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Self-defeating prophecies and built-in excuses are a thing.

 

Sure, but show me where that is untrue.
Some kids are nearly or full grown by that age.
What makes it more impressive if true is that Tyson was not particularly tall-for an adult.
Others are even by that age.
More often they say he was near 200 by the time he was 13, I do not recall 12.
But either way, I have never heard it debated.

 

I've never seen a 12-year old that's that close to full grown in weight.

And Tyson was a few pounds under 200 lbs as an 17-year old, a few months away from 18. Granted he could have shaved a bit off before the weigh-ins, but he was ca 3 lbs below the limit in amateur contests, so it could very well just be his weight when in top form.

So we would then be looking at someone who didn't put on more than 10 lbs of muscle in 5 years of intense training between the age of 12 and 17. I need more than just memories to believe that. We know in for example in Marciano's case how things can be embellished after the fact by people close to the fighter (stories of Marciano's training habits compared to actual newspaper reports at the time).

With that said, Tyson was a extremely developed at a young age, without question. Just as Marciano was a very hard trainer.

 

You make a good case sir!

The trivial: again I have only heard 13 used as when he was near 200 lbs.
But you are behind the times if you do not know that there are times when even a boy-more easily a girl, who matured earlier even before much of our food became estrogenic & inspired earlier puberty in many of them, & normally never add as much muscle weight...

Can be near their adult, non-overweight weight by or in their early teens.
You would grant it can happen when someone is fat only when that young then loses weight, & granted we are not discussing such a technicality.
If Tyson was 190 at or by 13, he STILL was 25-30 lbs. lighter than in his prime!
So if he reached his (not very tall) adult height by then, or even close, that is still a HE(double hocky stick) amount of muscle!!

And that does not even consider that Tyson likely lost at least a little body fat when he matured with rigorous training.
A small example: when Tyson came back after prison & faced McNeeley he was only marginally heavier than his prime weight.
But had at least a bit more muscle than that would suggest since he was leaner.

So even considering that Tyson matured early like some girls unfortunately get pregnant as pre-teens or before, & more potentially could...
The numbers on Tyson & seemingly consistent recollections easily accommodate Tyson still gaining a ton of muscle.

 

The quote I was referring to was "190 lbs of muscle at 12". So that would at the very least make him five years younger than when he weighed in at ca 198 lbs for 201 lbs limit in 1984. Five years of hard training during a time when even those who's early in adolecense and might be close to their full height at 12-13 typically fill out and put on a lot of mass.

So why I have no doubt that he was a very rare specimen for a 12-year old, I wouldn't be surprised if a fair bit of embelishement is at play. Maybe he was 180 and 160-170 of that was lean weight. That would still make for a formidable 12-year old.

 

That is very discerning; you may be near dead on there.
Although it could be that reaching puberty early he could have started doing a fair amount of that filling out earlier...
And the boxing training limited how much MORE he would put on, until at 18 or so when turning professional his routine changed so he could add the significant amount of more muscle he filled out to in not that much more time.

Or did he drain at all, lose any weight to make 201 & go a little further than necessary?
Your instincts might be right, either way he was a very unusual specimen in amount of muscle, very young, without being even tall for an adult.


I met someone last week through a friend who works security at an NYC concert venue Summerstage.
He was from Bed Stuy & the projects, not far from adjacent Brownsville.
Older than Tyson or Bowe, he knew them both.
Said Tyson was massively wide, although his legs were not proportionate then.
Maybe that is where he gained most of his muscle in his late teens.

Also showed me how Tyson would get in people's faces, shaking my pockets to illustrate how he would demand $2.
Never went after him since he would fight back (& being not small may be relevant).
Said Tyson did sets of 100 pull ups or chin ups.
I quizzed him on the form, said that they were full range of motion.
AND then claimed he did them in an "L" position.

Now even doing 100 of any pull/chin ups seems very unlikely.
Certainly if he was at least 190 lbs.
That & doing them with his legs perpendicular-when say doing 35 would be fairly amazing-we would both agree that it is likely he is not lying or willfully exaggerating-or you may say that may well be the case...

That stories like this can become somewhat enhanced even in the teller's memory.

 

Yes, enhancing somewhat is not at all the same as flat out lying. I'm myself most times guilty of enhancing a bit when telling old stories I think. Both a bit unconscious, as things tend to magnify in your mind with time, and maybe stretching it a bit as well to make an even better story.

