Worst matchup for Mike TYSON ?

Bowe was definitely a big puncher. Hd also fought Mercer and Cooper taking lots of big punches in all these fights. Your chin doesn't improve after running a gauntlet of heavy hitters. Dude was 4 years older than Tyson and had lots of weed and tear.

True.

And Hoylfield getting bashed in the head for years degraded his body.

That was a prime Tyson. He was a 23 year old undefeated world champion.

If firing a trainer makes someone go from prime to mediocre then they weren't a very good boxer and you're basically saying be owes all his credit to Rooney.

 

I agree. I wasn't suggesting Ali just easily handled Foreman. He didn't start to have control until Foreman began to tire himself out and Ali was fighting a very cautious fight to survive in the early rounds.

 

Kind of.

Tyson didn't gain 80 lbs or completely abandon a boxers lifestyle.

No one cries rivers for Douglas but Tyson gets dissertations whenever his losses are brought up.

Losing your mother weeks before a fight is also infinitely more devastating than firing your own trainer

 

What I meant was that no one talks about the excuses Douglas had that are just as valid as Tyson's.

It did, but most people aren't able to make the most of an incredibly depressing and stressful situation and using that as fuel to rise to the occasion.

Tyson did the complete opposite. He lost his father figure Cus and parted ways with his trainer Rooney then took all his talent and skills for granted slacking off. Point being, it's ok to acknowledge Douglas personal loss and admit he used his loss as motivation, but Tyson gets to use his personal loss as an excuse to diminish Douglas win and let Tyson off the hook conveniently for the only fight he lost in his Prime. Almost no other boxer gets this luxury.

By the way, Douglas himself admitted he used the pain as motivation in multiple interviews and in his book.

 

Douglas tested him more than any other opponent, and he failed in the most catastrophic loss in the history of HW lineal championships for a fighter of that status. Losing is forgivable, but losing in a devastating way to the only guy who really pushed you is unforgivable.

So to answer the question, from my perspective, that fight did actually say a lot about Tyson's abilities "at his best" even if for the sake of argument you want to babble about Rooney, Japanese hotel maids, Page sparring, blah blah. There was NOTHING wrong with him physically and he was in fact actually in good shape. It was all mental. He simply didn't dig deep to find a way to win when things weren't going his way. I think it's that simple.

Having a good trainer isn't going to change anything unless the boxer truly wants to win and is willing to listen. Just look at the tumultuous relationship between Atlas and Moorer, or Wilder and Breland. There are even some fights Tyson had with rooney where he had some of the same bad habits as the Douglas fight. Douglas simply wanted to win more.

 

Totally agree on the score of dealing with adversity - no matter how great a fighter appears without being under duress his stocks rise exponentially (and justifiably so) when he fights through and prevails over hardships.

At that stage of Mike’s career and the exaggerated perceptions of him, whoever beat him and however he lost was always going to immediately default to Mike not being at his best. Very circular and devoid of factoring the high quality opposition (mind, spirit and body) that Buster presented on the night.

Certainly the lesser quality opposition Mike prevailed over previously (including some being less than what they could’ve been) never detracted from the absolute credit Mike was always afforded for beating them.

Therefore, by the time Mike faced Buster, the calculations of just how good Mike was were incrementally skewed due to the affording of absolute credit to Mike for his wins without that credit being partially offset by the quality of the opposition in question.

Very ironic that when Mike met his own Waterloo, there was nothing but all manner of attempts to discredit Buster’s victory due to an alleged sub par performance posted by Mike.

 

You nailed it. This is honestly my only beef with Tyson supporters. I have even defended the guy when it comes to the charges against him in court, and I do absolutely believe he was taken advantage of by people such as Givens and King and I totally understand that he was a lost young man after so many important people around him died or parted ways.

You can't gloss over several of Tyson's opponents clearly being inferior in overall athleticism/ability while ALSO dealing with personal struggles/hardships of their own. He was SUPPOSED to beat those guys just like he was supposed to beat Douglas, who lost to guys Tyson already beat and should have been a mental wreck after losing his mom!

I don't even have a problem with people pointing out xyz issue going on with Tyson at this point in his life so long as you ALSO acknowledge the issues his opponents faced. That's all I'm saying. Either give Douglas some credit and level the playing field or stop crying.

 

Tyson couldn’t adjust in a fight. He never did once in his career. It’s probably the biggest fault of his as a boxer. If something wasn’t working in a fight he kept just doing the exact same things that had been programmed into him for years. Usually what he brought to the ring was more than enough but when it wasn’t (Douglas, Holyfield) he was found out.

What’s Rooney going to bring to the corner in Tokyo that Tyson didn’t already know by rote? Nothing. Tyson might have taken Buster lightly but that’s on him and he’d have done the same with Rooney in the corner. He was partying and womanising before the Berbick fight (I believe he had a venereal disease during and in the lead up to that fight according to his autobiography) and that’s with Rooney in charge of him. Didn’t affect his performance then.

 

Occasionally he did make small adjustments. He was told to stop going for one big punch against Thomas and started shortening up his punches and boxed. Against Ruddock, he realized he was too big and dangerous to just slug it out with and invested in body shots.

But in general, I agree he usually wasn't able to make adjustments or change the game plan in the middle of a fight. He was very robotic and couldn't think outside the strict system Cus implemented. He also doesn't have an example where he dug deep to win a fight he was losing on the scorecards or getting off the floor to win. To his credit, he did take his ass whoopings like a man in the Douglas, Lewis, and Hoylfield 1 fights, but at no point was he ever able to make a dramatic pendulum swing in the momentum of the fight other than the knockdown of Douglas (which showed he was actually trying to win, but it just wasn't enough).

9/10 He has to either overpower his opponents early blitzing them, win on sheer aggression/volume, or he just stands there taking a sustained beating. There are very few instances of him just winning rounds and outboxing his opponent or turning things around outside of a comeback KO.

 

Tyson was like Marciano in a sense- his size dictated how he fought. How was he going to adapt? He had to get close because he was considerably shorter than most guys he fought and he had stubby arms.
The biggest thing that he could have done was to consistently use his jab. Many short guys with short arms ignore the jab but, if you don't want to get tied up when you get close, there isn't an option better than jabbing on the way in.

 

Comeback foreman & holyfield (mikes daddy)

 

Gerry Cooney, that tall unbalanced tree might fall over Iron Mike Tyson, then it's TIMBER !

 

There's a difference between Ali imitators and Muhammad ****ing Ali

 

As I said it's a pickem fight. Tyson has the style advantage but Ali has advantage in intangibles and chin. Saying Ali would be an easy fight and Tyson's favorite victim is taking it to the extreme

 

All great fighters are very durable but Ali's chin appears objectively better than Tyson's. Ali was never really knocked out. Tyson was stopped in all of his losses minus the bite fight. Ali also fought 3 guys considered to be the biggest punchers in hw history: Liston, Foreman and Shavers. He also fought guys like Lyle and Frazier who were also great hw punchers.

Who's the hardest puncher Tyson took shots from and didn't get knocked out? Ruddock? Bruno? Good punchers, but not on the level of the guys Ali took shots from.

Also worth mentioning that in the twilight of their careers Tyson was knocked out by Danny Williams and quit against McBride while Ali with parkinson's went the full distance with Trevor Berbick and Dundee had to stop the fight against Holmes.

Ali also had better recuperative powers in addition to heart. Ali got up from several knockdowns in his career to win the fight. In fact the only fight I think he ever was knocked down and DIDN'T win was the FOTC.