Here’s something interesting I stumbled across: Douglas defeated Tyson in February 1990. So this result obviously isn’t accounted for in The Ring’s annual ratings for 1989. Here are the men in the ‘89 annual ratings listing only guys Tyson had not faced: (Ring considers the title vacant and Tyson is ranked No. 1) 2. Evander Holyfield* 3. Michael Dokes 4. Francesco Damiani 5. Tim Witherspoon 6. Orlin Norris* 7. James Douglas+ 9. Donovon Ruddock* 10. Gary Mason * Tyson would fight them later — much later in the cases of Evander and Orlin, a year later in the case of Razor (twice) + Obviously he fought Buster to kick off 1990 The ONLY top 10 ring-rated guy for the year whom Tyson had already faced was No. 8 Carl Williams, immediately prior to Douglas That got me thinking. Was Tyson facing the top guys in years immediately preceding and after Buster? Figured I’d look into it and see. To account for those who might have been knocked out of the rankings by losing to Tyson, I’m going to look into the rankings going into the year in which he fought them. In 1988, Tyson fought: Unranked Larry Holmes, W KO4 (former champ coming off layoff with no tuneup) Unranked Tony Tubbs, W KO2 (former title holder, had gone 3-0 in 1987 vs nobodies — Wimpy Halstead may be the best of the three — since losing to Witherspoon on points in a dreadfully uneventful fight) Lineal champion Michael Spinks, KO 1 In 1989, Tyson fought: Unranked Frank Bruno KO 5 (had not fought in nearly a year and a half, in his last active year prior in 1987 was beating the likes of Reggie Gross, ancient Joe Bugner and Quick Tillis, on cuts) No. 2 Carl Williams KO 1 In 1990, Tyson fought No. 7 James Douglas L KO 10 Unranked Henry Tillman KO 1 Unranked Alex Stewart KO 1 In 1991, Tyson fought: No. 3 Donovan Ruddock KO 7/ W 12 So in this period, Tyson went 9-1 with four wins and one loss against people ranked by The Ring at the time. It suggests to me that there’s a downshifting in (a) Mike’s level of activity (as in frequency of fighting) and (b) his level of competition. There may be good reasons behind some of these moves — Holmes, for instance, piqued interest and was palatable to HBO — but there’s also ‘let’s find some gimmes here and there.’ I think Douglas, while ranked, was seen as a gimme same as Tubbs and a Bruno who had lost his only major fights to that point on top of being rusty with so much time off. The other thing to me is this — IF we say ‘well Mike just wasn’t right for Buster, off night, didn’t walk into the ring in peak form’ (again, let’s apply this to Holmes and Bruno with the layoffs and not give Mike credit for beating diminished guys if we’re going to give him a pass when we decide he wasn’t at his best) … then why the hell did they need to dig up Henry freaking Tillman and Alex gatekeeper Stewart coming off the Douglas loss? Surely he’d have learned his lesson, you give him a few months to heal up after Douglas and you put him in camp and get him training hard and line up some more meaningful competition right away, right? I mean, it was just an off night, he had sex in Tokyo, no big deal! Get back on the horse. Instead, they treat him like he’s mentally made of balsa wood and needs a year to process a loss while lining up wobbling bowling pins for him to knock down to ‘regain his confidence.’ Why does the ‘baddest man on the planet’ who had one bad night need to regain confidence? I think Mike was ripe for the taking and his schedule around time time somewhat reflects that. The Ruddock fights were an all-in attempt to a fearsome guy (who was also largely untested) and regain the aura, and then Mike ended up in prison and that’s that.
Didn’t Bruno and Tubbs get demoted from the rankings because they were in line to fight Tyson and doing little while waiting?
In regards to Bruno/Tyson they were originally supposed to fight in 1988 but Tyson sued his manager hence the fight got cancelled. The fight was postponed a few times due to Tyson breaking his hand in a street fight with Mitch Green and then after Tyson was in a car crash. So the reason Bruno was inactive was because he was waiting for a Tyson fight but the fight got rescheduled 3 times.
Doesn’t make him any less rusty or ranked. IIRC, Bill Cayton had a huge purse lined up for Tyson vs Bruno in England and Don King promised he’d do the same if Mike signed with him, then naturally delivered the match at a much lower price point when Mike did sign.