 

Are professional historians tutored a course of source study in universities in the West? I once decided to look up any books on that branch of historical science in English, and the only one I found was from 1890 something, as though such things are not tutored to Western historians at all.

 

Tyson 200 pound from age 12. 13? but also
still 200 pound at 18 in Olympic trial? LOL
& was 220 as 19 age
suspicious haha

no. there photo of Mike as 13 or 14 in boxing and he smaller. lot smaller

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/15/sports/mike-tyson-photos.amp.html

 

I don't remember now which book it was, I only remember it was from the end of 19th century.

The thing is in Russia, then in Soviet Union, then in Russia again, this branch of historical science has continued to be developed, the theoretical part that can/should be applied to printed media, in particular. The process is divided into three stages - heuristic, textual and hermeneutical, and the course provides a lot of explanations and advices regarding each stage. As it's a whole course (of lectures), I'm not qualified enough to give a short overview of it, I'm not a professional historian either, but being an amateur historian you can learn some things from the pros to improve your methods of research, which I'm trying to do. Maybe when I have spare time I might write more about it and how it is applied to boxing history.

 

Source study is just one out of many branches of historical science (which takes several years to graduate), and a very important one. It's a lot more than just primary/secondary, bias, whatever you listed above. That's why I thought it was weird that I couldn't find any similar books in English, the only ones google came up with was from several courses tutored in Western universities by historians who graduated in former USSR countries, why I concluded this part of historical science seemed to be never developed in the West, kinda weird.

 

Really good and thoughtful response. What the excellent thread deserved early on. I'm going to read on but doubt anyone will have answered the question as well. Hats off Sal. And you @cross_trainer . Good stuff.

 

Again, historiography is a different thing from a methodology of researching printed media sources, the latter is more general/abstract, but at the same time applicable for any research of books/newspapers/etc, no matter what epoch or country or culture you are going to research. Unless we are talking about the results of source study, then these two branches of historical science do intersect somewhat.

 

Taking my most recent field of study, as an example - figuring out the 1820's boxing history. There's no existing historiography dedicated to this particular period of time. You can gather all the sources you can find, Boxiana (vol. 3 by Pierce Egan, vol. 4 by Jon Bee, New Series two volumes by Egan), Pugilistica vol. 2, a number of assorted newspaper clippings, and just quote this or that source.

You probably don't know much about the authors of these write-ups for the newspapers, who are these people, how qualified they were, did they have bias, how credible their write-ups are, how to look for proof of their credibility, using what methods, do you even need to do this?

Which newspapers are better to use than the others (because they always or mostly provided unique content), did their content vary over time, so they were preferred source one year, and just an alt the other year? How to find information that can help you solve this problem?

What to do with other newspapers, who could provide their own content or they could copy it from another source, how do you figure which one was the primary source of information, what to do if they have similarities and differences in the text, how to treat these simliarities and differences as a historian/scientist? Which newspapers to add your your bibliography/list of references, and which to ignore.

Basically, before actually researching this boxing epoch, you need to spend plenty of time researching the sources that can be used, and then you have to use the sources you have found properly. That's one of the problems I have with Adam Pollack's books, for example, yes, finding a bunch of primary sources is very good, but do you really know if you have collected/used the right newspapers, the ones that are most qualified to tell the story? I don't think his choice of the National Police Gazette for a lot of stuff was the right choice, but you wouldn't understand it if you haven't been looking for contemporary opinions about that newspaper, and if haven't compared their contents with what other sources wrote on the same subject, how they pointed out the errors and the shortcomings of the NPG. Ie. you don't have works of historiography dedicated to this topic and period of time, you are prone to using the wrong sources or using the sources incorrectly in general.

 

Let's say, even if it does intersect with other historical methods/branches, I think it deserves to be a separate course even for the fact how often it's ignored in many historical write-ups I've seen, which just compile what they found on the subject and leaving it to the reader to pick the version they believe the most. The author, if he wanted to be scientific, hasn't done his job if he chose such approach. Not every primary source is the same, sometimes I'd even pick a secondary source over a primary one, because the author of the secondary source understood what he was doing, knew the pros and cons of the primary sources and corrected their shortcomings one way or another.