Mike Tyson Prime Vs Muhammad Ali 1964

I'm actually curious about the Douglas vs. Ali 64 prime poll. Buster should certainly be higher than Tyson in such a ranking, but since he didn't beat Mike White? How about Ferguson vs. Ali? Jesse fared better against Buster than Mike.

 

Exactly.

It's just a fight. You win some, lose some. Douglas won, Tyson lost. Because, as you say, Douglas fought better, beat him up. It's weird how people still feel the need to spend hours 'excusing' it.

 

You're just showing that Tyson was more consistent in his results against ranked heavyweights than Douglas was. All fighters (with few exceptions) lose some fights.

There's no disconnected between Tyson winning a string of fights against ranked heavyweights then losing to Douglas. The fact that (age 20 to 23) he won 10 'world title fights' and then lost 1 to Douglas doesn't mean the loss to Douglas was a 'fluke'. It's a good record.
The "L" to Douglas stands though, it's just a fight he lost, and yes, he was around his prime.

 

I don't have a problem with that, although it's a bit like someone scoring 40+ points 10 times in a row in the NBA, then scoring 20, and we'd say 40 points was always out of reach, but somehow he managed to do it those 10 times. It's okay, bro

 

I'm probably repeating this for the millionth time, but here it goes:

Tyson in 1990 was not necessarily a past-prime shell so much as he was damaged goods.
Upon taking complete control of Tyson's career, Don King fired everyone who had essentially worked with Tyson from the time he was a teenager, including his trainer, cornerman, and manager. Bill Cayton, Kevin Rooney and everyone else was either terminated or had died by that point.
Hired in their stead, were Rory Holloway, Aran Snowel, and Jay Bright. These were the men who worked with Tyson for some 18 months following the dissolving of the original team Tyson.
In the meantime, Mike had gone through several episodes of exercising erratic behavior:
- he had since been divorced by Robin Givens, and during the whole process, had made death threats to her and her mother;
- he had been involved in a car accident (allegedly called a suicide attempt), where he was injured-postponing the Frank Bruno fight, which had an original date of October 10, 1988;
- he had been in a street fight with ex-opponent Mitch Green which left Green's face a bloody mess, and Tyson's hand temporarily injured;
- he performed in subpar fashion against Frank Bruno;
- he would lose yet another family member, as his sister Denise Tyson would die tragically in her late 20's.

Tyson spent the weeks prior to the Douglas fight staying out late and rendezvouing with the local escort services. Additionally, he was struggling during training sessions, and at one point was dropped by Greg Page in a sparring session.
With his list of blood relatives dwindling, his former team dispatched, his life going to pieces, and working with incompetent management for over a year, Tyson entered the ring against James Douglas on February 12th 1990.

During the fight with Buster, Tyson was rarely making an effort to close the sizable gap against the much taller Douglas, whereas against other tall opponents with reasonable jabs, such as Tucker, Holmes, Tubbs, and Biggs, Tyson had slipped the jab and followed up with a barrage of combinations coming in. We saw little or nothing of this against Douglas.

Following the match, boxing legends, Gil Clancy and Angelo Dundee were interviewed on HBO. Both agreed that the corner work in that fight was some of the most unprofessional that either man had seen in quite some time. Snowel was using a dissolved bag of water to try and reduce Tyson's swelling over his eyes, while calmly giving him ambiguous advice with no real instruction " Mike your not closing the gap." All the while, Tyson sat with his head down during every intermission between rounds. There was clearly no interest here...

CONCLUSION: Was Mike Tyson the same fighter who had thoroughly flattened the division when he was with the Catskill team ? Absolutely not. He was by this point, the product of an unstable life outside of the ring, as well as a cash cow who was poorly managed. Ad on his immaturity and lack of guidance, and frankly, I think any decent challenger in the 1990 top 10 would have had a good chance of doing to him what Douglas did.

Tyson vs Douglas was nothing more than an obscure case where one man fought the absolute best fight of his career, while the other fought the absolute worst. It does not reflect that James Douglas would have competed admirably against all time greats nor that Tyson would have necessarily lost to them when at his absolute best.

