At Mike's peak did people think he either passed Ali or would so eventually?

Following the Spinks destruction, the general feeling and expectation was that Mike was gonna go down as possibly the greatest fighter (nevermind heavyweight) ever, and that he would never lose. So, based on those lofty expectations, he underachieved. But he's a still a top 10 great at heavyweight, and has arguably the highest peak in heavyweight history.

 

Wasn't old enough then to really know, but I'd guess the real aficionados didn't think so, Holyfield and Lewis happened later, and even if Tyson had beaten them they still wouldn't have been as good of wins as Liston, Frazier, Patterson, Foreman, none of Tyson's competition pre-Douglas were close to the caliber of the guys Ali fought, even Bonavena and Chuvalo were levels above most of them

 

After the Spinks demolition a LOT of folks thought Tyson could become the GOAT. (That night Tyson IMHO could have matched up with any HW in history--even the 67' version of Ali that fought Zora Folley. Tyson was really something to see back then!!)

 

Louis has a case though for outranking Ali without superior opposition. It could have been done by Tyson with his available opponents, especially in the stronger 1990’s. As it was though he massively, massively under-achieved.

 

A lot of people were calling him the best ever in 1988-1989. I even remember some fellow boxing fans say they’d pick him to beat Muhammad Ali…. Then the Douglas fight happened and that sentiment changed 180 degrees

 

A lot of people thought so, due to recency bias giving people memories of Ali when he was past his best. When you can't easily go rewatch him against London, Williams, Terrell, etc., you forget just how good he actually was.

 

I think people overrated the Spinks performance. It was up there with Bruno 2 as an underperformance by a decent competitor for whatever reason. Spinks had left the building before he entered it, and lord know where Frank's head was at that point, poor soul. For me, the best Ali always beats the best Tyson, although if you could hermetically seal peak Tyson and drop him into a ring with peak Ali, it would be a much closer fight than many believe...and it's a fantasy head to head, so I can do what I want, can't I?

 

Tons of hype and lots of part time boxing writers can go a long way for popularity.

Look at the hype for Anthony Joshua and it started when he was an amatuer.

 

No he still had a long way to go to surpass Ali and it never got to that point. Ali had a very long prolific career.

 

Mike did what he had to do. Even if Spinks was intimidated in the time it lasted Mike was the epitome of speed, power and defense. It was a virtually perfect performance.

 

yeah people saw the potential but unfortuantely he went off the rails.

 

Sure I recall lots of fans and "pundits" making a case Tyson would surpass Ali.
Let's remember that Tyson initial years were impressive and at some stage it seemed like he was poised for a long stay at the top. But he failed the endurance test and became another woulda, shoulda, coulda case.

In an objective retrospective, the telltale signs of Tyson's flaws and limits were always there. But not many paid attention because so much hype and bias was running for Tyson back then.

Hindsight is 20/20.

 

Many boxers at the time predicted Tyson as the one to easily beat Ali. After the fight with Douglas, they completely changed their opinion, and Tyson's subsequent performances only confirmed everyone's belief that he was far from Ali. But at one point it wasn't like that. With Tyson after the Berbick fight, exactly the same thing happened with Leon Spinks after the first fight with Ali, but that doesn't mean that Leon and Mike weren't really very strong at some point, but it lasted embarrassingly short.

 

For me his surgical dismantling of Biggs was his signature performance. That was Aliesque, reminiscent of Alis malevolent battering of Paterson and Terrel, just hiting Biggs hard enough not to knock him out and prolong this exquisite act of fistic torture. A cerebral, malicious almost obsessive one sided lesson in levels.