Mike Tyson's slippage in his techincal Skills, a good example

A good example of his slippage. If you watch the first 2 rounds of the bonecrusher fight pre Rooney Tyson you can see Tyson getting low in a crutch and moving his head more. You can also see him letting his hands go more in combination and boxing more coming behind the jab.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fka_m4nyOLQ


Now in this fight(Post Rooney Tyson) against Rudduck, a fight where Tyson was still in his prime and in great Shape, you can see a difference. Both Rudduck and Bonecrusher are bangers this is the reason why i'm using these videos as an example and you can see that Tyson in this fight is fighting too straight up and not getting in that crutch as low or moving his head as much. He also is looking for one punch to get the job done. He only throws combo's when he got rudduck hurt. The whole point is, he was far more techincally superior and more multi dimensional in his pre rooney days, which is why he was very hard to beat.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3m7tXD-IuA

 

:good

 

I was gonna use Tubbs and Douglas comparison but Tyson didn't train for that fight, that's why I used Bonecrusher and Rudduck because he came ready to fight for both fights and there both pre rooney and post rooney.

 

ruddock was post douglas, pre prison and importantly he was VERY motivated especially for the second fight. he wanted to win and win big and that was a very dedicated, determined and focused tyson that night. and yet, still nowhere near his best

 

Good and interesting post:think:thumbsup

 

Exactly. Some people don't get it when I try to explain it to them.

 

Thanks. :good

 

I think that was do to the fact of boredom because bonecrusher choose not to fight but survive. Had bonecrusher fought Tyson the way Rudduck fought the post rooney tyson, he wouldn't of lasted the distance.

 

Yeah, I wouldn't use the Bonecrusher fight as a good demonstration of a prime Tyson. In fact, I think that fight says something about today's huge HWs would try to tame him to an extent.

Of course, the usual expectation is that the opponent actually would attempt to win the fight (unlike Bonehugger).

Still, though, I agree with your larger point. I think the Spinks fight was the final fight of the true, prime Tyson.

 

Rooney like D'Amato put a huge emphasis on head and upper body movement, not so much on squaring up, because of Tyson ability to punch so hard. Giachetti tried to get him to be more of a technical fighter while still punching in combinations. Aaron Snowell and jay Bright, didnt care what Tyson did in the ring, because they had no clue. Snowell later became a pretty respectable guy, but at that time, he was not cut out to handle Tyson.

 

No disrespect to Giachetti but he changed something that was effective. The old saying is, why change something that works and that's what he did. What your suppose to do is try and add something to it but he didn't do that.

 

what grinds me so much is his DEFENSE in the rooney era. I forget who he was fighting but way back there was a youtube clip of him slipping 34 punches in a row, waiting for the guy to tire, then flooring him with one left hook. his speed and his power are devasting yes, but the reason he posts so high on head 2 head fights is during his true prime his head movement was legendary

 

Your examples are spot on but you can shorten the span between the fights. Tyson's technical skills were eroding as early as the first Bruno fight. The Williams KO masked this but the Douglas showed us that the calculating fighter that Tyson had once been was no more.

By the time Tyson fought Ruddock he was just walking in and eating Ruddock's telegraphed punches. If he didn't have such a good chin he would have went the way of Bonecrusher Smith and Michael Dokes, both of whom Ruddock "smashed."