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

yup, you have lots of great fighters who lost to average fighters at then end of their careers. as matter of fact it happens more times then not because most of them stay keep fighting too long. that dosent mean you hold it against them.

 

Fat boy Tubbs, Bonecrusher Smith, Tucker, Berbick, Bruno, Thomas et al. are NOT way better than Terrell, Patterson, Chuvalo, Mildenberger, Cooper, Folley, and winning the title against Sonny Liston ....... and you know it.

I'm surprised in your attempts to legitimize all those guys Tyson beat as "champs". The proliferation of titles and the quality of some of those temporary caretaker "1/3 champs" are key to understanding their mediocrity.

 

Yeah, but Atlas ruins all the good points he makes by saying stupid stuff like that. He discredits himself. A lot of what he says is spot on though.

 

Mike Tyson was great in that he had great talent. He did great things with that talent at elite level when he cleaned out a division so he edges into my top ten. Mike was better than all the heavyweight champions who did not knock out linear champions.

At his peak, like Joe Louis, Tyson was knocking out fighters who had not been knocked out before. It was not like sonny liston knocking out Patterson after Johansson did it, or even marciano knocking out walcott after charles did it. Thomas, Spinks and Holmes had not been knocked out before, that counts for something.

whatever anyone says about Holmes, Thomas and Spinks they were regarded as the best of that mid 80's era that Tyson came into.

atlas is not incorrect about his comments, he is just using the negatives. If you add positives to the negatives Tyson is an ATG fighter BASED ON HIS PRIME

 

Tyson's top 10 for sure.

 

Teddy Atlas is a bitter *******.
Tyson is not overated.

There tends to be 2 types of dominating champs, you have the Alis and Holyfields, Lewis' who win a few and lose a few but have the better resumes and then you have the Tysons, Marcianos, Fraziers who may not have a resume as good, but their domination over lesser opponents qualifies them as ATGs.

 

Agreed. I tend to rank Tyson between 11 and 15, because I rank on the basis of achievements + head to head for borderline cases. I think his reign of terror from 1986-1989 is somewhat underrated now, whereas I think he gets little overrated head to head. He was beatable in his prime, but he also had some very good wins in his prime that people dismiss to quickly.

 

Its hard to judge Tyson because at his peak, he was unbeatable, i mean he hardly lost a round, was hardly hit by any decent punches and was hardly ever in any trouble.

He gets rid of the people who made him and then the losses start piling up. He also went to prison for 3 years so he was even more rustier and then he fought the 2 other best fighters of his generation AFTER these circumstances. You cant ignore these facts.