Can a case be made for Tyson being the hardest hitting heavyweight of all time?

Well, the thing is that first impressions can be a ***** to shake. I give him total credit though for reunifying a badly splintered heavyweight championship. During the course of his first title run, he eradicated any question of who the most worthy one to hold that title was.

 

Shot? Tyson put on one of his best performances against Bruno. Well maybe not one of his best, but he looked nothing short of spectacular, powerful, fast and back in action.

As for Holyfield, i think as a fighter he never had a better performance. His reflexes may have been a bit less but he boxed smart, controlled and imposed his will to perfection.

He was shot against McBride. That was 9 years later.


I agree though that Duodenum should watch more fights before judging. Watching only Holmes' fights with Mike Weaver (19-8) and glass chinned Norton would make one think of Holmes as a pretty average champion too.

Duonenum: watch his fights with Berbick, Thomas, Biggs, Holmes, Spinks, Tubbs, Bruno (both), Williams and maybe you'll see the light.
By the way, i know you hated to see it, but you can't tell me you somehow have never seen Tyson-Holmes.


I think Tyson hit as hard as anyone.

 

I thought his most impressive showings as a heavyweight were against Dokes, and the "Fan Man" win over Bowe.

Advice duly noted. (Are you trying to convert me back into being a boxing fan?)

Naw, I looked at it as divine payback from Marciano for Larry's jockstrap putdown. However, it didn't escape my attention that Tyson came within five seconds of letting Holmes off the hook, and that Larry would have gotten out of that round if he hadn't caught his right under the top rope. It also didn't escape me that it took Mike over 45 seconds to finally finish it off.

I'm not qualified to dispute Holmes that Shavers, not Tyson, hit him the hardest.

 

But Duodenum, you have to keep in mind that Larry got knocked out by Tyson and he beat Shavers so he may be a little biased.

I've noticed some fighters tend to do that.

 

Foreman didn't literally lift Frazier off the floor. Frazier sort of hopped up after the punch landed. The momentum of the punch combined with Frazier's position worked together at that point , in my opinion. For me, a great example of Tyson's power was the way he knocked down Trevor Berbick twice with one punch. Tyson, in his prime, would hit a guy and the guy would be like paralyzed.

 

True, but his assessment of Earnie's punching power agrees with the general consensus among both conquerers and victims of Shavers. Holmes was in there with Shavers, Weaver, Bonecrusher Smith, Witherspoon, Mercer, Cooney and others who had good power. When two HW champions with the background Holmes and Ali share agree on such a topic, I'm not too inclined to readily dismiss it.

 

haha...Larry Holmes is probably one of the most biased fighters ever! The guy has got more excuses that it's almost comical. And many of his fans are just as bad. In the Tyson fight, Larry swore that if his hand didn't get caught in the ropes at the end of the 4th round, he would have knocked Tyson out with that punch. LOL.......

 

Exactly. Now Dempsey did, in fact, lift Willard off the floor. We can especially see this in the third round, when Jack's digging in bodyshots. There is no delayed reaction from Willard. Jess's feet hop off the deck in synchronicity with Dempsey's delivery of the blow. (This becomes especially evident when viewing the movie frame by frame.)

As hard as Foreman could hit, I'm not sold on the idea that he could have lifted Valuev off his feet with a bodyshot. But we have the readily available footage of Dempsey doing precisely that to an opponent of similarly greater size. That's why I consider Dempsey to be the hardest hitting heavyweight champion. (On a pound for pound basis, forget about it! No other HW titlist could even begin to approach Dempsey in that department.)

 

I'm no great admirer of Tyson's, but nobody could have taken him out with one shot when he was in top form. If Larry swore that he would have, then he deluded himself. He only came close to doing that against Weaver. But I do feel that if his hand hadn't got caught in the ropes, that he would have survived that round to be taken out in a later one.

 

:rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl :rofl

 

While Tyson may not have had the one punch power of a Baer or Foreman,his hand speed more than compensated for it,on a par with Dempsey ,and Louis,in fact he may have been the fastest at "pulling the trigger"of the punchers.

 

Watch Foreman-Chuvalo and you'll see Foreman physically moving Chuvalo several feet, into the ropes. You can see a similar thing in for instance Lewis vs McCall II where McCall was shoved into the ropes by punches, or the recent Klitschko vs Brewster II where he moved him a few meters by punches that were blocked.

 

Tyson's right on the top shelf. It's hard to single anyone out from there, tho Shavers seems to get some milage.

 

Tyson is a contender, for sure.

 

I'm in the minority, but I honestly think Tyson was more adept at frazzling nerve endings than George Foreman.
Foreman hit with more tonnage, but Tyson hit with more force.

Berbick was a very durable guy, but Tyson knocked him around from pillar to post, and flattened him with a hook to the head that didn't seem that hard initially. However, the results spoke for themselves.

Pinklon Thomas had never been off his feet, but Tyson put him down for 10. (Albeit with a huge combination.)

Tony Tubbs had never been stopped, but was iced with a single left hook.

Larry Holmes was old sure, but nobody ever kicked the snot out of Larry like Tyson did.

Spinks had never been knocked out, but he looked as if he were shot the way he fell against Tyson.

The durable Bruno was floored within seconds of the opening bell against Tyson in their first fight, and was brutally stopped twice.

Carl Williams has a shaky chin, but nonetheless Tyson flattened him with a single bomb.

Buster Douglas was dropped with a single right uppercut.

Francois Botha had only been stopped once (in the 11th against the heavy-punching Moorer) before getting crushed with a single Tyson right hand.

George was a huge puncher, but how many one-punch KO's did he have, even against journeymen? Even against lowly opposition, he often needed a couple of knockdowns to get the KO.