could anyone else have made tyson outside of cus...

sometimes thats true...and its also a good thing to drill into a young man....because it will make him mentally harder..is it really true in the absolute sense of the word..of course not..but i can see how believing that as a fighter could be very effective.

 

he didnt move his head constantly your right..but i think given his build that was plus..he would have had a hard time doing that....his early training film shows that cus...using rooney and teddy..would have tyson drill slips for roudns upon rounds...repeating steps over and over again, head slip, step to the left and pivot,..pivot into a south paw stance...right hook....all these moves where practiced again and again....all the head movement and foot work was drilled....that was due to the style and training methods of Cus.

 

I completely agree, Floyd would have been the perfect man for the job. :good

However I don't think King would have wanted Tyson with such a positive influence, that could have made him realise King was an awful thieving manager.
(Although I know Tyson wanted to leave King before even the 1st fight with Ruddock, with offers from men including Steve Wynn on the table.)

 

3:13 Tyson dips to the left with his feet squared up big time, primed for a left hook, only Ruddock pulls out and tries to throw it from mid range, instead of turning it over inside.

Also, look at the way Green throws the jab, thats a dont hit me jab if
ever ive seen one, he is not even snapping it, he is pushing it.

Tyson gets picked off when Green has some space behind him
to move into, all Tyson does is move his head slightly, not greatly effective either, but generally just follow him toward the ropes where Green has no more room to move back, then he can go to work when he is trapped on the ropes.

What Tyson was good at IMO, was slipping and countering from a standing position, ala Carl Williams, but is head-movement was vastly overrated from my perspective.

 

I think Tyson was more of a guy that used head-movement to counter, rather than to lead off and not get hit, which i would say probably worked well for him, because he had one punch power, where maybe some like Frazier had to work a little harder in combination, although i know there is also video of Mike throwing combos, just that generally he could afford to set up that one shot with his head movement because his power.

I dont know, he had good head-movement, just feel it gets overstated somewhat. I would say someone like Qawi had better head-movement, mainly early in his career.

 

Ali was right that Frazier wasn't as quick or skilled as Cus

Tyson was lucky enough to have a great great trainer and work in a great gym. Boxing is knowledge and skill, if he had trainers without skill he wouldn't be so good or great

 

I think that style suited Tysons physical attributes quite well. The movement and power punching, etc.
I think with Tyson yes, there would be a number of guys who could have trained him and done ok, he was quite the athelete with his speed and power.
Cus did a job on Tyson mentally and that was biggest part, and I dont think too many guys could have gotten Tyson to buy into what they were preaching like Cus did.

 

Roach anyone? , He is quick of hand and foot like Pacman and has power.

Instead of bobbing and weaving he would be going in and out and turning the other fighter?

 

I don't they they are asking about theoretical trainers from any period. I believe they are asking about trainers that would have been available at that time.

 

I agree, this is what Cus did for Mike. In that recent doc Mike talks about how Cus broke him down and then built him back up brick by brick. He saw something in Mike, kept telling him he could be champion before mike had a bout. From what Mike says, he probably wouldn't have been a fighter at all had he not crossed paths with Cus. It's a good bet he would have ended up dead or in prison.

As far as style, what has always struck me was not his head movement, but his upper body movement on his way in from the waist up, off of which he brought big shots while presenting a moving target. There may have been other trainers that could have been as technically good for Mike, but I doubt any could've gotten through to him but Cus.

 

Oddly enough Tracy never fought in that D'Amato style. He was more of a stand up boxer puncher type.

 

True. And even during Torres-Cotton, no less an authority than Carlos Ortiz commented that he was against the peek-a-boo style. (The ongoing action prevented him from further elaborating on this.) What I was getting at though is that Floyd had to be a highly competent trainer to lead a son to become a champion who did not share his genetically inherited endowments. Tyson would have been easy for him, as Mike already utilized a style Patterson was wholly familiar with, and one Floyd used successfully into his late 30s.

