I thought he looked great against Holmes. Holmes did nothing in the first three rounds apart from use his savvy to escape a few of Tyson's deadliest punches and barely escape getting pinned on the ropes. He was hardly befuddling Tyson. Tyson was softening him up and had him looking downright scared. And I say this as someone who believes Larry Holmes was definitely a greater fighter than Mike Tyson. I'm not prepared to mis-perceive or mis-represent the fight though, simply because it was Larry Holmes in there. Tony Tubbs boxed Tyson well for one round, and much of the second. Tubbs was an excellent boxer, very "cute", good inside fighter, well-rounded (no pun intended). But Tyson took him apart well, softened him up with body shots, made him pay for bringing the fight to Mikey. 1988 was Tyson's peak year. With the Biggs fight in October '87 those four fights show Tyson use the most of his still developing repetoire IMO. Agree with those who highlight the Alex Stewart fight as vintage Tyson.
Although Tyson was smothering a bit in an attempt to get his measure against Holmes, the right hook that floored him the 4th was the accumlative result of such and remains very impressive. Berbick, Thomas, Biggs, Tubbs and Holmes were all good-excellent performances.
Totally agree. We have to take in Holmes great experience and awkwardness at that stage of his career, even if he paled to what he'd been.
The Holmes performance always seems to be one that splits opinions. I gave my thoughts on Tyson's showing against Holmes earlier in the thread and nothing will change. Magoo agreed with me as well. JT and others see it from a different angle than we both do. Based on Tyson's finish alone, it's hardly the worst showing out all his wins. But to say he "looked great" against Holmes is an opinion I can't live with I'm afraid. I thought he was superb as soon as he caught Holmes with that booming right hand for the first knockdown, and everything he done after it. But showings don't get graded on spectacular finishes folks, it's from first bell until the finish. Holmes moved, ocassionally grabbed and jabbed, and made Tyson look average up until the finish.
Disagree. But that was the type of fight it was going to be, going in. Not many were picking Tyson in a 1 or 2 round blowout of the guy. You knew Holmes was not going to exchange early and was going to jab and fight a negative type fight to stay in there and let those early dangerous rounds go by. No big secret in the Holmes plan & he wasn't ever going to go in with a **** poor fight strategy. It was up to Tyson to do something about it & he did. He certainly wasn't winging away in there and was using his youthful legs and upper body movement to make Holmes work. And Larry was always a pitchers mound fighter and the opponent had better not fall into that trap against him. Tyson didn't and was making Larry work a lot more than he wanted to early. Larry is /was like Lennox and likes his breathers during rounds where the opponent lets him coast. Larry wasn't coasting whatsover against Tyson and was having to do things like using lots of physical strength to tie him up. Or moving those legs a lot more than he wanted to in order to keep his distance. But after a few rounds of that, the openings presented themselves and Tyson capitalized. When Holmes dropped those hands, Tyson sprang in and caught him. And finished a guy that definately knew how to survive. There just weren't too many other examples of Tyson using ringsmarts like that and he usually just went in and dominated with his speed/combos/snap on his punches. But I thought back then & now whenever re-watching the bout, Larry was treading water and Tyson was forcing him to be the downhill skier way over his ski's more and more. Now maybe if the bout got to the 7th or 8th round, like Holmes wanted==the Tyson parachute might've opened. But Tyson was laying the foundation early & that was something I wanted to see him do far more often during his career. And he never did a whole lot of foundation work > Holmes.