Was Buster Douglas Really Stronger Than Evander Holyfield?

I'm not. Just because Douglas was a "natural" heavyweight doesn't mean he's stronger. Why is being "natural" make you stronger than someone who trained and bulked up (and roided up) to get to heavyweight. When Holyfield fought Tyson, he looked like the stronger man to me, even though Holyfield was a bulked up 218 pounds while Tyson was a "natural" 218 pounds.

 

Which is why Foreman decimates Tyson. He pushes him back all night, lands a heavy jab, uppercuts the **** out of him. Tyson literally can't fight any other way.

 

OK let us look at what you challenged me with in a more granular way, I appreciate the feedback!
We do not know if *anyone* uses or does anything. You or I could be secret (insert favorite predatory perversion or colorful means of murder here).
Yet you describe PED usage as rampant. It depends how you define the word, but nowhere do we see (across the board in any age of school) that it is the majority or nearly half of student athletes.
Plus you are talking about 40 years ago, before his pro debut? The early-mid 1980's.
PED usage became more common in the 1990's in boxing-& even in another sport resistent then to modern weight training, baseball, it was by all accounts not becoming more than rare before the Godfather of 'roids Jose Canseco-in the late 1980's.

Also Cus was a Ye Olde School 'ole...Cus. He was very likely to have been extremely leery about these drugs, as was the establishment-And Tyson overwhelmingly did body weight excercises early daaaaze, not even muscle maximizing lifting.
Now the weigh gain you posit...This is not suspicious.
2 lbs. of muscle a month for someone of Tyson's bone structure AND especially physically very active with muscle-bearing movements while

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not much as all.
If it was a little more than 2 lbs...AND he was at his final height...Only IF we can document it was all muscle he gained would I even think it could

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mean anything.

But if he gained any real fat...
If he was dressed more &/or more water weight when he hit the pros...
Certainly if he had to SHED a few lbs. to hit the 201 lb. limit, then it is not remotely suspect.

Thing is when folks gain weight they rarely gain 100% muscle & nothing else.
And some of that weight, food/waste in the system, water, what one is wearing...Is temporary & absolutely meaningless!
So there is no evidence Tyson used PEDs.

Now I would be an utter hypocrite IF I believed what you mistakenly attributed to me. To wit:

"But we do know this, since you somewhere alluded to Holyfield putting on 10 pounds of muscle over a period of like 5 or more years and attributing all of that to PEDs:"
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NO I would not find that weight gain-even though in Holyfield's case it appears to be all muscle-as suspicious at all!
I did not say or allude to that being suspicious.
What was is how it is distributed, so heavily in the androgen-receptor heavy areas around the traps (neck & shoulders too since adjacent), & his sudden onset baldness, & "heart problems"...

I said even that would not be a clincher: the BALCO evidence after their investuigation made it all but certain.

Even Holyfield's total weight & height was not-you gotta look more carefully than that-I mean any "you", anyone...
His muscle was overwhelmingly upper body.
Some use & do not gain weight or muscle that effectively: or have a lot of fat covering up muscle.
You know what expert shoulder-roller I mean...

Tyson was naturally WAY more mesomorphic than Holyfield.
I agree that folks *often* believe what they want.
I ask you IF because you like Holyfield's admirable toughness/heart & skills, + contempt for Tyson's very real character flaws...

You may want to definitively conclude-or make an untoward assumption about what is likely-because you want Tyson to be as guilty as Holyfield.

Now show me the actual documented evidence of gaining 30 or so lbs. of most all muscle in very few months after prison, as I said before...Even though muscle memory makes it come back faster...
And I will gladly revise my opinion of him using then from no decent evidence to likely!

 

correct. There is a great old special series called my greatest fight. Foreman talks of his strategy for Frazier 1. And it was jab or push his left shoulder. The inside of it, not the outside. With Foreman's strength and strong jab, it moved Joe. Forced him back and he'd have to take 2 or 3 steps to reset because he was squared up. Joe always liked to start things from 1 stance.

After doing it a few times, they knew Joe was just going to try burrowing his way in....he was hardly going to circle!!!! Or try jabbing his way in. He was not a guy used to being physically handled in there. And George was doing it early and setting the tone. Next step to do === George started throwing hooks and uppercuts because they knew where Joe was going to be.

 

Douglas maybe had the heavier right or uppercut, but Holyfield's strength was more effective for boxing

 

You seem to be missing the main point I made:

Tyson in his last amateur fight = 201 pounds.

Tyson a few months later in his first pro fight = 214.

That’s 13 or so pounds (don’t have exact weights on his final amateur fights but he was in the heavyweight 201-pound division, not super heavyweight.

You keep saying ‘Tyson was naturally thickly muscled’ … but how do you know it’s natural? You say, ‘well Cus was old school,’ yet there’s reference by AJ Liebling during Floyd Patterson’s career (another guy who gained a lot of weight (muscle) in a relatively short period of time (middleweight amateur to heavyweight pro) of Dan Florio (Patterson’s actual trainer … Cus was his manager) having put the weight on Floyd with ‘lamps chops and rest and (I don’t have the book handy but the following words are close) Dan Florio’s secret vitamins.’

How whether Florio was using anything that today would raise eyebrows or not, that’s evidence of (a) Cus not being so old-school that he eschewed ‘vitamins’ which were way more cutting edge in training during that time than routine like today, hardly old school, and (b) a D’Amato fighter from long before making huge weight games that you would probably look at today as suspicious.

Without question Mike Tyson added something akin to 7% body mass gain in a matter of weeks. And not by packing it around his midsection. That alone should make you at least curious.

