At the end of the fight, Berbick implies that he planned to do just enough to win and that he didn't want to hurt Ali. Do you believe him? I know Berbick was a bit of a mental case but he looked particularly awful in that fight, despite winning. This is a guy who beat prime Pinklon Thomas and Greg Page, and he barely got past a Parkinson's-ridden Ali. Do you think Trevor was telling the truth?
Not sure but I believe Berbick was doing his best to win and if that meant hurting Ali, he'd have done it.
Mike Tyson said that Trevor Berbick was trying to hurt Ali which is why he put a whooping on Berbick when he got a chance to face him in the ring.
No he wasn't. He is just so unskilled that even that form of Ali he isn't taking out. He doesn't hit hard which also saved Ali.
According to the punch stats, Berbick threw 522 power shots in that fight. I don't think he was going easy on Ali.
You can watch the fight and see Berbick isn’t holding anything back. But I don’t think Trevor was in prime shape. Both he and Ali clearly gassed at times. The promotion was shoddy and on-again/off-again and the training facilities, if you want to call it that, were … well basically there weren’t any but he had a place to ‘work out’ the final week or weeks while in the Bahamas. So probably less than best shape plus the humidity of the island and such … not to mention Ali’s capacity for absorbing punishment … I don’t think it was Trevor holding back but he wasn’t capable of doing it. The book ‘Drama in the Bahamas’ is pretty detailed into all aspects of the bout.
If you watch the fight, the amount of power shots he threw did not show that. Again, there's nothing wrong with that, this is the fight game, no baby ****. But if you're gonna lie about it, you're a *****!
Tyson talking ****. He tried his hardest to put a whooping on everyone he fought not just on Berbeck. It had nothing to do with Ali. Plus you think Tyson would have taken it easy on shot Ali if he was the one that was facing Ali instead of Berbeck or Holmes? He would've hurt Ali a lot more than Berbeck did.
Tyson took it light on old man Holmes because he didn't want to hurt him because of the respect he had for Holmes accomplishments.
On your second point, the two options aren't mutually exclusive, IMO. Tyson might be a hypocrite who psyched himself up to beat Berbick by getting "revenge" for Ali, but would also have done the same thing in Berbick's shoes that Berbick did.
