OP thinks Holyfield would beat Ali prime for prime

Wrong. It's not about mileage, but about him declining in terms of skill and not preparing properly due to the turmoils in his personal life.
In 1990 Tyson was in cahoots with that scum Don King.
Upon taking complete control of Tyson's career, Don King fired everyone from the original Catskill team that Tyson had essentially worked with since he was a kid.
Hired in their stead, were nobodies like Rory Holloway, Aran Snowel, and Jay Bright.
In the meantime, Mike had gone through several episodes of exercising erratic behavior:
- he had been divorced by Robin Givens, and during the whole process, had made death threats to her and her mother;
- he had been involved in a car accident where he was injured-postponing the Frank Bruno fight, which had an original date of October 10, 1988;
- he had been in a fist fight with ex-opponent Mitch Green which left Green's face a bloody mess, and Tyson's hand temporarily injured;
- he performed in subpar fashion against Frank Bruno;
- he would lose his sister Denise Tyson, who died tragically in her late 20's.

So by the time he faced Douglas, his former team was gone, his personal was going to pieces, his sister had died and he was working with incompetent trainers and cornermen for over a year. Proof of how bad his new team was the fact that he was struggling during training sessions, and at one point was dropped by Greg Page in a sparring session.
To make matters worse, Tyson spent the weeks prior to the fight with the local escort services.
During the fight with Douglas, Tyson was rarely making an effort to close the sizable gap, whereas against other tall opponents with reasonable jabs, such as Tucker, Holmes, Tubbs, and Biggs, Tyson had slipped the jab and followed up with a barrage of combinations coming in. We saw little or nothing of this against Douglas.
Following the match, Gil Clancy and Angelo Dundee were interviewed on HBO. Both agreed that the corner work in that fight was some of the most unprofessional that either man had seen in quite some time. Snowel was using a dissolved bag of water to try and reduce Tyson's swelling over his eyes, while calmly giving him ambiguous advice with no real instruction. All the while, Tyson sat with his head down during every break between rounds. There was clearly no interest here.

Actually it is. Unless the boxer is properly prepared, it doesn't matter.

They didn't, they declined much sooner. It was also obvious in the first Bruno fight.

Ruddock wouldn't even have landed hald the punches he did if he would have fought an 88 Tyson with Rooney in his corner.

WRONG.

A few punches are not proof. Tyson was getting hit 3 times as much after he fired Rooney. He became too cocky and arrogant seeing that he was still dominating despite not prepaing properly.

He was better than he was vs Douglas, more prepared. But nowhere near as good as when he was with Rooney.

Holmes went on to fight 2 more times for the world title (against Holyfield and McCall) and went the distance in both fights. In fact, he was close to winning it against McCall, even though he was 45/46 at that time. So he clearly wasn't shot when he faced Tyson.
Spinks was a Gold Medalist, Ring Champion, and was still considered the Lineal Champion by the entire world when he faced Tyson & was also Undefeated (31-0 with 21 KO's). Spinks was never even knocked down in his entire career, none the less knocked out until he faced Tyson. As for him being a LHW, that did not stop him from ending Holmes's 7 and a hald years unbeaten streak, just 1 fight short of Marciano's record.
Tucker was a very good boxer. His downfall was his cocaine addiction that he developed in the early 90s, but he was in good form vs Tyson.

 

Holyfield would be hell for 70s Ali, but he loses soundly to prime Ali, Holyfield struggling with an old Holmes doesn't induce confidence at all

 

Holyfield was slow compared to Patterson and never applied pressure like Frazier, he was good at countering and being inside with guys that stood in front of him like Bowe, 67 Ali would boast that Holyfield can't hit what his eyes can't see, too fast and slick for Holyfield to effectively counter, old Foreman was timing and landing on him imagine 67 Ali, in a brawl Holyfield doesn't have the firepower to stop or deter Ali who should easily be able to lead on points

 

Prime Holyfield was not as strong as the postprime version that emerged in the mid 90s. He won the title at 205. He was still fighting like a light heavyweight. He got bigger and much stronger after he lost some fights. He started fighting like a heavyweight.

