Buster Mathis jr was his second fight out of prison. Against Holy the feeling was that he had gotten rid of his rust. He actually looked better against Bruno the second time around than the first. Holy was seen as washed up on the other hand.
It's not so much what Holyfield brought to Tyson that brought out the dog in him it's the fact that no matter what Tyson brought to Holyfield it didn't affect him in the slightest.
I actually don't disagree that this was the majority perception at the time. But, a closer examination of those fights shows that with the exception of Bruno II, Tyson looked pretty bad both before and after Holyfield. He had had fought less than 7 total rounds post prison before meeting Holyfield. And, after Holy, he was even having trouble with guys like Francois Botha for Christ's sake. Botha wouldn't have lasted a round against prime Tyson. I am not arguing that Tyson-Holyfield was a farce like Tyson-Lewis was. I am just saying that Tyson had deteriorated too much to truly evaluate what would have happened if they had fought in 1991. But, Tyson has nobody to blame but himself. Holyfield came to fight, and won the fight fair and square.
You talk of rounds but Tyson seldom went a lot of rounds in his career, when did he ever take a fight with the mindset of getting the rounds in?
