Greatest heavyweight with weakest resume?

Tell me again who has more title defenses, Tyson or Johnson?

 

I went inactive for a while, but i was one of the more active posters here back in 2018-2020

 

It was an indefensible claim & Seamus knows better or so I would expect.

 

Shoulda, woulda, coulda.. He already beat a continuous slew of top fighters, did that thing so very rare amongst heavies and "cleaned out the division". Title challenger Tillis, one loss Green, one loss Frazier, RIbalta, ex champ Bonecrusher, champ Berbick, ex champ Pinky, champ Tucker, undefeated Biggs, Larry freaking Holmes (who would come back to title challenge half a decade later), ex champ Tubbs, champ Spinks, future champ Bruno and that dude who hit like a mule kicks Ruddock TWICE? And he fit all that into four years rather than rest on laurels in Hollywood and make title defenses against complete cherries like Carpnetier or Firpo. Or get a round robin of old men, light heavies and white dopes like Marciano. If his career merely ended in 1991, Tyson's legacy blows Dempsey and Marciano's out of the water.

Frazier, who holds the greatest victory in the division, has a better case but Tyson's depth is greater and he didn't flame out like Frazier until after a 3 year stint in the can. But again, I will not even include his victories against Bruno, Botha, Golota, etc that occurred when he was obviously compromised during his "second career".

 

Larry Holmes still an ATG, but particularly after Cooney, even before some of those guys.......still making 20 defenses against anyone deserves a lot of merit.

 

Marciano probably the weakest, Walcott, Charles and Moore were old enough to be Rocky's father.

 

And Ali was in great shape for Frazier, right? Still, I give Frazier full credit for his victory as I do Tyson.

Let's focus on what Tyson did before prison, which was 42 fights, or 6 more fights than Frazier ever fought.

Wouldn't call a 6-4, super talented dude who beat Berbick, Page and McCall and Tyson a journeyman per se. Perhaps a career underachiever who rose to the occasion several times. Dempsey had his Flynn and Meehan. Johnson had his Choynski. Ali should have had his Cooper were it not for Dundee. Sht happens in the ring, especially when you are a coked up alchy. But what Tyson had already done was enough.

What is this crap argument? Do we want to talk about his Jake Paul fight, too. Let's focus on his reign of terror when in a 4 year prime run where he crowded in the fights rather than laying on settee getting blown by starlets.

 

Braddock.

 

Johnson signed to fight his 3 outstanding black challengers,Langford,Jeannette and McVey.the fact those fights did not happen was not his fault ,and this is totally verified in several books.

 

Tyson won 75% of his victories in the 1980s. By 1989, he won 37 fights, including 10 for the title. In the remaining 12 years of his career, he didn't win even half of the fights he won in the first 5 years of his career... this is the most uneven it can be, and these periods are clearly divided. We can, of course, take into account the fights with Lewis, Williams, Nielsen, McBride and say - Tyson was a complete fake. Or watch the Douglas-Tyson fight and say, Buster should have been the youngest champion, he should have unified the titles, not Tyson, and wonder how it didn't happen. We can also assume that Jersey Joe Walcott's career is also a fake, at his best he lost to journeymen and even to rivals who had more defeats than victories, and wonder what the hell Rocky Marciano had in mind when he said that Walcott was his best opponent. I have no idea why people treat other people, athletes, like characters from a computer game who still have the same skills, the same power, speed, stamina, etc. No, they don't. The whole history of boxing shows this... But no one, absolutely no one in history, he has never reached the top like Tyson. He didn't do it that way.

 

While he obviously should have fought Langford again technically speaking Jim Johnson was the best black HW he had not fought. He'd beaten Jeanette and McVea many times there was no reason to make those fights.

 

Zzzzzzzz, again?