you're right, if he hadn't broken his arm, Frans Botha would definitely have win to him in this round. I also don't know why Ruddock didn't look for excuses after losing the fight and stated in Best of Faced that Tyson was the best rival he fought, but he kept saying that he went to Lewis to detrain. Maybe he hasn't watched his fights and has a poor memory? But anyway, to answer your question I want to confirm, let's ask Mike. Do you have contact information for him?
There’s a link in the OP where Mike, on video, confirms fixes. You can go find him and ask him yourself. I’m responding to someone who said the Holyfield losses don’t count because “Holyfield cheated.” Well, Mike cheated in a lot of fights so I presume those wins don’t count, right? That means we should consider the guys he fouled as the rightful victors by his logic.
Imho you are right, but you are too soft. Seldon tried to stay unharmed. But I will analyze from the point of view of a "conspiracy theorist" how Seldon became a champion in the competition: Bowe, Lewis, Foreman, Holmes, Moorer, Holyfield... without defeating any of them. And isn't everything set up? Seldon became the champion, only for the returning Tyson to become the champion... Think a little longer about that, before you start criticizing me.
well, I understand you want to balance it out. As I wrote, I have no problem with you questioning the victory of Tyson over Botha and Holyfield over Tyson due to fouls, although in my opinion, honestly, Tyson was weaker than both of them in these fights. But Holyfield's fouls were important - an illegal clinch and a headbutt, Tyson and Botha's fouls did not have much impact on the result. Overall, however, in both of these fights Tyson boxed worse than his rivals, so if you write that Botha and Holyfield were better boxers at that time, it will be ok imo. Similarly, I do not question the fact that Foreman was better than Frazier, Fury was better than Cunn, Wlad was better than Povo even though I believe that each of them helped each other in an illegal way. The old boxing truth says that you fight as the referee allows, the fight it's not always clean.
You’re missing, it seems to me, a key element in the discussion. We have Mike Tyson, on video, saying some of his fights were fixed in his favor with crooked refereeing. He’s saying he knew going in he could break rules and get away with it and took full advantage, that the opponent was fighting both him and the ref (his words, not mine). So the question is which ones. The fact that he didn’t get DQ’d (or even warned I think) for trying to break Botha’s arm tells me that he probably could have hit Botha over the head with a shovel and the ref would have taken a point away from Botha for head-butting the shovel, lol. Tyson isn’t saying ‘sometimes it felt like I had an advantage with the refs,’ he’s saying he was acutely aware of it and that it was intentional, deliberate and set up that way. That’s a high level of corruption. So I wanted to start a thread to see if we could figure out which of these wins weren’t legit because they were fixed in Mike’s favor with the officiating. The question isn’t ‘well even if it was fixed in his favor and the refs let him get away with murder, could Mike have won anyway’?
Buster Douglas kicked Mike's butt. That's indisputable. What's the matter with you? Sure, a couple of things happened but the fact is that Buster knocked Mike out. Convincingly and resoundingly.
Tyson was actually ahead on one card against Douglas and even on the second. So if anything was fixed, and those judges probably were, it was in Tyson's favour.
I too am a Tyson fan and can't stand all of the excuses other fans make for Mike's loss to Buster. Douglas beat him black and blue in spectacular fashion. Really embarrasses me as a Tyson fan to see all the immense coping, some 34 years later.
Mike talks a lot of nonsense, a lot depends on what and how much he smoked or inhaled that day, although it must be admitted that he was always critical and honest like probably no one else but... you watched his fights, right? You've probably seen fights in which the judges favored him and in which they didn't. What kind of fights are these? Honestly, I don't know. And I watched them all. In my opinion, every boxer who is on the A side is a champion, the star is usually treated better, but I really don't know which fights these are. In my opinion, Mills Lane should have disqualified him earlier and Richard Steele should have given Ruddock a chance in the first fight. Generally both. Both Razor and Tyson fought dirty and I don't see anything rigged there. If Octavio Meyran had counted out Buster, in my opinion it would have been ok, but allowing Buster to fight was also ok, this fight certainly shows that the referee was objective and the score judges did not matter at all. Richard Steele, giving Tyson a warning for Botha, was also ok. Botha's hand was ok and Frans hit Tyson several times in the clinch, probably causing more damage. Mike also fouled Peter McNelley but was it a set up? it looked similar to the fight with Botha. I think Mitch Halpern favored Holyfield a little bit, as did Mills Lane in the sense of - they made it a dirty fight. In my opinion, Mike Eddie Cotton and Lennox Lewis were favored the most in all fights, so you can consider this fight to be for Tyson. In my opinion, in none of Tyson's fights did the referee distort the result, you may have doubts about Douglas and Ruddock 1, but in these fights the better fighters also won. This whole thread is quite strange. Do you really think Tyson could hit his opponents with a shovel? well, he never did it, but as I wrote earlier, you can change the Botha-Tyson result in your book