Why not checking Ring ratings of 1986 and 1987 ? You will see that Mike beat most of the contenders. 1988 version of Holmes while clearly past his best, was no slouch and by his own admission proved his fitness during a 15 round exhibition. It's also worth nothing that his second loss to Spinks was controversial, so Tyson by beating him and Spinks in a frame of 6 months (incredible by today's standards) left no doubt about who was the best. Tillman was interesting in the sense that he beat Tyson twice in the amateurs, and Stewart was ranked n°4 by the organizations (and gave Holyfield problems a year before).
We can criticize Tyson for a lot of things, but his tenure as a champion in the 80's was excellent, as he always fought his mandatories and very good ranked contenders. 1986 : Green, Frazier and Ribalta were ranked in top 10 by at least one organization. Berbick was the WBC champion. 1987 : Smith was the WBA champion who just had dethroned Witherspoon. Thomas was WBC mandatory and WBA n°3. Tucker was the IBF champion who had beaten Douglas. Biggs was IBF/WBA n°1. 1988 : Holmes was the former lineal champion who had controversially lost his crown. Tubbs was WBA n°2 and specifically choosen by the Japanese. Spinks was the lineal champion. 1989 : Bruno was the WBA/WBC n°1. Williams was IBF n°1. The only critic I can see is that Tyson seemed to have duck Ruddock at the end of 1989 (Dokes priced himself out of a 1 million purse). But he made it up for it by fighting him in 1991, a time where Ruddock was even better regarded and feared.
The opposition 88-89 I see no questions about. We have to remember that Holmes and Tubbs were in the 6 months before the showdown with the lineal champ, biggest payday ever to that point. Normally you take no fight whatsoever during that period. Bruno was mandatory as noted, and brought in good money from the UK, where he was very popular. Williams was nr. 2, as you said. Holy should really have come after that and that's a great what if, but it seems King wanted to squeeze in one of his own fighters before. But Holy was lined up as his next opponent. So not much to see there. But two fairly soft opponents after that can be questioned. All in the same year, though. But normally one "build your confidence back" should be enough. On the other hand, you can see Ruddock as a ballsy move seeing how Tyson would get his shot against Holy no matter who he fought. That was the money fight regardless.
I’m looking at it more in the context of Tyson himself rather than how it stacks up historically. Nothing indefensible on his championship resume nor even squirrelly, like, say Floyd Patterson fighting an amateur with the heavyweight championship of the world at stake (at least Tyson had his McNeeley moment in a non-title fight coming off a prison stay rather than in a title fight). I do think if you compare it to Tyson’s activity level and level of opposition immediately before this period, Mike (particularly post-Spinks) was shifting into a more ‘reclining champion’ status and schedule. Perhaps King and others saw he wasn’t quite all that (at least not anymore) and that to milk their cash cow they needed to make sure it was grass-fed by hand.
Nah. Comparing to 86-87 is holding a quite impossible standard. I counted 18 fights over those two years. And 15 in 1985. That's a hell of a pace at HW. Not even Louis kept such a pace for more than a few years. And when you come to the point when you make 10+ million a fight there's not just a good reason to. I think a more reasonable way of viewing it is to compare with Frazier after his apex mountain, FOTC. Bruno, Williams and Douglas were clearly superior to Daniels and Stander. For someone who made the money and had created the kind of legacy he already had, I don't think it's remotely surprising that he didn't have 5+ fights a year any more. And the one fight that was interesting, Holy, was already signed going into the Douglas fight I think. So really, really nothing to see here. After the Douglas loss there might well have been some doubts, though. Maybe that's why two relatively easy victims were chosen (we're talking one Olympic gold medalist and a fighter who gave especially Foreman but also Holy some problems, though). But then it was straight to Ruddock even though he could have fought whomever and still got the shot at Holy. So what are we looking at? Four fights against ranked fighters plus a mandatory and a signed contract with the nr. 1 contender over the three years after Spinks. Add Tillman and Steward to that, who weren't exactly bums.