 

Cope I fear.

 

The thing is that Douglas also had his fair share of problems.
Like others said, it's part of one's greatness to adapt to bad circumstamces.
And it's not like Tyson was always in 100% great shape every time he fought before : he had medical problems against Tillis, Berbick and Smith ; had an awful camp before facing Tucker.
Douglas was simply better than night, and Tyson acknowledges so anytime he talks about that fight.

Also, I think it's a myth that Tyson always moved his head, jabbed and threw combinations under Rooney. As a good as Tyson was, he quite often had tendencies to walk straight in, throw one big punch and purposely fall in clinches. Rooney often reminded him to throw more combos ("Don't look for the one shot to the head !") and move his head.
The Thomas fight is a good exemple of that.

 

Thanks for listing all of the excuses in one place!

 

Or ******ed

 

Do you have a similar list of excuses for a lot of the guys Tyson beat as well?
I mean, the 1980s was notorious for heavyweight boxers with a whole load of "personal", "drugs", "management" "wife" and "promoter" issues?
Trevor Berbick was actually severely mentally unstable, and had just split with his trainer Eddie Futch. Pinklon Thomas was on heroin from about 12 years old, had been disturbed by a detached retina operation (at a time when there was a lot of hysteria around them) and a big divorce battle. Tony Tubbs had cocaine addiction and no discipline, and his trainer walked out on him the week of the fight. Tyrell Biggs was an unreliable drug addict and alcholic who was being cashed in. Tony Tucker was a cocaine addict with disputed contracts that carved him into pieces, and was reported injured before the fight. Michael Spinks had been off a year, didn't really like boxing, had lost his wife a few years earlier to a car accident, and had very damaged knees. Etc.

If we give Tyson a pass for being KO'd by Douglas, should we give those guys a pass to for being KO'd by Tyson (at a time when things were arguably going well for Tyson) ?

 

The paradox of excuse making. Every fighter goes through sh1t, every fighter deals with niggling injuries at one time or the other - when we are talking about the absolute very best of the best, the very best have zero to very little excuses.

It's very telling when the same allowances aren't applied to other fighters that you apply to the ones that you champion - someone cynical would say it's bias and hypocritical.

When the man defeated and most of the world and their dog accepts that the better man won, nothing else needs to be said really.

The one victory that Tyson has that offends me when people champion it as proof of his eliteness is the fight with Holmes. This fight in no way proves his greatness - that version of Larry was nowhere near ready to be in the ring with Tyson.

 

It seems Mike was a myth. He was the first real opponent and he shattered him to pieces. Buster was incredibly unlucky not to have Mike in his place.

 

Mike was no myth - the greatest destroyer of B and C level opponents at HW IMO.

However, he, like any fighter, wasn't infallible but some of his fans want to avoid taking his prime loss for what it really is. Even if we accept that Mike had many things going against him into the fight, more than Buster? As someone who's lost a parent, there's not many bigger things that affect your ability to be at your best.

Reality is Tyson is better than his detractors make him out to be and worse than his most ardent fanatics make him out to be. When distinguishing between the very best of the division, things like ability to overcome adversity in the ring do count.

 

I think if Buster with problems defeated Prime Mike unilaterally, Buster without problems would have done it even easier. That's the logic. Buster should have dominated the Mike era instead of Mike himself, but maybe Jesse Ferguson and Tony Tucker were simply in better shape than when they faced Mike, and their problems got in the way.

 

Weird way of looking at fights but fair enough.

Facing an elite fighter makes it in some ways easier to bring your best performance when you face an elite fighter than when you face a mediocre. Buster isn't an ATG - what tends to separate the ATGs from the mere HOF very good fighters is ability to maintain consistency throughout career.

The logic doesn't stand up in the way that that supposition would suggest. Mike lost - Buster then got beat by Evan - NOBODY makes excuses for that version of Buster. Coming into a fight and overcoming whatever adversity is going on is part of the job, the same way a CEO goes through divorce or addict kids and still has to coach and mentor success.