Mike Tyson had a better career than Larry Holmes.

Holmes schooled Shavers 12-0 in the first fight. It was very one-sided. No need for any rematch.
Tyson won against Ruddock by controversial stoppage in a competitive fight. People did not like the way the referee called it off and they wanted a rematch.
Holmes and Shavers rematched only when Shavers scored a big victory over Norton. And Holmes continued to school Shavers for the next 6 rounds, until Shavers caught him in the 7th.
It's funny that you actually used Shavers knockdown as a big thing to point out Holmes's weakness, despite Holmes schooling him for 18 rounds before that.

Shavers almost knocking him out is a credit to Shavers. But the result was a stoppage win for Holmes, which you SHOULD see as credit to Holmes.

Witherspoon and Williams did deserve rematches, yes.

Holmes fought some bums.
But so did Ali and Louis.
If you take away the bums on Holmes's resume, you are still left with a lot of credible opponents.
You seem to want to downgrade them all a bit.

 

I just can't see the case for Tyson having a better career.

He doesn't have the quality in his very brief time at the top to compete with someone who has the longetivity of Holmes.

If someone wants to rate Tyson over Holmes on any other criteria...that's debatable, but in terms of overall career, there's no question who was more successful.

 

Don't agree. The skills are there against Bruno. Holy just stifled them.

 

Yes, which should be considered when rating who had the better career.

Tyson seems to be a guy who needs to be young, prime, perfect shape, 100%, ideally prepared, no distractions, etc. etc. .... for him to perform. Any time he's well under 100% against someone really good he gets his ass beaten, and all the excuses come out.

Whereas great fighters like Holmes and Ali and Louis and loads of others, they have their 'off nights' against some very good young challenger, pull out a win, then get a load of flak for 'struggling with' X, Y and Z.

The same people will claim Tyson "didn't struggle with his challengers", "he dominated" ..... yeah, until that day he struggled and got his ass whupped !
He gets a pass for struggling because he couldn't even manage to win.

Holmes's prime ended in 1982 and he still managed to be a decent boxer in the early 1990s when he was way past it, a shell of himself.
Tyson, in comparison, has a couple of poor habits in his absolute prime, and gets beaten to a pulp, and people want to write it off as a fluke.

And we all know that's what happens.

 

We both know who Tyson and Holmes fought and the context. These are two well documented very famous heavyweight fighters.

 

Larry couldn't even produce a drop against glass chinned Spinks over 30 rounds of combat. . Put a Mike on the slide in there and he will find the knock out guaranteed.

Mike lost to hard hitting Douglas who was bigger than him

Put Tokyo Douglas in against 36 Holmes and Larry is taking a loss as well. .

 

Excellent post. This BS that the stars must be just right, you have to have just the right milkshake from just the right guy and be in the right time zone and you have to also "feel like it" for a loss not to be written off (for certain fighters) is actually... BS.

A fighter's career is to a large part performing even when it's not your night. Holmes could do that as well as dominate, with consistency over a fairly long period. That's why he's higher than Tyson.

 

Yeah, and Holmes is the only guy to stop Ali. We all know this, but how is it relevant?