What was your first impression of Mike Tyson?

I think I first saw him on ESPN in one of his early fights in 1985. He looked awesome but I held judgment until he faced some quality opposition. The stoppage of Ferguson made me think he was the real deal. Ferguson had looked pretty good in a war with Carl Williams only months before the Tyson fight.

 

I remember in the late 1980's...lots of the boxing magazines had articles about Tyson vs the greats of the past..."How would Tyson do against Dempsey?...Tunney...Louis?...Marciano?...Ali?"...some of the the articles had him destroying everyone in the first or second round! As someone who's been following the fight game since the early-mid 1960's...I 'd say, "Why don't we wait until he really gets into a fight...and let's see what he's made of..."...After Buster Douglas...and Holyfield...we can see what he's made of. Does he steamroll the legendary champs from the past?...No.

 

I saw him fight Tillis and wasn't as impressed with him as the press prepped me to be. In fact, I wasn't impressed until the Holmes fight, then I was VERY impressed. Right up to Douglas.

 

13

 

"Scary".

 

You'd have to be awfully defiant not to be impressed by his 2 round decimation of Berbick Rules. He hadn't been stopped in 7 years (when an unknown) and was never in trouble over 15 rounds against the likes of Holmes. It was an incredible performance. From memory he wasn't even hit clean such was his speed, power and skill.

 

That he was the future Heavyweight champion, no buts, ifs or how about it, just when.

Of course, I also believed I was gonna be Heavyweight champ one day too in 8 years time, that i was gonna marry my 8th grade sweetheart and that me, her, Hilda, Ana and Carmen would soon be the next Supremes or the next Bananarama lol so.., hey in baseball 1 for 4 is appreciated haha!

 

Beast

 

I think I was just keeping in mind his ko loss against Mercado, as well as the total Holmes domination.

I never had a high estimation of Berbick (or the other 80s alphabet champs like Dokes, Coetzee, Tubbs, Tucker, Smith, et al), in fact I see Thomas as having been just as disappointing as the majority of the aforementioned "Champs" and lame as Berbick when the latter beat him.

This is admittedly my own opinion, all respect to yours.

There's also the fact that I was coming from a Foreman/Holmes/Ai/Frazier background, so maybe it would take a lot for me to be impressed after those years.

I really, really hope I don't sound like some ridiculous "elitist', forgive me if so.

As an aside, I also never forgave Page for losing to Berbick. I thought Page would school him at least as much as Holmes did. I was hugely pro-Page in that fight. I guess we could chalk it up to Berbick's weird style.

 

in Poland we couldn't watch professional boxing, I was a little boy. Sometimes in sports news flashes this boy was shown, called a champion, with the strength of a hammer, and later about subsequent knocked-out rivals. I knew he was very, very good. The name Tyson meant boxer. He was by far the most famous. It was only after he was released from prison that I became a conscious boxing fan. Unfortunately, he didn't look that good in the ring, but I remember his disastrous fight with Botha... it was terrible, Tyson was a shadow of himself and my calves were still shaking, he was definitely the most explosive boxer I've ever seen. In my opinion, he is greatly underestimated today because he is remembered for the end of his career and the best years when he was simply unbelievable are discredited.

 

Being from NY, I heard about him very early on, so I watched his earliest televised fights. I knew he'd be fighting for the title soon.

 

Very angry young man with lots of pent up rage - literally wanting to kill his opponent.

Sneering and pacing back and forth, like a caged tiger before first bell.

His aura and powers of intimation were palpable.

You could see fear in his opponents eyes and you could feel the fear yourself if you mentally subbed yourself in for a moment as his opponent.