How good was Mike Tyson´s jab ??

I actually agree that Tyson was a work in progress and improving in '87 - '88.
I cannot rate him on some imaginary peak that he never achieved, or potential that he didn't fulfil.
I think his overrating always originated from his age and the expectations of what he could be like at 25 or 26. Plus the division was in a mess and had no real excitement.

 

Lennox Lewis for one, who is ranked higher than Tyson by most.

He was pretty dominate in 9 or so? Regardless of what you think Douglas was not superior to any of them.

He beat some good fighters as well. He regained the title in 1996 so he was champion again.

 

Everyone has their own feeling about Tyson. I hate when people say his opponents were scared and thats why they lost because thats just not true. Many of the fighters that came to fight got knocked out the most spectacularly. Its really easy to degrade his resume by the way he dominated fighters, but really he was the only one doing it. Holyfield, Bowe and Lewis were all struggling more with comparable opposition (with exception to Douglas). It wasnt until Tyson started screwing off that he appeared more vulnerable and in line with the others, but up until that point his opponents were surviving or getting knocked out.
He wasnt getting knocked down or dropping half of a fight on the cards. I would have liked to have seen Tyson presented with more of a challenge during his peak years, but it didnt happen, so people draw unfair conclusions off the Douglas loss, just as they would have with Lewis had he not gotten a rematch with Hasim Rahman.

 

Yeah I saw that. Were you saying he lacked the jab against Williams, though?

 

No, just a random video I saw on youtube. It was only for the Tubbs fight not the Williams fight.

 

True. Lewis is overrated too, to be fair.

I never said Douglas was better. If he had been better it wouldn't be so bad on Tyson. Douglas was mediocre. He used what he had better than had done previously with Tyson, and possibly had the best style for the job.
There's no logic in saying "Douglas was no better than Tucker, therefore Tyson beats Douglas" when the fact is : Douglas beat Tyson.

Tyson beat 9 or so contenders in the lead up to that loss in a 2-3 year period, yes, and he beat some of them impressively. Then he LOST to someone who wasn't great at all.
Therefore he was a GOOD champion, not a bad one, not a mediocre one, but not a great one either.

Tyson beat some good fighters. But then TYSON WAS A GOOD CHAMPION. So it figures.

With so many titles around, and Bruno and Seldon as "champions", Tyson picked up a couple of belts. OK. But I am not too impressed with that. Both those guys were petrified. Bruno's defence of the "title" was poor, and to call Seldon pathetic would be to flatter him.

 

He didnt just beat contenders he beat champions, Berbick, Tucker Smith, Spinks etc. He also beat quite a bit of former champs. So you have to beat a great champion to be great? Nah. We can go around in circles, but I already know how you feel, and you me, so we'll leave it at that.

 

Even if what you say is true (and I have issues with some of it), the fact is DOUGLAS PRESENTED TYSON WITH MORE OF A CHALLENGE and Tyson failed miserably to repel it.
Even if Douglas's prowess was wholly dependent on Tyson's own diminished prowess, why does Tyson have to be 100% to beat him ?
All the GREAT fighters came through tough fights where they took their opponent lightly. Tyson gets beaten up and knocked out and somehow that allows the whole thing to be filed away as a 'fluke', meanwhile Bowe, Lewis and Holyfield get downgraded because they "struggled" with X, Y or Z.

 

Well, you can call them ALL "champions" if you like but most of them were just alphabet titlists.
Imagine the amount of contenders from the 1920s to 1970s who would have been "champions" under the flimsy standards of mid-1980s alphabet mess.

I'm not saying he has to beat a prime GREAT fighter to be great, but if you don't beat a prime great fighter, and then you LOSE (by bad beating and KO) to a definitely-NOT-GREAT pretty much in or around your prime, there's good reason to say you were something less than great !

There's no hiding from that truth.

 

But that's really the contradiction with Tyson supporters. In the fights he lost it's all "he wasn't in any kind of shape, he looked terrible, didn't do this, didn't do that", but when one points out the same thing about his victims it's being called unfair and simplified.

That's a bit of having the cake and eating it. I believe Tyson won his fights mostly because of his boxing qualities, but intimidation often played a part, something he says himself. Of all his abilities, he actually seems proudest of how he managed to scare opponents with his ferocious attitude.

Likewise, I don't believe he was at his best at any of his losses. But I wouldn't put them down to just him lacking mentality. I genuinly believe that Douglas and Holyfield exposed some of his flaws and that he lacked an answer. Especially the Douglas defeat was to comprehensive for me to think anything else.

You have a point. But Lewis was smoked with one punch. It's not surprising that something like that happens when you face as many punchers as Lewis did. I do think that's different from being dominated over 10 rds.

 

He didnt have to be 100% to beat him, but he had to be better than he was, obviously, and I have issues with people just thinking it was Douglas who presented those challenges, Tyson had something to do with allowing Douglas to fight his fight.
Tyson had been presented with similar challenges against Tony Tucker in the opening rounds, and was able to take control of the fight, so its just as likely Tyson would have performed better had he been better prepared.

Im sure if you breakdown the majority of the heavyweight division you will say the same. They were all manipulated into position in some way whether by the mafia or alpahbet mess. You fight whatever is out there. Regardless of the mess, the talent pool wasnt poor and it only got worse leading up to today in my opinion.

I dont agree with this, and Tyson never got the opportunity to prove it was a fluke. Had Evander Holyfield been stopped by Bert Cooper would you have said he wasnt great? Would beating Riddick Bowe by a razor decision been good enough to consider him great? I think if you dominate a crop of fighters in the way Tyson did, there is no problem considering him great.

 

I believe Tyson quickly became a different fighter once he parted ways with Rooney. He wasnt consistently doing all his best things under Rooney, so that was proof he wasnt the complete fighter yet.

I dont think fighters were intimidated by Tyson being a scary monster, they were intimidated by what was going to be the pace of the fight. Tyson came out fast and hard and for a lot of boxers that was something they werent used to or prepared for. How do you prepare for a fighter with the speed and power of Tyson, but I dont think fighters were shaking in their shoes because Tyson was a scary guy. He was a small heavyweight with a lisp, his actions in the ring are what made him intimidating, just like when a fighter went in with Holyfield, he wasnt scary but they knew it was going to be a long hard fight and Holyfield was there to break them down through the course.

 

Holyfield beat Cooper.
I think his claim to greatness would have been very tenuous indeed if he had lost that fight.

I suppose we have different views of what an "elite great heavyweight" is.

 

I agree there was a difference, but it gets very overstated. Previous opponents didn't really test him so we forget the rounds he threw one punch, clinched, threw one punch, clinched etc.

Douglas was the first of Tyson's opponents to be consistent with a stiff jab, movement and combinations. It was the first fight that Tyson would himself have needed consistent head movement and use of combinations to win, and he failed.

I think it was both. Tyson himself is very proud of his ability to intimidate opponents through sheer ferocity.