How did Mitch Green do better against Mike Tyson than Michael Spinks

Spinks is an infinitely better fighter than Green and would Iikely beat Green at heavyweight quite convincingly.

 

Green was fresher than Spinks, had bravado to hang in there till the end.
Spinks had been in wars, had a dodgy knee and was not in the right frame of mind on fight night.

 

Spinks was scared. Green wasn't

 

Styles makes fights

 

Green was 6'5 durable and tied up Tyson on the inside. Green fought to survive and was tough enough to do so there's no real revelation behind it.

Green was technically never stopped in his career the one stoppage loss wasn't actually a stoppage it was some dispute where Green refused to throw punches.

 

Tyson got better.

 

Green didn't **** his trunks before the fight.

 

I think Spinks beats Mr. Green

 

Spinks tried to fight back + Green also had a great chin.

 

Green is a nutter. Spinks is a sensible person.

 

A) Spinks was in bad shape physically, with knees that had been messed up since him amateur days.
B) Styles make fights. Tyson always had a harder time with big boys.

 

Green actually did worse than Spinks in his rematch with Tyson in Harlem.

 

One was a heavyweight. One wasn’t. Pretty simple, man.

 

The tale of that confrontation at Dapper Dan’s is an interesting one.

Both men’s accounts told long since more or less match, except that Mike says Mitch was high on PCP (how would he know that?) and Mitch says he wasn’t.

Other than that, they agree: Green came up and approached Mike talking smack, saying Mike didn’t beat him — Don King beat him (and owed him money … seems like in later years they could bond over that common experience lol).

When Mitch came close, Mike hit him with a right hand and dropped him. Mike broke his hand, Mitch’s eye swelled shut.

Mike then beat a hasty retreat to his car. Mitchell got straight up and walked after him. While Mike was trying to start the car, Green hit the side window with his fist. Mike got the car started and hit the accelerator — Mitch grabbed the side-view mirror and ripped it straight off with his bare hand.

So yeah, Mike knocked him down. But he didn’t knock him out. Mitch got his eye swelled up, Mike had to postpone his fight with Frank Bruno due to the hand injury. Mike didn’t stay to finish the fight, he beat ass out of there. And got his Roll Royce damaged by Mitch ripping off the mirror.

If you get down to it, Mike ran rather than face the man to the finish. Both got some publicity and Mike got his career sidelined for several months.

Anyway, as far as Spinks:

Michael Spinks threw like 12 right leads in 91 seconds (of which he was on the canvas for more than 15 owing to taking a knee after a body shot for a break and then being counted out), so total action 70-something sections. I never heard Spinks or Eddie Futch discuss the game plan, but it was an odd one — right leads at a charging Mike Tyson rather than use his jab … which was probably his best weapon?

Maybe they thought Tyson would run into one and it would make him pause enough to slow things down or something like that. But really kind of stupid when you think of it. But you don’t throw that many right leads in that short of a time period by accident, so it had to be the plan.

Watch the entire 10 rounds of Tyson-Green and you’ll see Mitch was there to clutch and survive. He threw some kind of slapping jabs and then grabbed. He threw fewer meaningful punches in 10 rounds vs Tyson than Spinks did in 70-something seconds of action.

Which is to say, I don’t think Green did ‘better’ than Spinks — he was a bigger, taller guy and he was in pure survival mode. Bonecrusher and Tucker also lasted rounds with Tyson as bigger guys doing the same thing, more or less.

The only time Mitch Green came to fight vs Tyson was after he got up from the knockdown at Dapper Dan’s. That Mike couldn’t put him down to keep him there bare-knuckled is interesting, and if Green had gotten ahold of Mike like he did that car mirror, we might have seen what Tyson was made of in a real fight.

I was told by a boxing person from the NYC boxing scene of that era that Green was a sort of mid-level manager — like a street-level officer — of a MAJOR drug operation during those days. People feared him not so much because of what he could do in the ring but because he could put a hit on someone and had some guys who would probably carry it out.

As an amateur, Green won four NY Golden Gloves titles (not a ton of guys have done that), fought for the U.S. internationally and beat a Russian or two, and had wins over Tyrell Biggs, David Bey and Jimmy Clark with losses to Marvis Frazier and Greg Page. He was definitely a prospect but I’m told his main hustle was the street gang and drug operation.

 

Tyson was 19 years old facing a late 20’s Green who also had a 6’5” 228 lb body. Against Michael Spinks, Tyson was a fully developed world champion at his peak while Spinks career had been winding down for some time…. And quite honestly I don’t think Michael showed up with any intention of making that a long night