Could an Iron Mike-like HW excel in todays era of giants?

Of course Mike would had a chance of beating Fury.

At least a reasonable one.

Fury would have had to have grappled with him up close and tired him out. Because a guy of Mike’s size and style would have been very elusive to Fury.

Now I could definitely envisage Fury roughhousing him. Leaning on him etc. But Mike would have had A chance.

Who else is there?

I’d have backed Mike over AJ and Wilder. 100%

 

I also think Fury would beat Mike, but that's a combination of size AND Fury's skillset tbf, particularly his ability to employ his jab, his movement, his solid inside fighting and mauling skills. If you kept everything about Fury exactly the same but gave him AJ, Wilder, Joyce, Hyrgovic etc skillset I think he'd very much stop being the favourite.

Heavyweights, especially Super Heavyweights on average have always been somewhat overrated in their ability to defeat top tier smaller opponents imo. The most skilled SHW's, like the Klitschko's, the Lewis's and the Fury's (who got knocked down by Steve Cunningham mind) can usually fight up to their dimensions without issue, but the average 5-15 ranked SHW is so ridiculously unskilled that I think it's overstated how much their size improves their H2H ability vs smaller opponents. A lot of that weight is just undisciplined fat as well mind you, not pure size in a skeletal sense.

Ruiz is a morbidly obese 6'0 cruiserweight, and he defeated one of the hardest hitting AND most skilled SHW's in his division AFTER coming off the canvas.

Deontay Wilder only weighed 212.5lbs when he was literally a second away from defeating Fury by way of knockout.

Hyrgovic, Dubois, Joyce, Parker, Whyte, Ortiz and others, none are the favourites to beat Usyk in popular discourse (and he beat Joshua too ofc).

The absolute best SHW's > the absolute best HW's, but the average top tier SHW < the absolute best HW's imo.

A common retort to this is "if what you're saying is true, where are all the smaller HW's?" which doesn't really make sense. Fighters don't usually go out of their way to fight at a 20-30lbs weight disadvantage. It doesn't mean that they can't, but it'd be strange for them to try, at least before clearing out their own divisions. Duran eventually won a belt at Middleweight, Hearns eventually won a belt at Light Heavyweight, 5'7 Qawi eventually won a belt at Cruiserweight, Holyfield and Usyk eventually won a belt at Heavyweight, etc.

 

Mike was unigue . He is indeed small in height and reach an he also in his era knew it so fighting out of the distance was not an option . He learned from cuz the peek a boo technigue to close the distance quick where his reach disadvantage was not a matter anymore .

Here we come to another unigue phenomena of mike : being small in height he had one of the biggest punching power of all boxers ever lived . The pendlum of his peek a boo style to close the distance allowed him to shot body hooks to the ribs , and with the power of his arms and neck this shots were deadly .

His finishing move was usually an uppercut from a peek a boo pendeling and lowered upper body to evade the opponent .

So : mike was not the "small" hw like e.g usyk it . So small in height and small in punching power . Mike,s punching power was devastating .

Not fully sure about tyson vs fury since fury is indeed an elite boxer but i guess prime mike would nevertheless floor fury . Pretty sure about all other current boxers except wilder . Wilder is prone to go lunatic and not sure what happens if he windmills mike .

 

Wilder is an easy pick for me.

He wouldn’t have been able to have landed a power shot on Mike.

He would never have had the time or the space.

He hasn’t got the skills.

No great jab.

No in-fighting skills.

Many of his great knockouts are straight shots. Great shots, but ones where Mike would never have been.

Mike with his size and his style, would have provided Wilder with such a small and elusive target.

 

Ruiz is only 6 foot and destroyed one of the top modern HW giants of today in AJ, so only a moron would deny prime Mike would likely be the man today. This era is garbage. Only problem might be Fury who would make it an ugly fight but he has bad defense so would likely get knocked out.

 

Yeah, I just don't see where this reasonable chance comes from though. His fights with Mitch Green and Mike James, lower-tier big men who weren't afraid of Tyson and fought on his terms tell me Fury would be way too much for him. Fury is above them in size and levels skill wise; he just has too many routes to victory over Mike. But I think it goes as you suggested, Fury by mauling.