 

It was a shame Holyfield devolved to fighting "Like a HW" Tyson did the same thing. Below is Prime Holyfield at 208lbs and Prime Ali at 211lbs... If you had to bet your life on which guy was stronger you wouldn't hesitate to say "Commander" Evander! - Ali was a decent sized HW overall and usually enjoyed a good size advantage but was an athlete of the 60s-70s built up on running hills, push ups, bag work etc no excess bulk... Holyfield is an 80s-90s lap experiment and looks like a different species to Ali and fights like a badger. P4P IMO strongest HW of all time.

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I believe it's the inverse, Holyfield is hell for 60s Ali and the 190lbs one could beat him but the 70s Ali who became much smarter would improve on Holmes game against prime Holy.

 

You think CW Holyfield could beat Prime Ali, but not Toney? Pure delusion. Holyfield loses to both versions of Ali clearly, while CW Holyfield beats Toney in a close fight.

 

It's a styles thing, I mean "delusion" is a strong term to use in context to thinking two top 10 HW's would have a shot at one another.

 

I'm not saying you're delusional for thinking Prime Holyfield could beat Prime Ali. In fact, I said it's not outlandish in another quote. I'm saying you're delusional for thinking that Holyfield has a better chance of victory against Prime Ali than he does against Toney.

 

He doesn't need to do any of that, he can beat Holyfield on the outside

 

No one cares. Holyfield came back from a retirement due to a heart condition when he fought with Tyson. Golota had been in a car crash where a passenger died before he fought with Tyson. Every boxer goes through something, Tyson is just the only one that gets that used as an excuse. Douglas' mom died 23 days before the Tyson match. That's a far, FAR more effective thing than whatever the hell happened with Tyson, but apparently, it just made Douglas "stronger" while Tyson's much inferior struggles apparently destroyed him for that one night. Yeah sure bud.

Mayweather got handled by Spadafora in sparring, its sparring, things happen.

Douglas wasn't just bouncing back and spamming naked jabs like Biggs did, nor was he throwing weak flurries that Tyson could just walk through like Tubbs. He was throwing stiff double jabs and standing his ground and responding with uppercuts and combinations on the inside when Tyson tried to walk him down. You can see Holmes catching Tyson with uppercuts and right hands in the same manner, he was just too old by that point to keep going and fight fire with fire like Douglas did.

"No interest" yet he kept going after taking a truck-load of punches and even dropped Douglas in round 9. There was plenty of interest, just not the skill.

There's literally no evidence that shows Tyson was not prepared beyond some hearsay words. He looked just fine physically.

Bruno is literally one of his best pre-prison opponents lmao. He didn't "decline", he just fought with a better guy than Jose Ribalta.

Why? Because Rooney-era Tyson could dodge combinations from Reggie Gross?

Lol.

Tucker connected 40% of his punches, its a bit more than a "few punches" buddy.

I probably would as well if I went from fighting Sammy Scaff to Razor Ruddock.

Cool story but you don't brawl with Ruddock for 12 rounds, eat bombs and come out on top without proper training, skills and everything aside you'd lose on conditioning alone. Tyson was very much trained. He was what he always was. He was just fighting against much better opponents compared to before he got the title. Tyson's "decline" before prison is nothing more than a myth.

Why?

Holmes lost both fights because he was visibly unable to keep up with the much younger men in a physical sense, in both matches (even against Tyson) he was clearly the better boxer, he was just too weak physically.

He was 200% shot, that's just how good he was, even when shot he could do stuff like that.

Spinks barely beat a 35 year old Holmes who barely scraped past Carl Williams a match ago and won the rematch by robbery. Apart from this his resume consists of beating a nobody and stopping the worst version of Gerry Cooney the world has ever seen. Not a good win.

Tucker's resume is almost empty.

 

Styles make fights

 

Holyfield was a better boxer then anyone Ali fought, I’m not sure if Ali is just going to outbox him when he couldn’t do that with Bonavena… yes it’s not “Prime Ali” but what “counts” is a bunch of okay and shot LHW’s / CW’s lol, Holyfield was more skilled then Doug Jones so it’d be closer then that fight, Ali didn’t even make it easy looking to beat Chuvalo or stop him getting inside…

 

I think Ali beats him ... Holyfield was terrific but speed and movement would give him trouble more than big punchers ... I see Ali defeating him , Homes beaten him and a war with Frazier who may outlast him over 15 ..

 

Ali is better than Qawi, Moorer, and Cooper