Why has Mike Tyson become so underrated?

Also, in the other thread about Tyson vs Ali there's a fair amount that think he'd go through Ali like a hot knife through butter. And that's against the HW that's most proven against elite opposition. You can always speculate that Tyson would beat Liston, Frazier and Foreman, but the fact is that he didn't beat anyone near their level.

So the fact that he has a good amount of backers against the one who's 5-1 against those guys doesn't really point to him being underrated, does it?

 

Same argument can be made for chinny lenni.

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Everyone has "life issues", except the dead. Most fighters are less than ideally prepared.

I'm not sure what you're getting at. Tyson was, for all intents and purposes, pretty much in his prime in 1990, was undisputed champion of the world, was THE man to beat. He showed up for some fights less than 100% and got beaten by Buster Douglas. I think we agree on this.

My point is, almost EVERY champion in their prime, barring a very few exceptions, has bad nights, bad preps, and "life issues". And we factor in those bad performances, and sometimes losses, into how we rate them in their primes, do we not ?
We don't dismiss the whole result or go into lengthy lists of extentuating circumstances, or we shouldn't anyway. We just take it at face value.

How a champion fares when he's having a bad night in his prime is meaningful in how we rate them. That's what I believe.

At a certain point, YES, we do and we should explain certain results. Like, for example, if Mike Tyson made a comeback in 2016 and got KO'd in 1 round by a bum, that wouldn't factor in to how we rate Mike Tyson.

But when a man is at the top of the world, in his prime, young, and heavily rated as the best around, that's a different matter. That's when he's going to be judged.

But that's just my opinion.

If you have such a problem with your own example Berbick-Ali being repeated back to you, maybe you shouldn't have used it.
It is so clearly dissimilar to the case of Douglas-Tyson that it serves no pupose in making any sort of serious point.

I could go through the list and there's probably a few results there that I don't think should be disregarded.
Like Barkley-Hearns 1.
I don't think Hearns deserves much of a pass there at all for being "past prime", actually.

But every case is different.

 

How can someone who possibly makes it into the Top 10 all time list be classed as underrated?

 

Hearns can't be given a pass for his first bout with Barkley but surely can for his second loss imo.

 

Oh ****, we got a bada ss over here!

 

Run along Superwoman....

 

This post sums it up perfectly. The same Tyson fan boys who slate Lewis off for his loses to McCall and Rahman will make every excuse you could think of ( and a million more besides ) for Tyson's defeat to Douglas, and the fact he NEVER avenged a defeat.

Personally, I find the excuses to be of great entertainment value. Some of these morons could give the John Grisham's of this world a run for their money.

 

Tyson nut huggers and other assorted weirdo's 0

Swadelfadeel, game, set, and match.:rofl:rofl:rofl:rofl:good

 

Pure, unadulterated HORSE SH&T. And all you are doing is verifying both your lack of knowledge, and your moronic fan boyism.

FACT. Tyson weighed a similar weight for Douglas to those he weighed for Spinks, Bruno, and Williams. So anyone who knows anything at all about the sport will conclude he used similar preparation for all 4 fights.

Now, what you do next is come back with that old chestnut about poor little Mikey having to lose 50 lbs in 2 weeks, so out of condition was he.

But please put your name and address, so as we know where to send the Sunshine Bus.

There were 2 reasons Tyson got beaten the sh,it out of, humilated, then KTFO in Tokyo.

1. BUSTER

2. DOUGLAS :yep

 

Yeah, more so with the second bout perhaps, but even there Barkley was arguably almost as past it as Hearns was.

 

Well, there might be some but I think there are probably some decent posters here who do make excuses for both Tyson AND Lewis.
Tyson seems to have MORE excuses than anyone for that one defeat.

The thing I don't understand fully is that you can barely mention Tyson's loss to Douglas without people calling it "unfair", and declaring me a "hater" simply for factoring in a loss in his prime, which we do - or should do - with every fighter when assessing how great they were.

The other thing is that many of Tyson's alleged "issues" could equally be found in many of the better fighters he defeated.

Fighters with documented and serious drug issues, extensive managerial problems, family problems, career turmoil, lack of training discipline and motivation, changing trainers, or trainers walking out on them, depression, schizophrenia even, bad marriages, inactivity.

You can run through the list ... Biggs, Tubbs, Thomas, Berbick, Tucker, Green, Bruno, and even Douglas himself !

That's life.

 

Exactly.

 

Tyson was a shell of himself for at least the last 5 years of his career so I don't hold those losses against him.