Again, we’re talking about two different things. Tyson’s pace was slowing down. Forget all the pre-title bum-of-the-week fights when Jimmy Jacobs was creating a KO highlight reel to distribute to every TV station in the country to hype his guys. Before Berbick, he fought 2 1/2 months earlier Before Bonecrusher, he fought 2 1/2 months earlier Before Tucker, he fought 2 1/2 months earlier Before Pinklon, he fought 2 1/2 months earlier Sensing a pattern. Not so long later we’re looking at 2-3 fights a year. It’s a different pace. Until Buster, there’s no fight where he took significant damage or got pushed to his limits. Whether he was knocking guys out or slogging to a decision (which he also did pre-title with Mitch Green, nearly with Ribalta, etc), he was winning every or nearly ever round and wasn’t putting a ton of miles on his tires. Something shifted here. I’m not comparing him to Frazier or anyone else. I’m comparing his own pace to his own pace at consecutive parts of his career. I get it when a guy gets older and he wants to tap the breaks a bit, couple of defenses a year, but not for an early 20s guy. If the idea was they were going to do him like Dwight Gooden when he was a young phenom with the Mets and no overtax his arm early in his career, it didn’t work for Mike because he managed to degrade regardless of pace. And of 10 opponents in the span I listed, only half were ranked. He was heavyweight champ for most of that time. They were picking spots. Guys like Dokes and Witherspoon and Evander were ranked all through most of that period. He let them fight each other or avoided them altogether for whatever reason. So instead we got Tubbs and Douglas, who was expected to be a pastry.
I compared to Frazier, in that after a momentous win and record pay day it's natural to slow down a bit. Very few HW champion's hold a tempo of almost five fights a year for several years. I think Louis before WW2 is the only one, and he didn't make close to the money Tyson did. By '88 the tournament during 86-87 was done with and he had won the lineal title on top on that. He probably would have fought a fourth time in '88 if not for breaking his hand and then he fought twice in '89, three times in '90 and would have fought at least three times in '91 as well if the Holy fight hadn't fallen through because of first injury and then the trial and prison. This is a better schedule than most, perhaps any, fighter making that kind of money. I just see nothing here.
Fair enough. If you’re making huge money per fight and bowling over opposition, until there’s a diminishing return then I’d say fight every 2 1/2 months. If you’re comparing Frazier post-FotC to Tyson post-Spinks … Frazier spent like a week in the hospital after. Mike didn’t even work up a sweat. I don’t think he even got hit. It was 91 seconds and more than 15 of those, Spinks was on the canvas, so basically a bit more than a minute. Mike could have fought again that night. Whether Tyson slowed down because he demanded the schedule slow down or Don King and his minions now running Team Tyson saw something, it’s still a change in schedule and pace. And for that matter, level of opposition — the Dokes/Witherspoon duo were regarded as better than Trevor or Bonecrusher at the time by most I think, and probably at least on par with Tucker (on pure threat/ability/resume, although he had a belt that HBO/Tyson wanted to collect). Obviously Tim had beaten Bruno and Frank hadn’t beaten anyone of note who was still ‘live.’ But fair play on your observations. I just noticed what I think is a distinctive downshift for Mike and maybe if people had been paying close attention rather than ooh-ing and ahh-ing over quick KOs they might have seen Buster as a more viable threat than he was regarded. And I think there’s certainly a few other ranked guys he didn’t fight who might have made things more interesting than people would have anticipated. I think we can all agree that his post-prison schedule was managed VERY carefully to make it se Mike was something he no longer was.
The funny thing is how people simply airbrush history. From Berbick to Spinlks Tyson was an all-time exceptional monster and dominated a very good, big group of heavyweights. Berbick was comoim off the biggest win of his career defeating a previously undefeated Pinklon Thomas Bonecrusher just knocked out Witherspoon on a round Thomas was one year off being considered by many the best heavyweight in the world and back on the comeback trail after being upset by Berbick. Tucker was huge, undefeated and just coming off a title winning victory over Buster Briggs was an undefeated top contender , former olympic gold medalist. Holmes we'll ignore except to say Tyson may have peaked in this fight and led many many to say he would have beaten any version of Larry. Tubbs was a once defeated former champion who beat Page and lost a thin decision to Witherspoon .. still in peak form. M. Spinks was the undefeated heavyweight champion ... All other than Holmes in their primes. All soundly thrashed. At the same time Tyson was possibly the largest mega cross over celebrity possibly of all time, printing money, used and manipulated for opportunity and gain since the Catskills and a deeply trouble human being as well .. he was loosing focus as distracted fight by fight while Buster Douglas was a career underachiever far more famous for losing than winning ... the upset was possibly the greatest in heavyweight title history and decisive ... one man fighting the fight of his life while the other came into the fight unfocused with a poor training camp and fought poorly ... this is based on comparisons to precious performances ... the net/net is Douglas won and Tyson lost.