Mike Tyson had a better career than Larry Holmes.

To give Shavers his due most people gave him round 2

 

No.
I'm not talking about "ducking".
I'm talking about "missing".
NoNeck has come out with all this crap about Holmes "missing" Tom, Dick and Harry, A, B, C and X, Y and Z.
Citing RING magazine rankings.

So, I've responded by showing Tyson was missing TOP GUYS during this reign where he allegedly "cleared out".
Not only that, Tyson fought THREE GUYS at least (out of 9 challengers) who seem to have been completely unranked by RING magazine.
Oh, and Holyfield was ranked #1 at end of 1988 and 1989 .... and Tyson fought unranked Bruno,.#2 Williams and #7 Douglas instead.

I've also shown that Holmes beat far more RING RANKED fighters that people make out with their vague assertions.

What these anti-Holmes postors can do with Holmes, can be done with Tyson too. That's all.

To be honest, the debate has been completely one-sided.
If you want to join in with the losing team now and try to salvage something, I think they could really do with your skills.

 

Just to keep it real Holmes rematched Weaver 21 years later when both had one leg in the wheelchair.

After Holmes Witherspoon had an easy one with the limited Cummings but then pole axed Tillis inside 1 round. Tillis had only ever lost to Weaver, Page and Thomas and was never stopped in less than 8 rounds. Witherspoon then beat Page for the WBC title. It's not like he just went from losing to Holmes to losing to Thomas, he had some excellent work in between.

Also the claim Witherspoon lost his credibility as a challenger after being beaten by Holmes could not be further from the truth. His credibility took an immense leap upwards after such a spirited effort in running Holmes close. He wasn't very highly considered prior and therefore went in as a big underdog. He came out the other side as one of the best fighters in the division with loads of potential.

Very true.

 

The stretch from Berbick to Tucker, maybe Biggs was good. That's only 5 fights though.
If you have the RING magazines from that year, you can work out who was rated where.

Spinks was lineal champion. But his other two opponents in 1988 were unranked by RING, I think.
Bruno was unranked by RING in 1987 and 1988 rankings.
Douglas was #6 in RING magazine end of 1989 (The top 5 was made up of fighters Tyson did NOT defend against ever) and Tyson lost.

If any of these FACTS are incorrect. Let me know.

 

@janitor
if you want to address this ("I think what would be telling ..."), please do.
If my information is doubtful, let me know.
Under the microscope, at first glance, it seems to be Larry Holmes beat as many or MORE ranked contender in 4 years than Tyson did in 4 years.
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I think Holmes would tally more.
In fact, I wouldn't be at all surprised if Holmes beat as many in four years as Tyson did in four years.
It has to be close, at least.

For example. Holmes beat Shavers, Norton, Evangelista, Ocasio in 12 months. I have good reason to believe they were all RING ranked. That's 4 already, between March 1978 and March 1979.
(He beat Shavers again in September 1979)

At the end of 1979, Leroy Jones, Lorenzo Zanon and Scott LeDoux were all in the RING rankings .... Holmes beat all three within the first seven months of 1980.
In 1981, Holmes beat Leon Spinks, Trevor Berbick and Renaldo Snipes.
I suspect all three were ranked in the RING magazine rankings (though Snipes, due to the controversy of the Coetzee, possibly was not?)

^ That's NINE or TEN (one of which Holmes beat twice) fighters who were probably RING ranked when they faced Holmes.
I haven't even got to Cooney.

^That's all between March 1978 and November 1981. Less than four years.

If Tyson ever did a whole better in four years, let's hear about it ....
(I think you should perhaps give up any hope of Tyson's four year run beating any eight years of Holmes ...)

 

His point is that Tyson had almost zero filler.

You can find filler in Holmes reign right off the bat and it remains consistent. You don't need to go years into his reign to find it. Of course guys like Ali and just about everyone else had it too.

The thing is Tyson's reign, tho shorter, had little to zero filler. This is extremely rare and needs recognition.

In short Tyson's short reign is quite offset because he lacked such filler.

Of course the flipside is that he was exposed to less emerging talents but one can say that was also the case with Holmes due to avoiding them all in his last couple of years.

I'm not advocating Tyson is to be rated above or any such thing but the strengths and weaknesses of both reigns need to be recognized.

One could easily claim Holmes reign ended with Frank after which he failed to fulfill obligations and held the peoples champion title to ransom. This would shorten him up by 2 years and 4 defenses. He would still be left with heaps of course.

 

Berbick was around his best for Holmes and also Tyson strangely enough. He was somewhat inconsistent in between but could still fight at a similar high level when "on". He was on his best run ever coming into Tyson.

 

2 years.

 

This is the good old choklab/Mendoza trick. You are a lot better than that.

 

Tyson also defended against Smith and Thomas who both beat Witherspoon.

 

Yes, Tyson had less filler.
Everyone he beat in that reign was better than Lucien Rodriguez or Jean-Pierre Coopman.

Well, I'm sure you will claim that until your dying day, and that's fair enough.

It would be intresting to see where Marvis Frazier, James Smith, David Bey and Carl Williams were ranked (if at all) by RING magazine at the time they fought Holmes.
I have a strong feeling Bey was another "top 5" that Holmes beat.

 

Fair post.

It's still extremely hard to rate Tyson ahead tho because of the Douglas loss. Truth be told it's grossly unfair Tyson didn't get an immediate rematch after such a dominant reign. He could have gone a long way toward redeeming that loss.

 

Yes, those two were better matches at the time too, early 1987. Witherspoon had just lost in 1 round to Smith.
But roll on to 1988 and 1989, Witherspoon was better than Bruno, rated higher, already beat him. Just superior and better qualified.

 

Tyson's schedule and the speed through which he emerged is impressive, but his prime seems to have effectively ended at the time he hit the wall, named Douglas. He was 37-0 and aged 23. He remained relevant during the '90s, but never regained anything like the aura he had carried in the late '80s.

Holmes went 48-0; didn't lose until he was 35. It was an unusual period of time to go undefeated at Heavyweight and it was only nature taking it's course and perhaps a little jadedness on the part of Holmes, through which both his physical decline and wavering focus, together brought his meaningful career to a close.

In order to seriously consider Tyson to have had a better career than Holmes, either Tyson's opposition needs to be widely accepted as having been stellar and/or Holmes' opposition needs to be looked upon as dire.

Neither of the above viewpoints could be deemed absolutely true (if anywhere near the truth, at all). But, in my opinion, Holmes has the better wins and, from a pure boxing perspective, demonstrated the craft more completely. Combined with the period of time, over which he successfully practiced, I think the idea of Tyson having had a better career is a tough sell and putting the case would require too much bias - (which I believe the OP has adequately shown).

 

It wasn't grossly unfair at all.
Holyfield had been sat waiting for Tyson to give him a shot. Holyfield was #1 contender.
Not to mention that King and Tyson (with the honourable WBC) tried to have the Douglas result declared a win for Tyson, before backing down in the face of media backlash.