...in the Tyson fight, have been a bigger deal? It was 13.65 seconds, to be exact. Wasn't Sonny Liston considered knocked out in Lewiston in less that 12 seconds, in spite of the count, or lack thereof? What if there had never been a Tunney long count? Would the Douglas long count have been a bigger deal then? Did Tyson's case suffer because of the "We've been down that path before" syndrome, and "We ain't goin' down that road again?" Your thoughts?
It was 31 years ago who cares anymore? Plus the count between Douglas and Tyson was identical..... It had no real importance, Douglas dominated and beat the snot outta Iron Mike.
The largest misconception is that you have ten seconds to get up. In reality you have until the ref counts to ten to get up. These are two different things. Buster was looking at the ref, waiting to hear the number he was trained to listen for and got up easily. He wasn’t really hurt and even slammed his own glove down on the mat in a moment of “How stupid of me to walk into that” clarity. Let it go. Tyson lost to the better man that night.
I think you're right that a precedent was set of not overturning long counts. Most of the controversial ones involve KD scorers not going to a neutral corner, I'm not sure what the rule is about that, if that should delay the count at all.
YES. The long count between Dempsey vs Tunney was a huge deal. https://stmuhistorymedia.org/the-long-count-fight/
Controversial count. The referee himself in a documentary admitted he was determined to help Buster get up before the count as he was like his son in their last night
Yeah Buster was making him look stupid from round 1 to the end.. Tysons punch, although timed well, felt like a lucky punch
I'm not sure how it's controversial whatsoever. A fighter can get up at the count of three and if the ref wants to wave it off then it's waved off.
It was played out when it happened. It was made a big deal by the sore loser Tyson and his boys. Buster beat the refs count, case closed.
It was a big deal at the time. I was only a casual fan back then being only 14 and even I was aware of all the furor over the long count. Fact is as pointed out in this thread it's the ref's count that has to be beaten not 10 seconds. Maybe the rules should be changed and we have a clock above ring to show fans and the ref the count as soon as a fighter goes down. But the rules now have been adhered too for the Tyson long count, the Fury long count and the Benn long count. Fans of the losing fighters will forever dispute the result over the count but you can't go back and change history most fans have accepted the official result and moved on.
It was a hard knockdown to be sure, but Buster still had his wits about him (and beat the count), whereas Tyson was crawling around on his hands and knees in a very sorry state looking for his mouthpiece. How about that final combination from Buster, hey?
That final combination was indeed brutal, I was amazed he even shoved his mouth piece back in and tried to get up. No quit in Tyson at all at that stage even after taking such a barrage of shots.