The other issue for me, is how much leverage is Mike realistically going to be able to get on his punches against a man of Fury's stature. His uppercut coming from a crouched position is going to have to travel an awful long way to land on Fury, so I don't it being in play unless Tyson is putting himself in dangerous positions in the clinch. Yes, the former cruiserweight champion Steve Cunningham was 6'3" (That's 5inches on Mike) dropped Fury, and we saw how a younger less experienced Fury rag dolled him after that.

Saying that there is a chance an upper cut catches him:

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Well, I think it was obvious to most watching that it was a bad miscalculation by Joshua that cost him in the moment and the night quickly unravelled for him. Besides, he made easy work of Ruiz in the rematch and I doubt he would overlook Mike in the same way.

But do you not think it is interesting that you highlight something that Mike himself was never able to do? i.e. win a fight when it mattered AFTER coming off the canvas...

That is the other problem here, not only is he in with a size of opponent he had very mixed success against, but it only takes one punch to ruin Mike's day, and this is heavy weight boxing. Scratch that, this is now Super Heavyweight Boxing.

I go back to what I said earlier, Mike was an ATG in his day and age, that deserves respect, but the division moved on.

EDIT: combined the posts

 

Mike Tyson was such a talent, even with his lack of size he would still be #1 today, IMO.

But he would have a hard time against Usyk, Fury, Joshua, in that order, and may lose those fights.

The rest of them he KOs or dominates.

 

Green and Bonecrusher didn’t even want to fight did they.

They just fought to survive.

I’m not saying that Fury couldn’t have won, but you giving Mike literally a zero chance would have been silly.

Smith and Green were smaller and faster than Fury.

Fury is very fast for his huge size, but not compared to smaller HW’s.

I don’t think that you can use evidence of smaller, faster guys tying Mike up, as absolute proof that Fury could have replicated that, just on the grounds that he was the better fighter. It’s always about styles.

The reason Mike would have had a reasonable chance, is because of his speed and his unique style. He absolutely would have had a chance of slipping inside of Fury’s range to go to the body.

As for AJ, Mike would also have presented him with a very tough stylistic match up. AJ also looks to panic when hit and hurt, and he’s had stamina issues. It also goes without saying that he’d have had a hard time trying to time such a small and elusive target. It’s hard for those SHW’s to get close to much smaller fighters on the inside. AJ would have found it very difficult.

No, the division has not moved on.

If the division was ruled by SHW’s, then Usyk wouldn’t be in the picture.

 

Boxing fans suck, period. Every one is either a bum or overrated. Everyone's resume are trash. As soon as a fighter loses people jump ships, yet they always complain when the big fights don't get made.

Has to be one of the worst sport to be a fan, to be honest.

 

God damnit, I guess never pressed post reply. I thought responded to this message like 2 hours ago lol.

Was meant to say, my Ruiz comment was more of a general statement about smaller Heavyweights , less so Mike. You always hear things like "one punch and he's literally dead bro" or some such nonsense, but that's not usually the case.

Specifically in regards to Mike though, I don't think he'd be anymore likely to get knocked out with a punch today than in this era. Your statement about "this is the super Heavyweight division" is kinda what I mean about them being overrated on the basis of their dimensions. Most fighters in this division aren't particularly hard punchers compared to the fighters of yesteryear. Hell, the champions of this very division and best Heavyweights of this era are arguably the two lightest punchers out of all the ranked Heavyweights, and the lightest punching ATG H2H Heavyweights in the past few decades.

If a shot to pieces Mike Tyson can take shots from a prime Lennox Lewis, I don't think a prime Mike Tyson would get flash KO'd or one hit KO'd by the likes of a Joyce, Parker, Whyte, Ruiz, Ortiz, Usyk, Fury, AJ etc. I know I know Buster Douglas and all that, but I don't think taking a fighters worst moments are a basis for accurate comparison. With that logic the champions in this era wouldn't translate to their own era lol, people underachieve every now and then.

In these conversations is also the assumption that the Super Heavyweights actually know how to USE their super heavy weight, but pretty much none of them do besides Fury. They're mostly extremely rudimentary boxer punchers. No infighting or mauling ability at all, so it's not even like Mike would get his clinching weakness exploited all that much. That and they mostly have horrendously slow feet, which is something that Mike absolutely feasted on.

