who do you rate higher as an all time great? mike tyson or michael spinks? tyson blasted spinks away in 91 seconds, and spinks was not past his best or shot. but michael spinks was a great light heavyweight, and made history by beating larry holmes to take the heavyweight title. are spinks accomplishments and the opponents he beat, better than what tyson did? i think so. what does anyone think?
Each was special in his own way. Spinks was a great lightheavyweight. Tyson was a great heavyweight. Spinks accomplished a lot by defeating Holmes, but lets face it, he wasn't really the first smaller man in history to go up in weight to defeat a heavyweight champion, and he got Holmes when Larry was aging and slipping. Hell, Holmes might not have even deserved to win the Carl Williams bout. So he was ripe for the taking by a guy with very fast hands and feet and superior conditioning. I'm not sure Spinks deserved to win the rematch. Spinks wanted no part of Tony Tucker, which is why he gave up the IBF belt, and based upon Tucker's performance against Tyson, you can see why. Linear title defenses against Tangstad and Cooney were next to meaningless given that Tangstad was a nobody and Cooney was inactive for so long. Tyson then blew threw Spinks like he was nothing, and Michael picked up his paycheck and disappeared. So I would not give Spinks any edge over Tyson. Both had meaningful careers in their own unique way.
Michael Spinks. I think his victories over Holmes eclipses any single victory on Tyson's resume, and his dominance of an impressive Light Heavyweight division ain't bad either. I find the argument that Holmes was "old and slipping" to be largely irrelevant considering Spinks was also unable to operate at his optimal level.
In order to be a great fighter you have to clean up all the names in your division, both Spinks and Tyson did this. Michael at LH and Tyson at HW so they both qualify. However, Tyson makes the greater impact on boxing just ask the man on the street. The man on the street is no boxing aficionado but he’s the guy to ask when it comes to mainstream impact. Even if we stick with divisions Tyson still makes a greater impact since Spinks was a slow burner who wound up cleaning up, it was never like "look at this kid Spinks, he's going to clean up!" where as with Tyson everyone just knew. Spinks worth is at LH. After cleaning up Spinks “developed” 24 pounds in 3 months to take on larry holmes an old champion past his best and was awarded two close wins. spinks only ever fought two rated HWs. there is a good argument spinks’s record against these two should read 1-2 rather than 2-1 but there is a respected minority out there that could argue spinks could have been 0-3 against holmes and tyson. when assessing Tyson ask what his goals were at the starting point of his career and how thoroughly he achieved them. yes Tyson crashed and burned whilst still young but he was undisputed domination personified.
Tyson is best known for blowing away Spinks in 91 seconds Spinks is best known for being blown away by Tyson in 91 seconds. To the guy who said Spinks win vs Holmes was better than anything Tyson ever did. Tyson KO Holmes 4 Tyson also cleaned up his division And Tyson Kod Spinks too
Tyson and it's not remotely close, Carl Williams performed aswell against Holmes as Spinks did, where do you rank him?
Imight be inclinded to agree that Tyson had a bigger impact on the sport, but using Carl Williams to solidify your argument doesn't hold water.. Michael Spinks was a dominant light heavyweight champion with a unified title, an olympic gold medal, and the first of his category to win the heavyweight title... Not to mention surviving to the very end of his career without a loss or knockdown, until meeting Tyson in the last fight of his life. Asside from just giving Holmes a shitload of trouble, Williams did little else.. If I were to sum this up: 1. Tyson had a greater impact on boxing from a charasmatic standpoint. 2. Spinks probably acheived a tiny bit more given his prescence in two weight classes. But the two aren't far apart, and I can see others adding many additional arguments for both.