Patterson beat Bonavena at 37, and he wasn't necessarily washed up after Ali II. He was proof that style could be sustained well over a 20 year career. The final career numbers of Tyson and Patterson are remarkably similar in many ways. Each competed professionally for 20 years. Floyd took a two year hiatus between Ellis and Green, while Mike was out for four years between Ruddock II and Pete McNeeley. Both were stopped five times. Patterson had 55 wins, Tyson 50. Floyd stopped 40 opponents, Mike 44. Mike had 58 fights, Patterson 64. The big difference though is in how they responded to life without Cus, and how they finished their careers. Floyd may well have still been a top five heavyweight at the end. He was certainly a top five character, maybe not quite Barney Ross material, but perhaps Tiger Flowers class. Under his guidance, Tyson's weight would have stayed under 220, and he'd be better prepared for life after Floyd, quite possibly a very productive and fulfilling retirement. (As a boxing historian instead of carnival sideshow, he could have done the sport a tremendous service.)

 

Cant argue with this and I agree. It is amazing to watch in some of the clips of Tyson as a young champion, how he speaks about the pitfalls of a prizefighter and the importance of staying focused and never underestimating anyone. He was very aware of what to expect and avoid, yet he still succumbed to wrong path.

 

After Holmes, he talked about the inevitability of eventually finding his aging self in the same defeated situation he had just placed Larry in. Still, when that young, it's enormously valuable to have a respected elder to provide guidance and a good example, not yes people to enable bad behavior. Floyd was the sort of gentleman who would always give his seat on a bus to a lady. Especially with respect to his treatment of women, Patterson could have imparted a mode of conduct which might have saved Mike a world of grief. As Tyson's trainer and mentor, he'd have never allowed Mike to take anybody lightly.

In hindsight, I'm a little surprised that the elderly Cus didn't steer Tyson more in Floyd's direction in the event of his death. Paddy Flood instructed Hamsho to rely on Al Certo if anything happened to him, and Flood was only 48 when he died of a cerebral hemorrhage. (Hamsho was already pushing 30 when Flood died, over two years before D'Amato. Mustafa's a class act who's done real well in retirement, and become something of a pillar in his NYC community.) Cus was a quarter century older than that when he took Mike under his wing, and Floyd was a very fit, healthy and active 50 year old running marathons when Cus died.

There was never any possibility that D'Amato would live long enough to conduct Mike into fully mature adulthood. Jimmy Jacobs had been diagnosed with leukemia in 1980. Patterson was the only potential father figure who might have been strong enough a character to command Mike's respect and provide him with a grounded center as he became more rich and famous. Atlas and Rooney were too close to him in age, being just ten years older. Floyd had 31 years on Tyson, understood the experience, demands and pitfalls of celebrity, and was accomplished enough in boxing and life to command the authority over the "baddest man on the planet" necessary to channel, contain and restrain the beast.

Now, the thread starter asked about what if Tyson had never met Cus in the first place, but was trained by another guide available at the same time. Eddie Futch is clearly the man, and Mike was 35 when Eddie died in 2001. Futch would have made Tyson into a two fisted, two eyed Frazier. Mike would have become more resilient, better on the inside, with a much stronger stance than the squared up posture of the peek-a-boo style. Given his power from both sides, he might have been something of a Frazier-Marciano hybrid, more attrition oriented than the slugger he became.

 

Agreed. That Futch touch, but d'amato only worked with a very few select people.

And the big big loss for Tyson was the Jimmy Jacobs death. That guy was a top shelf manager and didn't spend all of his time promoting himself, which seems to be a common occurance of most recent managers.

I thought the loss of Jacobs was bigger than D'amato when it got right down to it. the thing that has been always overlooked is that Tyson was groomed to be olympic champ and then move on to the pro's. 82-84 timeframe. That was the Cus gameplan. But Tyson was ko'd as an amateur and then had those 2 big losses in the olympic trials. Big losses and he was supposed to get the gold. But those losses did show a ***** in the armour.