Who ranks higher as a heavyweight, Joe Frazier or Mike Tyson?

Frazier's win over Ali takes him above Tyson IMO.

 

Tyson. Not close.

 

I'm currently in the process of redoing my all time rankings, using information I've gathered here and other places, rather than just shooting from the hip. And I'm putting more emphasis on head to head this time as well. With that said, currently I'd rank Tyson ahead of Frazier.

 

Hard call, I lean towards Tyson though.

 

Its a question about that one win really. A win that happened out of five trials. But what a great win it was!

 

It's close IMO. I have Tyson at 9 and Frazier at 10 on my All-Time list. I think the title defenses and being the youngest HW champ in history help me rank Mike over Joe. The aura around Mike at the time also was something like I've never seen.

 

Actually, title defenses are close. Tyson had ten successful defenses compared to nine for Frazier. As undisputed champs Tyson was successful six times while Frazier had five such defenses. Given the closeness in numbers I would say that Frazier's FOTC win puts him higher on the ATG list than Tyson.

 

I have Frazier only one step above Mike, at #7 ATG.

Mike never came off the floor to beat anyone, and he never beat anyone the level of an under 30 Muhammad Ali.

 

Remember we have the #3 or #4 best HW ATG Lennox Lewis who never came off the floor anytime to continue a fight, which MT at least did for a couple of times, but lost.

Btw, did Sonny Liston?

 

Frazier’s defenses other than Ali weren’t even close to the quality of Tyson’s in a h2h sense, nor did he get the same quality of wins after his reign.

 

Frazier his win over Ali was the greatest in history

 

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These two have been compared many times in styles and head to head, but I don't usually see a discussion about who ranks higher legacy wise. It's a good question.

Frazier had the better amateur career, and has less embarrassing losses. You don't see Frazier getting taken out by guys like Danny Williams, if you didn't belong in the ring with him he let you know right away.

Tyson fans often are quick to point out how he was far past his prime when most of the really bad losses occured, however, Frazier was already showing signs of slipping before his first loss so that evens the playing field out a bit, right? I mean Frazier was a guy who was partially blind in one eye dealing with high blood pressure, arthritis, etc, and wasn't a particularly athletic individual to begin with. So why is it cool to just gloss over Tyson's record post prime but ignore the fact Frazier was continuing to perform well past his best beating Ellis and quarry and having one of the best HW performances of all time in manilla despite his body falling apart?

As for wins, both of them had a meteoric rise to the top clearing out their divisions. Both were often the shorter man chopping down big guys despite the odds. Where they differ is Tyson had more belts to collect while there were only two titles in Frazier's era. So at first glance it may seem Tyson accomplished more, but that was partly due to the fact the belts were so split up that mediocre guys could grab one and claim to be a champion. So I guess it boils down to if you think guys like Seldon, Bruno, tucker, etc are on the same level as highly ranked guys who didn't become champion in Frazier's time such as Quarry, Bonavena, Bugnee, etc. I certainly do think many of Fraizers opponents could have grabbed at least one belt in the 80's or 90's.

I'm terms of top wins, Frazier has a clear advantage with the Ali victory, but then he has two losses along with the two brutal beat downs from Foreman. However, going 1-0-4 is better than going 0-3 against the best opponents for Tyson (Hoylfield and Lewis).

I think Tyson does get the nod for mid level opposition. Thomas, berbick, spinks, Williams, etc stack up very well compared to the Ellis, Mathis, etc guys on Frazier's resume if not moreso. And he has sheer quantity, Tyson did indeed go through the division like a knife through butter and took out practically everyone. And Tyson was dominant a bit longer too.

So I guess it's kind of apples and oranges. Both tore through the low level guys with ease. Tyson did more mid level work, and had a wider variety of styles and more contenders to go through to be considered #1, but then fell off like an anvil over a cliff and never managed to beat his absolute best opponents. Frazier did slightly less mid level work, and did manage to get at least one win over the absolute best of his opposition, and hung around a bit better than Tyson did post prime. Tyson was more impressive in sheer quantity and domination, but looked far worse in his losses. Frazier remained competitive with Ali in each fight, Foreman was the only one to make him look like a chump. Tyson got punked by guys who didn't belong in the same sentence as him.