 

You do realize he was probably cutting weight to make 201?
Anyone can add 13lbs of mostly carbs water in a few weeks(without looking any fatter) if they were dieted down beforehand. And thats without de/rehydration. You can double that number if you want to add water manipulation to the mix

 

The version of Holyfield that fought Tyson was bigger and stronger than the version of Holyfield that fought Douglas.

 

Any documentation of Mike cutting massive weight to make 201? I don’t remember ever seeing or hearing anything about that.

And, of course, Evander could have been doing the same thing to make cruiser.

 

That statement by McCall has always seemed odd. Other than that time he knocked Mike Williams down three times with jabs, he never seemed in the same power class as Lewis or Tyson.

 

How can you think I missed the point?
I addressed in detail your argument about Tyson gaining weight from his amateur to his pro career.
Now you say it is a matter of weeks? OK please link the details & dates so there are no mistakes.
I also mentioned things you ignored or somehow missed:

1) We do not know how he was weighed. Maybve he was just in boxing trunks in the morning before eating both times, but I also said...
2) He may have gained some fat. You at least mentioned this-but nobody nees to "pack it in" on the midsection to gain a few lbs. of fat-OR water-as I said.
3) He was a teenager & boys normally fill out then-even when done growing in height.
4) He may well have cut at least somewhat or a bit to MAKE 201 lbs!

One or a few of these things could account for his weight gain.
You already mixed up WHY I was suspicious about Holyfield-& did not acknowledge this.
I am *very careful* about assuming someone is a Dirty Rotten Scoundrel without good evidence.

Holyfield's muscle distribution AND sudden onset baldness AND "heart problems" were suggestive & veryt diffwerent from anything to do with Tyson.
But again the BALCO investigation is virtually definitive.


Now for the new argument you present...
First a TON of guys gained a lot of weight throughout bnoxing history-many before steroids were common or even INVENTED.
You likely now about many of them, starting at least from Sam Langford.

Going from Middleweight to HW-especially when you end up what in modern times is a small HW (& would be a small CRUISERWEIGHT by today's standards...is EXTREMELY common.
Especially since Floyd also turned pro as a teenager & was the youngest HW champion ever!

I filled out in college, & still in my 20's without cutting could have been a LHW-getting leaner as I occasionally did naturally SMW would be easy. And with rehydration? At least 154 would have been very feasible. Yet later would be a small (meaning mid-century sized) HW or a CW with routine dehydration-& would never even take Creatine.t much food in my system, early 200's. In actuality as I bulked up I go up to mid-late 20's in body fat/near Tua's weight when fighting Lewis-later losing some weight.
EDIT: I meant what I would hve weighed lean & wit

But I am not ignoring your argument about "vitamins".
This is ambiguous...What were they?
Assuming it was literally vitamins & minerals that is neither the most "old school" possible...
But not very modern or unusual-like eating a ton of food.

Did Cus even sanction a lot of or any weight training for Floyd? I never heard about anything like that.
If not that is very old school.

 

Well Evander probably was cutting to make 190. So if he showed up at 200 or 205 nobody would be screaming roids. Its the sudden balding, heart issues, inflated traps and deltoids and the fact he looked a good 15lbs slimmer between fights that are suspect. The post Bowe 1 Holyfield is the one that has an asterisk imo.
Anyway, evander was plenty strong. Just as strong as some of the strongest heavyweights of his era except for george foreman.

But to point at tyson turning pro at 214 as evidence of PED use is absurd. Have you ever been on a strict diet and then stopped watching what you eat? You´d be amazed how fast the weight can come back.

 

EDIT: that is a very fair statement.
But still someone who comes in lean at the top of a weight category has a very good chance to have cut weight.
Holyfield when coming in 3 lbs. under the then CW max-is less likely to have cut weight then.

Hearns glared at Stewart when he weighed 145 against SRL-makes sense, because he had drained too much/unnecessarily, & when already so lean being 2 lbs. under likely weakened him at least a bit!

 

All we know about Tyson’s weight at the Olympic Trials is what division he was in … for all we know he was 3 pounds under the limit.

It’s absolute fact that he packed at least 13 pounds (of muscle … show me the fat rolls on him if you disagree) between his last amateur fight and his first pro fight.

Holyfield was 190 for his last cruiserweight fight (the exact division limit at the time). He weighed exactly 12 pounds heavier for James Tillis in his first heavyweight fight some months later.

So they put on basically the same amount of weight in the same time span. Yet you conclude with nothing but speculation that (a) Tyson was weight drained as an amateur and didn’t actually gain a lot of ‘real’ weight, yet (b) Holyfield must have been juiced to the gills.

 

See my post above. I’m saying if you’re going to assume Holyfield went on ‘roids to gain 12 pounds between his last cruiserweight fight and first heavyweight fight (after draining out make 190), you cannot then assume Tyson did it naturally when he actually gained at least one more pound in the same time frame.

Also interesting, Tyson was at his lightest weight for the Roy Jones Jr exhibition since he was 18 (per his account) … most people gain weight when they get older. I’ve seen 300-pound NFL linemen end up being 225-pound guys a few years after retiring from football (when they stop weight training and, probably, get off the gear).

We know for a fact that Tyson cheated drug tests with a fake dick. He bragged about it. That makes him a drug cheat. If you want to believe the guy with the fake dick when he says it was only for pot, that’s your prerogative but I’d say it’s a bit trusting and naive.

We know Holyfield didn’t use a fake dick because of all the children he fathered. His was real.