed and weaved, it was kind of hard to hit him. I attacked his body, shoulder, chest. BEST SKILLS Eddie Mustafa Muhammad and Holmes: Wow. Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Larry Holmes, Yaqui Lopez, a lot of guys had skills. It’s kind of hard to pick one. As a light heavyweight champion, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad; as a heavyweight, Larry Holmes. BEST OVERALL Tyson: Well, Larry Holmes was undefeated. Tyson had to be the best because he beat Larry Holmes and me.
Great post bro, i never saw this one before. Years ago i had an old video previous his fight with Tyson and Michael spinks said literally " people say that Mike Tyson is the most powerful boxer around but George Foreman is more powerful than him"
No surprise. Foreman is a tour de force. Having said that they are very different types of powerhouses. I've seen anyone remotely like either of them. So unique. By the way how do you catch a unique rabbit? Unique up on it.
We all have our little delusions. I must admit though, after having watched it for like the 30th time since it first happened I could see where Michael did seem very busy, and certainly wasn't entirely dominated by Larry. That said, I still had Holmes ahead by four points. Most of Spinks' performance in the second fight was smoke and mirrors, he rarely had much of his bodyweight behind his punches (it would have been impossible for him to get much leverage given how herky-jerky his rhythms were; he was seemingly, intentionally off-balance for so much of both fights). The problem for Larry is that Michael often outpunched him...the fact that those selfsame shots didn't have much on them didn't seem to register with the judges. I think Michael's performance in the first fight succeeded because he, to quote one of the announcers, kept giving Larry different looks. Larry didn't like those whom strayed from the norm, and it wouldn't surprise me if Michael's game plan (whether pre-planned or made up as he went along) was to do precisely that: to make it so he never rested enough to give Larry a good calculation. Many of Holmes' titular defenses involved him trying to zero in on an opponent's style, and sometimes he had to walk through fire to get there (Leon is a good example, Larry was perplexed at first by his kind of goofily blitzkrieg style). Michael never gave him the chance to figure him out. In the second fight, Larry did get more of a grip on his weirdness, and scored by far the most telling blows throughout the fight (though still never getting off the combinations we remember in his prime, and thus not finishing the job). Oddly enough, I think the Holmes who beat Mercer may have stopped prime Spinks in 9.
“I do pretty much what I want,” said Spinks, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1994. “That’s what I worked for, so whenever I did retire I wanted to have enough money to do exactly what I want. I’m raising children. I have three children so I’m trying to be the best father I can with them and I’m having a good time.” That's awesome, good for him, it seems Holmes and him were the only ones that managed their money correctly.
I heard awhile ago that one of his promoters or managers (I don’t exactly remember which) took a big portion of his money when he retired, anyone know if it was true
I saw an interview where Spinks said in his prime, he could handle all of the modern day light heavies.
His children have to be adults now. He was holding his toddler daughter after the 2nd Holmes fight and that was 1986
