Youngest Heavyweight Champion Ever: Patterson or Tyson?

Here are the facts:

1. Tyson had all the belts - Spinks had no belts.

2. On the evening of their fight, Spinks was announced as the challenger, with a side note stating " considered by the ring magazine as champion", while Tyson was announced as THE CHAMP. That's basically all that needs to be said.. If the media venues like Ring Magazine are the ones who dictate the rules of the sport, then we might as well turn the American Presidency over to the Washington Gazette, because that seems to be the logic that some are going by here.

This crap about unwritten rules, lineal titles, and beating the man to become the man has been blown way out of proportion.. When someone is called on the fact that Floyd Patterson won his title in the same vacant fashion as Tyson, then a new unwritten rule appears - " a champion is still a champion until he either dies or retires." As if losing a belt for refusal to defend it ( which is what champions are paid to do ) has absolutely zero meaning... Personally, I'd rather go by the official rules of boxing, as opposed to some century old tradition that was likely designed to protect white men from relinquishing the title to black men. I'll agree with anyone who says that the sanctioning bodies suck and have done many things to boxing that are of a great diservice, but so have many American presidents and British prime ministers.. It doesn't mean that their authority is any less..

Looking back, I almost wish that Spinks had never fought Tyson and continued his career cherry picking paydays against men like James Tillis, his brother Leon, and perhaps even a rematch with an old Holmes, while guys like Tyson, Holyfield, and Bowe fought in REAL title fights exchanging belts.. Then people would see how much meaning the lineal title really has.

 

The difference is that Marciano had retired while Spinks was still active. Spinks was hand-picking foes and was inactive for a while, but this didn't stop Braddock, Jack Johnson, even Dempsey from being recognized as champion.

In the case of the Klitschko brothers, the two have eliminated each other. If Vitali retired now, no one would have any problem recognizing Wladimir as the man of the division, as long as he fights a David Haye atleast. Imagine if Ali/Frazier or Louis/Schmeling were brothers.

 

Good post.

 

Youngest ABC Soup Belt Holder and So-Called Heavyweight Champion: Tyson

Youngest linear, real heavyweight champion: Patterson

There you go. Brian Nielsen was never the heavyweight champion of the world.

 

QFT

It's not Tyson's fault he fought in an era with different rules and multiple belts. There is nothing to argue about: He is the youngest heavyweight champion ever.

And I'll also second the point that Spinks was the challenger when he fought Tyson. When you relinquish your belt, you also relinquish your status as champion. Again, it's not arguable--black and white.

 

It didn't happen though.

If Spinks's claim was as insignificant as you say it was, would the fight have been as big as it was? Spinks was still the man who had beaten the man and that counts for a lot. Can anyone say that Spinks looked like a threatening opponent on paper? He was a 30+ year old light heavyweight, who had suffered injuries and hadn't fought at top level for a while, but aside from all that he was the man Tyson had to beat. His claim was significant, his win over Holmes when Holmes was still the champion couldn't be taken away, unless he himself laid off the claim by retiring.

It would have also been worse for Ring Magazine's tradition to somehow "strip" Spinks off his claim only because Tyson had been making waves. They would have been going against a hundred year history to accommodate the public.

 

And one of the letters in his bowl of Cambell's alphabet soup was the one spinks had ditched.

Via elimination.. Sound familiar?

Brian Nielsen never unified a title and cleaned out a division of its top challengers. There you go.

 

It was the logic that I was aiming for, and by the logic that some apply, it was the direction that things were heading in....

Sure it would have been, because he was the only viable challenger left, and the media had done a good job of hyping him as the rightful holder of the throne.

It counts for something, yes but it isn't the be all end all of the sport or its rules. When establishing one as champion, defending a crown is an equally important part of the process as winning it. You can't just pick and choose which rules best apply to better suit an argument.

All true, but timing and events are of the essence. Beating Holmes in 1985 made him champion.. Being stripped of the title in 1987, while Tyson went on to beat his succesor made him a former champion.. Kinda simple really.

What ring magazine was trying to "accomodate" was the sale of magazines, which resulted from the very kind of controversy that they were creating. Its no secret that the Ring is no advocate of the governing bodies, but the difference between their opinion and the organizations, is that they Alphabet bodies issue titles to champions.. The ring doesn't..

This is what they were hyping around the time, and be sure to read the quote in the lower left hand corner.

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So in the end it was significant. If Tyson wanted to be recognized as the undisputed champion, he had to go through Spinks, isn't that correct?

Can we then claim on hindsight that the Spinks fight wasn't of any consequence and that Tyson was already undisputed champion by the time he fought Spinks? I don't think so. It would greatly take away from the significance of the Tyson-Spinks fight. The whole point of the fight was that Spinks was the last obstacle on Tyson's way.

And Spinks did defend it against Tyson. He went two years defending his claim against only two viable contenders, Holmes and Cooney, but it isn't so bad when you look at the sport's history where champions have went years without fighting. Spinks wouldn't have been called out on this as much if not for a Tyson, who eventually forced him to fight him. There was no chance of Spinks not fighting Tyson, unless he retired and laid off his claim of being champion.

He was stripped of the IBF belt for not facing a "mandatory" challenger. Tucker was hardly a number 1 contender in waiting though, such as a Harry Wills or Sam Langford were in their time. It had no effect to his claim of having beaten the "man" in Larry Holmes. When Ali was stripped of his belts, the magazine did not stop considering him the champion either until he officially announced retirement (and then came back to fight Frazier).

However I do acknowledge that Tyson beating Tucker can be argued to have been the moment he became undisputed champion (even if he really wasn't with Spinks around). I don't agree with it but a case can be made, since Spinks avoided Tucker.

Tyson beating Berbick though was just him winning a title off a contender. I don't see how this can be argued to have been the moment Tyson became "the man" or the champion with several other titlists around. If we falsely say Tyson became the heavyweight champion then, we have a problem on our hands as there have been so many title holders since. The champion is the fighter who stands above all, not one who holds some belt that two or three other people happen to hold at the same time.

 

Butch Lewis is such a dick. He was the most complicated person to work with.

 

This is the whole point that I was arguing. The time by which he unified the title, including the one that Spinks had been stripped of, at which point, he was still younger than Patterson.. I never claimed that he was the youngest upon capturing a fragment against Berbick..

 

It really is that simple.

Its amazing how some people can go on for pages and pages, arguing hammer and tong over something that's so easy to figure out. Its like creating an argument saying that circles aren't round or that water isn't wet. You'd think it was a waste of ones time.

 

But if you are getting technical (small enough) water is not wet...

Kudos for trying to simplify a complex argument, but without complexity of life, we would all still be living in caves.

It is not very often something is black or white, there is a normally grey area somewhere, particularly when it comes to boxing.

The evidence is overwhelming that Mike Tyson was not universally recognized as World Champion until he beat Spinks. Patterson was universally recognized when he beat Moore.

Lineage is a significant factor in any claim to being a Universal title holder. It always has been, and hopefully always will be, lest people forget.

 

I agree that Tyson would have had the right to be called the lineal champion when he beat tucker, had the title been vacant, but it wasn't.

Your problem here is how you seperate Spinks from the lineal title.

I don't think that the IBF can do it. They can strip him of the IBF title, but the lineal title rests on him having beaten Holmes.

The acepted system of lineage is inconsistant, but the solution that poses the least amount of problems is probably to accept Spinks as the lineal champion untill the 92nd seacond of his fight with Tyson.

The end result is the same so why complicate things?