How big of a deal was Tyson-Spinks to the mainstream public?

Huge, with a capital H.

 

Really? Were people expecting a great fight?

 

At the time Mike was not being valued as the worlds best heavyweight by Ring magazine which carried a lot of weight as the so called Bible of boxing.. Mike had all 3 major belts but Ring stated that its criteria was a Champion (linear) could only lose his title in the ring and the Undisputed champ was listed as Mike Spinks at heavyweight.. Mike had a complex about this and wanted to get rid of Spinks to claim he was the outright number 1.. Mike Spinks had also just battered Gerry Coony impressively to uphold his cause as linear holder... Even having a belt made for him calling himself the peoples champ holding the new ruby encrusted belt into the ring with him... Tyson and Spinks was a enormous event and the people involved had it named as The Superfight..... It was the closest thing at the time as Frazier v Ali 1... Mike Spinks however looked by fight time very drained and stressed almost like a beaten man submitting to the fact Tyson had his whole life geared towards knocking Spinks out asap to make his crowning statement solid as a rock.. the card was full of great heavyweight matches and a lot of amazing characters and stars were all out at the most glitzy event i can remember in years..

The fight was HUGE !!!!!

 

Unprecedented. Massive.

I was only 7 years old at the time--too young to know much about boxing, but all of the kids new who Mike Tyson was (people forget what a public icon he was), and the hype even reached down to people of my age.

I remember hearing it talked about on the radio a lot and I recall the TV ads too. I remember really anticipating the fight and getting caught up in the buildup, even though I had no chance of seeing it.

I remember wanting Mike Tyson to win because he was the "smaller guy", so I thought I was cheering for the underdog. Shows how much I knew at that age, haha.

 

Drained? How so?

 

Most people figured Tyson would beat Spinks, but Spinks having never lost before made it interesting. Some thought Spinks might be able to find a way to extend Tyson and test him. Others felt Spinks really wanted no part of Tyson and was about to get crushed.

As said, Spinks was considered the lineal champ and held the key to being recognized as the real unified champion. Tyson could go on winning belts forever, but he would never be recognized as the one and only champ until he beat Spinks.

Ultimately, the object of the fight was to crown a single unified champion, something the division hadn't had since Ali lost to Spinks' brother a decade earlier, and that as much as anything made this such a high profile, captivating fight. Spinks appeared to have stalled making this fight for a couple of years, and only took it now because he had nowhere else to go (Tyson had all the official belts) and he got a humongous payday.

 

The fight was HUGE.
Not that many actually thought Spinks would win, but that he was Tyson's last remaining rival. Tyson's reputation had just been building and building and now everyone on the planet knew who he was, and knew he was very very good. His previous fights had been BIG, but this was astronomical.

It was shown live on free TV here in the UK, in the middle of the night. Also, it was a monday or other weekday night ?! And it was shown again on free TV the following evening prime time at 8 p.m.
But by that time every news bulletin on TV and radio had been running the news, press conference footage, a big big story, how Tyson's pay had worked at at something like $250,000 per second of ring action !

It was a BIG BIG fight.
But in those days boxing mattered.

 

The fight was as signifigant as Ali-Frazier 1 in as much as there were two men who had legitimate claims on the title. Very few people expected it to be as good a contest though.

 

Huge fight. Spinks had his share of fanfare, don't believe other.

 

It was a huge superfight that transcended boxing ... the general pulic, the non-boxing or even sports fan knew all about it. It was a main news event, not a huge sports event.

Three fighters in my lifetime commanded that crossover attention ... Ali, Leonard and Tyson. Not even Oscar did it .

 

More people picked Spinks than most think. There was a lot of so called experts that picked this fight to be very competitive and close. Because Tyson absolutely demolished Spinks it was simply written off as a mismatch, Spinks was scared, too small, etc. in reality it showed how great Tyson could be at his best, and that night Tyson was at his best.

 

Biggest fight of my lifetime that I can remember. It was massive.

Oh, and to those who are saying most didnt give Spinks a chance: One of the bigger magazines at the time, cant remember which, had an entire issue dedicated solely to the fight. In that issue that interviewed a ton of people for their opinions on who would win and the picks were split almost exactly down the middle. Another aspect that made it so big was that it was the first time two undefeated heavyweight champions fought while they were rated #1 and #2 P4P in the world.

 

Amazingly enough, they were. The general fight fan is stupid. They believed Spinks would use his jab and smartly box iron Mike into the middle rounds and tire him out with MT's shots flying harmessly over Spink's head.

I smelled mismatch and predicted two rounds. The crowd didnt seem to mind it ended quickly but the performance went to the heads of some of his supporters and Mike became boxing itself.

 

In fact, the first time this fight got build up started with a tournament style to see who would be the true claimant to the title. You could see it just before the start of the Tyson-Pnklon Thomas fight in 1987.

One pretty much knew who was going to end up in the final as they kept giving Spinks all the soft opposition: Tangstad, Cooney. In fact, their camp was hard pressed to find anyone safe enough for their man. IMO, the Cooney fight look fixed the way Gerry kept standing there refusing to let anything go. It looks like they paid him off to lose