did you guys see Teddy Atlas with Skip Bayless saying Mike was overrated?

I've been getting to know you these past few weeks and you seem just as bias as those men you speak about. Tyson's most memorable fights are clearly Michael Spinks, Evander Holyfield, and Lennox Lewis. Only one of them which were in his prime(which he won). The Spinks fight was a super-fight, a unification between two undefeated champions. Both fighters made around 20 million. Tyson deserves much more credit for this victory.

 

I've heard a few versions of this, and they vary pretty widely in terms of the degree of what Tyson may have done. It was implied **** in one version, unwanted fondling in another, just vague sexual "intimidation" in another, and a version of no sexual anything, leading to an angry Tyson scaring her and Teddy going ape dung.

I can't remember exactly if Teddy ever came outright and talked specifics but Teddy...Teddy's funny. He wrote that he almost shot Donny Lalonde and went to his place with a gun to do it but changed his mind. Years later, Lalonde said where Teddy described the place...he didn't even live. Several sources seem to agree Teddy has a screw loose and a terrible temper to boot. I don't know what to believe with him. Then there's Tyson who definitely has a screw loose so I don't know what to believe that he says about it either. But, I can't remember him ever even talking about it, at the moment.

 

[ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr2k8Ig9_vg[/ame]

 

I can see Tyson out of the top 10, but I would have a hard time him being out of anyone's top 15. Somewhere between 9-12 seems about right to me, but I wouldn't argue much if someone had him higher than that. It might also depend on whether or not you focus on his whole career warts and all, or focus more on his achievements in his prime.

 

Some Extracts from '91, when Teddy didn't seem to hate Mike:

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1139899/index.htm

Sports Illustrated June 24, 1991
Where's The Fire?

The controlled fury that not long ago lifted Mike Tyson to the pinnacle of his sport has already ebbed, as have his prodigious ring skills.

Atlas comments:

What has happened to Tyson's skill at working the body? At coming in behind the jab? "Not there," says Teddy Atlas, who worked with Tyson in D'Amato's camp years ago. "He doesn't work his way in behind the jab, he doesn't punch to the body. Rather than work his way into position to throw punches—and it is work—he loads up with wide punches and long punches. The one thing he has retained is his power. But when he's loading up, he's vulnerable."

"When you make that kind of money," says Atlas, "it's not abnormal to slow down a gear or two." Atlas sees a damping of Tyson's fire and fury that perhaps not even D'Amato could have reversed. "When I say he's not punching inside, that's not just a technical breakdown but a lack of desire. When a guy no longer wants to fight inside, he finds ways not to. So he creates clinches, whereas in the past, when he had a lot of fire and desire, he would create ways to punch. Now Mike puts his hands behind the guy's head. It's a lack of work ethic, and maybe you can understand that, with all that money he's already made. Maybe he'd have strayed whether Rooney or Cus was here or not."

Atlas thinks that Tyson is desperate for more than that. He believes Tyson sees it all—the fame, the wealth—slipping away. Says Atlas, "Early in his career, when he believed in himself, he said things in a controlled way, very Spartan words, honorable words. Even when he talked about driving a guy's nose into his brain, he didn't mean that in a disparaging way. To him that was something Jack Dempsey might say. He thought it was sportsmanlike, glorious. But now, when he sees himself slipping, he's grabbing for something he never thought he needed before, a stick to take into the ring."

But Tyson may be spent emotionally as well as physically. There comes a time, says Atlas, when it is no longer possible to persuade a fighter to step into the middle of the ring and "face this...thing in front of him, doing what he's doing to him. Cus used to say he could put a gun to a fighter's head and say, I'll kill you if you don't fight.' But then that fighter gets in the middle of the ring and he's still only thinking about one thing, that guy in front of him. He's not thinking about the gun." To be a great heavyweight champion, the one so many thought Mike Tyson was sure to become, may require more animal barbarity than he can sustain.

"Sometimes, if you listen to Mike, you can hear him preparing for failure," says Atlas. "He says, 'I've been poor once, I can be poor again.' He's said that a number of times. He's not saying, I'll never lose what I've got. He's saying the opposite—I could lose everything and I could handle it. It's like he knows he's vulnerable and he's preparing for that day."

 

Teddy is ultra ****in biased about anything in regards to Tyson.

Top pundits should be completely impartial.

 

I still do not see any rationale that can rank Dempsey above Tyson. It's a classic example of applying uneven standards to fighters of different era's.

 

Yeah, like Atlas will say "Tyson didn't beat anyone".

Yet i bet he wouldn't criticise the competition of Dempsey...

 

Atlas is more right than most people here, IMO.
He makes some valid points, but he exaggerates too much.

Opinions differ.

 

He would steamroll Johnson, Marciano, Dempsey and has a clearly better resume than two of them.

 

not tyson is not top 10 basing on his career, h2h yes

 

Teddy hates Tyson....

 

as many of you said, atlas is biased, so he not credible at all here. bayless knows nothing about boxing so you can forget about him.

is tyson a top 10 heavyweight, maybe not but he isnt very far at all. he was one of the main guy who started the myth "stand up to tyson and you'll beat him". if you say something like that, it just proves you're limited in boxing knowledge. he basically said tyson folded every time there was resistance. so what the **** does he call the punches ruddock was tagging him with. guess that dosent qualify as resistance.

 

Tyson is over-rated because he had an explosive style and quick hands early in his career but he wasn't even the best HW of his generation (that is Lennox Lewis). You could even argue that both Evander Holyfield & Riddick Bowe achieved more so that would make him 4th at best. Yet, because his style was so exciting people rank him as a top 10 or top 5 all time heavyweight.

How can you be a top 5 or top 10 ATG HW if you're barely top 5 in your generation? Teddy Atlas might be biased as hell but I can't really argue with his points. Mike had great talents but he never accomplished what his early promise hinted at and he just eclipsed by other HW's of his era eventhough they lacked the excitement factor that Tyson had.

 

atsch