Despite being close in age these guys peaked in their careers at very different ages, so their 2002 matchup doesn't tell us the whole story of course. Lewis has the size advantage but he could and did get caught. How does this fight go?
The 2002 fight pretty much tells us all we need to know. It took Lewis 8 rounds to beat Tyson who was well past it and had no desire to box. He just simply hopped in the ring for the money and even then Tyson almost got him out in round 1. If Lewis had that much of an issue with an old warn out 2002 Tyson, the 88 version of Tyson would absolutely flatten Lewis. No question on it. Lewis's penchant for getting caught with big shots would doom him and having a glass chin makes it worse against a small, elusive guy who was good at slipping jabs and thrived on brutally knocking out whoever was unfortunate enough to be his opponent. When you think about it, Lewis has been in trouble like this against a number of other hard hitting heavyweights who were inferior to Tyson. I see this match ending much like the Spinks one.
Lewis was stopped with one shot 2x against McCall and Rahman. The 1988 Tyson will connect and finish him off worse than those two.
Yeah it's incredible Lewis got out of that first round given the astounding amount of Trouble Tyson had him in. What's the timestamp for that again?
