Better resume Ali vs Mayweather

My argument isn't that he wasn't a top ten heavyweight but that he wasn't the number one heavyweight. Wilfred Benitez won his first professional title at 17. No one argues he's the the the #1 welterweight of all time.

 

Would it be fair to say that Tyson losing to Douglas would have been akin to Ali losing to George Chuvalo in 1966?

 

I’m not sure.

But James was a world level fighter who underachieved through a lack of focus and discipline.

 

Nobody argues that Tyson is number one.

 

There are two gentlemen in this thread who are arguing just that.

 

I don't believe so. He lost to Folley, Patterson, and Terrell- Whereas Douglas beat Tyson after a fine set of named wins against good opposition.

Chuvalo beating Ali would be the greatest upset in the history of EVERYTHING.

 

BOAT=best of all time (I assume)

He’s saying Tyson at his peak was the best heavyweight h2h. That can’t easily be disproven.

 

The argument becomes circular. He lost in his prime and he had two unavenged losses in what should have been in his near post prime but those losses don't really count for one reason or another.

 

I'm not arguing for what NoNeck or anybody else is, I just was responding to your post and saying that Chuvalo beating Ali would not be equivalent to the Douglas - Tyson win.

 

I was responding to No Neck's assertion that peak Mike Tyson was a head to head monster. The counter argument is he lost at what should have been his peak. That's where the argument becomes circular when they argue he really wasn't at his peak anymore when he lost to Douglas. As to Chuvalo he was somewhere between journeyman and contender.

 

That’s ignorant, not circular.

 

What is the intelligent rebuttal to the argument he lost his belt in what should have been his prime and never avenged the loss nor won his belt back?

 

this is really unnecessary rhetoric... Anyone who knows anything about boxing knows that Douglas was not a journeyman that night and Tyson was clearly weaker. It's like saying that the great Ali wasn't great when the belt was taken from him by a guy with 6 wins who turned out to be a journeyman with a terrible record at the end of his career. Of course, if someone insists, one can assume that Douglas was better and if he had started his career in the same year as Mike, he would have taken over in this weak era, unfortunately he met Mike White and Jesse Ferguson instead of beating Tyson already in 1986.

As life shows, whether someone becomes ATG at the end does not matter much. what matters is here and now... Spinks and Holmes was ATG and was destroyed by Tyson in 90 seconds, Douglas was, as you said, a journeyman and kicked Mike's ass, so what does your ATG matter

 

You literally repeated yourself. If you believe a 24 year old boxer is at the same place in his career as a 36 year old boxer who was in the early stages of Parkinson's Disease and had been boxing at the amateur and professional level for 20 years there is nothing I can do to disabuse of that notion. And even in his diminished state he avenged his loss. Let's make Douglas a contender. He was a 42-1 dog for a reason if you could find a book. Very few houses were even taking You're arguing with a strawman. No one is saying Tyson was a can. To paraphrase Junior Soprano Mike Tyson doesn't have the resume of the BOAT, GOAT, or TBE. He was great but not the greatest.

 

Thadzi and Tiberi.