Does anyone find Tyson vs. Holyfield I very overrated?

They don't pick the fights I do enough for me lol.

 

What do you mean Tyson started folding rounds earlier?

 

Was kind of one sided and a smartly/bravely played strategy by Evander. Not a terrible fight by any means but not great either

 

It was the second biggest upset in heavyweight history after Tyson-Douglas.

I believe Holyfield opened as a 22 to 1 underdog. He was coming off an apparent heart episode, a KO loss to Bowe and whatever that fight with Bobby Czyz was.

When it was announced immediately after the Tyson-Seldon debacle, there was a collective groan. People thought Evander shouldn't even be fighting.

Now, decades later, it is viewed differently.

But when Tyson came out at the opening bell and immediately staggered Evander, everyone I was with thought it was going to be over momentarily.

Amazing performance for a guy given zero chance. I believe one sportswriter in attendance picked Holyfield before the fight.

 

Holyfield's savagery with the mauling and the buttery kinda ruined those fights imo. At least he didn't make a career out of fighting with that barbaric style.

 

Keep in mind, Tyson only had one loss coming into that fight (45-1 with 41 kos). Holyfield's plan was to bully the bully. Seemed like a ridiculous idea. Everyone who had tried to do that before had failed. But that is what he did.

 

It was a huge miscalculation on Team Tyson's part.

At the Tyson-Seldon postfight press conference, everyone expected Tyson was going to announce he was fighting IBF champ Michael Moorer next. Instead, Holyfield walked out.

Had Tyson fought Moorer (who had a win over Evander), Tyson likely would've blown out Moorer early (like Cooper nearly did in one round and Tua would later).

Then Tyson would've won the WBC, WBA and IBF belts all by KO in the same year.

Had he never fought Evander, at the time, nobody would've missed it.

I'm glad we got those two fights, though. I think Tyson-Holyfield I is a great fight.

And it totally changed the way we viewed both fighters (Tyson and Holyfield).

 

Great performance by Holyfield, without the fight itself being a great one - it was a little too one-sided for that, really. Tyson looked increasingly lost after the fifth round or so.

Aside from the obvious facts that Tyson was still the biggest name in the game by a country mile at that point, and that it was a huge upset which not too many people saw coming, there is another reason for its lasting appeal; the fact that, to millions of boxing fans, it encapsulates the careers of and a couple of indelible 'truths' about both fighters in eleven bruising rounds. Tyson flattering to deceive, never quite reaching the greatness many thought him capable of when it mattered most, the bully crumbling when faced with the sternest resistance. Holyfield, on the other hand, the guy who could always be relied upon to raise his game when it mattered most, and who seemed to thrive and be at his best when he was the underdog or was facing difficult circumstances.

I think the fight consolidating and imprinting those lasting impressions of both fighters (simplistic though they may be) is particularly so in Tyson's case. Before Holyfield, you could write Douglas off as an anomaly and put it purely down to him being off-colour at the time. But when it happened again with Holyfield, the excuses simply didn't seem to wash anymore. Tyson's bullying, fragile psyche and inability to come through adversity was a fringe opinion before Holyfield - after Holyfield, it quickly seemed to become 'fact', and those charges dogged him ceaselessly, persisting to this day.

In that regard, it's a fight which seems to tell the career story of both men.

 

Well, the rounds were kind of flat and bulky. So Iron Mike did us a favor by folding them in half so we could more efficiently store them...

just being silly, my friend. I thought Mike started kind of lagging a few rounds before the end.

Just my opinion, I thought he started looking pretty bad right up to the end.

But hey, all respect your views.

 

Exactly - it was an amazing event to watch. Everyone around me where I was watching it was going nuts when they realised Holyfield was getting on top in the fight.

As someone who grew up watching boxing in the 90s, I don't have an emotional attachment to Ali's win over Foreman. I wasn't there so watching that one back in the cold light of day, it's not a particularly great fight to watch but when someone confounds your expectations like Ali and Holyfield did 22 years apart then it becomes an unforgettable moment for those that were there to see it unfold in real time.

 

We were all ears in the rematch, Ha Ha.

 

Tysons aura of invincibility was such that most of us felt the 95/96 version was just going to take up from where he left off in the late 80s...in hindsight its clear this was a flatfooted,tentative,lesser fighter devoid of the previous fire.He seemed almost meek letting horne and holloway do all his talking.the fight itself caused shock.i recall being on a london underground train and a group of studious young students 20-21 picked up picked up a tattered newspaper with a bloodied tyson snd gasping as if they couldnt beleive any man alive could do that to mike tyson

 

absolutely. Holyfield did not look very good the previous 18 months... Almost everybody back then thought that he was going to get his ass kicked. I was a sophomore in high school and went to watch it at a friend's house... Didn't really get exciting until the fifth round on.

 

PLENTY OF DRAMA BUT NOT A REALLY GREAT FIGHT IMO.