How can people think Tyson is overrated?

Discuss.

There a lot of "no" people in this world, and a lot of people like to deny Tyson is right to, essentially, be the "baddest" man on the planet , if you will. What shocks me more than ever, is the fact that people from WITHIN the boxing community think Tyson is overrated.

Please explain why Tyson is overrated in your own words so we can have an honest debate about this. I personally view him as my second favorite fighter, behind George Foreman. So, I obviously have a little bias. Which is why I'd like you to express your reasoning behind this rating.

 

Tyson is very overrated when someone who knows sh** about boxing talk about boxing. The less you know the more you over rate Iron Mike. Like, Ive heard milion times how "prime" Tyson would literally kille every other boxer in history one round.

 

Rated vs Overrated is solely at the discretion of the fight fan.

 

He was overrated big time around the time that he retired.

He had an arm of sycophantic fans, who saw him as being an unbeatable god in his prime, albeit obviously very very briefly.

I have the scars on my back from that era.

Today he is perhaps getting a bit under rated.

Everybody on the current heavyweight scene is a pigmy next to him.

 

I get that Tyson is *EASY* to over-rate, especially if you are new to boxing.

Do I make excuses for him in the Douglass fight? No, not at all. He lost in his prime.

My personal opinion is that he is in the top 10 heavyweights of all time.

Does Tyson live up to the hype?!!

 

"The 1986 VerSiOn oF TySoN wOuLd'vE sUReLy BeAteN hIm"

 

A lot of people seem to rate him higher in the all-time heavyweight ranks than I do, so to me he’s overrated. I don’t have him in my top 10 although he’s high in the 11-20 group.

 

It's pretty simple casuals overrate Tyson but hardcore boxing fans at the sametime underrate Tyson. For me i'm somewhere in the middle of those two sides, i don't think Tyson is unbeatable and i do think fans go over the top regarding mythical match ups involving Tyson. But at the sametime his 80's reign gets underrated nowadays.

 

Overrated by casuals and underrated by hardcores

 

It seems some people cannot disengage from Mike’s aura of invincibility even though that bubble was well and truly burst in Mike’s prime, no less.

And the more fanatical supporters give themselves away by applying dual standards - every excuse possible offered up for Mike but NO excuses for the opposition be prevailed over.

It is true that, in the face of mass overrating, one might find themselves underrating Mike to reinforce their push back on some heavy handed excuses, extrapolations and assumptions on Mike’s behalf.

There are ever so brief clips of Mike on YouTube only throwing a few shots at the heavy bag - clips that garner 10s of Ks in views and endless, adoring comments.

The man has a tremendous following - and good luck to him for that.

He was a one man, dynamic show bringing HW boxing back into sharp focus in the 80s - which ironically is why he also reached out to far more casual fans than boxing might’ve otherwise enjoyed.

 

I think in the late 80’s and early 90’s he WAS overrated. Many people hailed him as the GOAT. Today he doesn’t even make some peoples top 10 at heavy so the pendulum has swung the other way

 

I don't think we can overrate 80s Iron Mike.
From a career perspective, yes, I think he's overrated.

I think placing him above Louis, Ali, Holmes, Holyfield, and Lewis is overrating him.

 

I definitely agree that he is top 10. The issue is that he is overrated by people who rate him as the #1 HW ever, which his career makes pretty hard to believe.

 

Not Zhilei Zhang. I heard about a guy who overrated him heavily on this forum, but I haven't seen him around.