Boxing Desperately Needs a Dominant American HW champ

Floyd Mayweather's biggest purse absolutely dwarfed Tyson's biggest ever purse.

 

It wasn't.

His second biggest purse absolutely dwarfed Tyson's biggest purse too. And his third. The idea that an American heavyweight is required to make the massive purses ended with Tyson.

And, frankly, Joshua's biggest purse compare wonderfully well to any any HW ever not named Tyson. He's probably the best paid all time never to have fought, or to have been, Mike Tyson.

You've got it the wrong way round. It is Tyson who was the one-off.

 

Since Tyson retired, it's been Oscar, then Floyd, then Canelo and AJ.

Every one of them has absolutely massive purses to hand directly comparable and usually bigger than every heavyweight not to have fought Mike Tyson or have been Mike Tyson.

You have it wrong. Mike Tyson was the one off.

Ali's biggest purse was about a third of AJ's biggest ever purse adjusting for inflation. Holmes got a little more. None of the American heavyweights are comparable to Canelo, Floyd, Oscar and AJ apart from Mike Tyson and dance partenrs who dwarfs them all. But he's a one off

 

I don't know, or care. The notion that "boxing needs..." is wrong. American boxing needs, maybe, yeah. But if the next AJ (bigger than any American HW since Tyson, bigger than any HW before Tyson, allowing for the fact that purses for fighting Tyson were as big or bigger) is from China, that makes no difference to me. It would be better, in fact, for me, less very late nights. If Chang is the next HW superstar, great. If it's a Brit, even better. If it's a Kuwaiti, brilliant.

If it's not a heavyweight, i prefer that personally, but it doesn't make a huge difference.

There are new players in the game and whether or not the next hugely popular fighter is from America makes absolutely no difference to most of us. That said, if it is an American heavyweight, what fun.

 

I think that in America there were probably more eyes on Ali than Tyson, yeah. Worldwide? I'm not sure that's true. And I know it's not true now, Tyson's overtaken him at some point. Tyson was huge in Chechnya in a way that Ali wasn't and US tv was broadcast to China for the first time right before Mike turned pro. He is big in India. I don't think you can really exaggerate how enormous Tyson was, although yeah, arguing about who was more famous out of Ali at their respective peaks is pretty ridiculous, they were both utterly enormous.

It's certainly true that before Tyson, heavies were the biggest thing in boxing. Post-Tyson, this is not true, partly because nobody could live up, but partly because Oscar landed in the wake of Leonard.