How good was Tyson's stamina?

Watch the Tyson who fought Douglas or even Bruno, then watch him against Thomas, Berbick, etc.. it's like night and day.

 

How can someone even say that Mike had bad stamina? He must had incredible stamina for his "keep pressure" style and for generating so much energy to his punches.

 

Tyson stamina was pretty good early in his career, certainly after prison it was a bit of a problem. Tyson in his prime was never really able to carry a high punch count through any of his long fights because he threw everything into a lot of his punches which can be very tiring to along with his active head movement and footwork. Though I think his stamina was good in his prime I believe there were many great fighters whos were a lot better and could've taken advantage of this had they met Tyson and took him into the later rounds.

 

I'm not so sure. Where is the evidence to suggest it?

If you watch the Tucker and Smith fights, he is not even remotely out of breath at the end of either fight. One could argue that neither were particularly gruelling affairs and that's true, but even so Smith for example was sucking in air from about the 6th round on whereas Tyson was breathing normally.

To be honest, I'm not sure where this rumour of bad stamina came from...maybe from the fact that he didn't score many (barely any) late-round KO's?
Maybe posters remember the mid-late 90's version, where stamina did seem to be more of an issue.
But around the late 80's when he was at his best, there is absolutely no evidence to suggest he had suspect stamina. I'm fully expecting folk to go and check for themselves...please do.

Had the likes of Smith and Tucker tried to make a fight of it and presented Tyson more opportunities to punch, we may have seen more later round knockouts. Unfortunately both were content to grab, dance away and basically try to survive rather than fight, especially Smith.

 

The only time Tysons stamina looked questionable was the first Holyfield fight, he was huffing and puffing by round 4. Prior to that, Tyson never looked like he was gassed. Bored maybe but not gassed

against Douglas he looked very sloppy like his punches had no power in them.

To those saying Tyson didn't carry his power late, that's because alot of the time guys were already knocked out, only a handful of guys went past 8 rounds with Tyson, some beat him, others held on for dear life and made it to the end

 

actually Tyson has stated, he knew he wasn't what heonce was but he knew if he hit someone hard enough hes knock them out. I can provide the sports illustrated article where he made comments that he wasn't ready for the fight but he needed the money.

as for the 6 round it had nothing to do with adversity. Watch the fight again. Tyson has his best round in round 5 he follows on strongly at the start of the 6th, then there is a low blow by Holyfield, a headbutt and then a knockdown, Tyson was affected by the headbutt, you can see Holyfield actually targeting it later on again.

Tyson got up from the knockdown straight away, it was the headbutt that did it. Hence why Tyson snapped in the second fight.

'this man is taller than me, what's his head doing under my chin'

Holyfield also landed the same 'combo' on Dokes