Did Mike Tyson in his prime only beat bums and over the hill fighters?

Most guys were in their late 20’s/early 30’s and reigning or former champions. He did all a champion can do in facing the best he possibly could in his era and destroyed them.

 

They were the best available at the time.

 

Nope. They were all solid contenders.

 

Tyson’s opposition wasn’t any worse than a lot of other champions...many of whom never get criticized

 

Huh? Pretty sure only Holmes and Berbick were past it. The rest were all more than legitimate contenders...Tubbs, Smith, Tucker, Bruno, Williams, Thomas. Many either were or became champs.

There's no taking away from what Iron Mike did in the 80s. He was sensational.

 

ABSOLUTELY!

I ask the OP why...He even asked this question.
And if you feel that Tyson only beat "Winos from the Ali"...

Tell us exactly which champions, particularly HWs, had a good or better resume leading up to or during his title run.
Everybody on earth fights some relative stiffs, especially when they were just starting out.
Even Ali did not have a better-at best as good-run leading to & during his title.
Even when he faced great competition during the '70's he also fought some "bums"!

See what former champs fought better or even as good competition, as often as Tyson did, during this '70's run.
If you pick apart Tyson's opponents...They are almost certainly gonna have better records & H2H status than most any other HWs.


Most times they were worse, sometimes markedly so.

 

No

 

I didn’t feel that way at all. No they were not ATG’s in their primes but there’s a huge gap between being that and “ bums.” It was somewhere in between

 

100%. I believe this is an unfair use of hindsight.

 

Not in the slightest.

Tyson beat Spinks, Holmes (old, but could still go), Tubbs, Thomas, and Tucker. All of which were good wins.

The Spinks win was a great one.

 

Have a wander through the list of Tyson's opponents, and flag all those of who already had either:-

a) a crack cocaine or other drug addiction,
b) had come out of retirement to fight Tyson,
c) were carefully selected / matched with Tyson during his novice to contender phase due to being 'tailor made' for Tyson, and / or
d) had recently lost.

Some had more than one of these flags. Do this and you will find you are left with a lesser / smaller list. As its been said, you can only fight what you have available.

I might have to start quoting the contemporaneous opinions of boxing writers / analysts from the time to contextualize how smart boxing people alive then actually viewed the quality of Tyson's opponents. World's apart from the retrospective bubble-wrapping I read here.

 

That's arguable.

 

That's overstating it but most of the big names were past it due to age, injury, drugs and poor training.

All of that not withstanding, Holmes, Tucker, and Bonecrusher managed some good wins after, Williams gave hell to Morrison, and many people felt Tubbs beat Bowe. Bruno of course went on to win a belt.

So not bad. Not an Ali list, but not a Dempsey list either.

A shame because I honestly think that Tyson could have been remembered as the best ever. His real prime was basically Berbick to Spinks, and then he abruptly stopped doing the things that made him special with the combos and Peek-a-boo, and got heavily into drugs and alcohol.

 

100%. Even with Holmes, nobody ever did what Tyson did to him, before of after. Berbick himself was on a 9-0 winning streak having just won the WBC belt and at 32 was younger than today’s elite in Fury, Wilder and AJ (32 soon).