 

Of course the division has moved on, the likes of Lewis and Bowe were the first breed of modern super heavies to really shine. And it's written how Lewis put his stamp on the 90s. The next 10-15 years were then dominated by super heavies in the Klitschko brothers. The torch was then passed onto Fury (and Joshua). Again both super heavies. Of the next generation of fighters people are looking to 6'7" Jalolov, who dominated the field at the last Olympics, again a super heavy. It's undeniable at this point that as the years passed the talent pool of big men has naturally grown in size and we begin to see more and more large fighters who actually have skills dominating their eras. And it's been 35 years since '88 Tyson. Time to put the myth to bed.

About Usyk, he is 6'3" - he isn't really a small heavyweight. Granted, he is small for this era. Though, that just shows how the division has moved on. I like Usyk a lot, he is a special fight, BUT he has yet to overcome Fury, has a very thin resume at heavyweight, and it looks like he is avoiding his mandatories in Hrgovic (and Zhang) by committing to a fight against Fury with no set date. Possibly the backers are see it to be too much of a risk after the Dubois fight and are looking to cash him out before taking a loss. I'm picking Fury over Usyk too. For me Mike's career best win was Tony Tucker, a big man for the 80s, but bridgerweight by today's standards.

Btw, I said Mitch Green and Mike Jameson. Tyson fought them in '86. Mitch wasn't there to survive either. Go back and watch it.

 

People saying "Usyk is a small successful heavyweight, so Tyson could too" are illogical here. Usyk is up to 5 inches taller with 7 inches more reach and a mover style. Tyson was a pressure fighter. Apples and oranges. Plus thus far Usyk's full pro heavyweight record is beating Chisora, Joshua x2 and Dubois. We don't know how he'll do against the top guys.

It's more apt to compare Tyson with Povetkin, who was more similar in height and reach but still much taller, longer and about 10 lbs heavier, with a similar style, even trained by Atlas for 2.5 years. How successful a Tyson-sized HW could be would partly depend on officiating. The considerably bigger Povetkin lost 12-0 to Wlad, got put down and never really hurt Wlad at any point.

Tyson didn't perform that well against much bigger men, especially those with more heart than average and those big men (Ribalta, Tucker, Douglas, Ruddock) were a lot smaller than most of the modern crop.

So until we see another 5'10, 215-220 lbs heavyweight come along and destroy everyone, I'm going to say no.

 

But isn't that what we often do with these fantasy match ups for Mike Tyson. Insert '88 Mike where convenient. Btw, I think it is fair to say that Whyte, Parker, Ortiz are no longer relevant when discussing the top of the division.

I think the best I could say is, this is the best possible time for '88 to make a run at the current top ten. This is the transition of an era where the big names are on their last legs and the next generation has yet to truly establish themselves, much like when Mike made his mark the last time round. Still don't see him unseating Fury though.

 

Basketball is worse. Everyone that played after 1999 is a horrible basketball player and an inferior human being, apparently. The most popular pundits on the most popular sports show in America regularly **** on the product, and Shaquile O'Neal in particular goes out of his way to bully modern players due to his own insecurities. He, completely unprompted, posted a Photoshoped edit of him dunking on the reigning Defensive Player of the Year on his twitter saying "I'd destroy him" with the collective basketball community jizzing their pants over how awesome and manly Shaq is. It's absolutely pathetic.

A lot of teenagers who've never even watched a single basketball game prior to 2010 just talk utter shite about how basketball used to be better, all because the commentators that they've been brainwashed by who played in that era have been saying that every single day for years.

 

"I think the best I could say is, this is the best possible time for '88 to make a run at the current top ten."

The best time since 88' was probably 2005. Holyfield had his number, Bowe was a much bigger inside fighter, Lewis could grab and lean on him like Wlad-Povetkin, Vitali would be tough but was retired by the end of 2004. Wlad was still transitioning stylistically and his confidence was very shaky in 2005, knocked down 10 times in a 7 fight period. So 2005 would have been the best time for Tyson to run through the division since the time that he did. After that I'd say 2016-2018, when Fury was inactive and Parker/Joshua/Wilder held the belts, though Wilder would have been very dangerous. Right now I think Fury still has way too much and Usyk would likely beat Tyson down the stretch if Tyson didn't get him out in the first half.