I think Thomas had the tools to beat Tyson, the only thing that might be his downfall is he might not be able to stick rigidly to the right strategy. Jabbing and breaking Mike's rhythm and moving just enough to confuse Tyson. I mean, on one hand I can see Thomas doing enough of what Douglas did to win this fight, but I can also see him getting stuck in a slugging match too much, like Ruddock did, and being outpointed or stopped late.
Using the Douglas fight as basis for beating Peak Tyson is pretty flawed. http://articles.orlandosentinel.com...2023249_1_tyson-trevor-berbick-buster-douglas I honestly believe that 35 year old Berbick could have beaten Tyson that night in Tokyo too, which is a strong statement considering how Tyson obliterated him in '86. Shame I couldn't find the interview with Berbick in which he states that Tyson was performing so poorly, even before leaving for Japan, that he was getting his ass handed to him in sparring. Note how infrequent Tyson's sparring was for the fight, whereas with Rooney he would spar at least 10 rounds every day in training camp, up until three days prior to fighting.
Tyson would obviously find it a lot harder. He'd still win,by late round stoppage. Thomas would take his share of the early stanzas.
I've always had similar thoughts, and can remember thinking back in 1990 that most of the top 10 heavy weights at the time such as Razor Ruddock, Evander Holyfield, George Foreman, and even Tim Witherspoon would have left Tokyo with the title that night.. I don't like to make excuses for a fighter's defeats, but the plain simple fact of the matter is that you had one guy in the ring that evening who was fighting and one who wasn't. I don't think Tyson showed even so much as 30% of the aggression, tenacity, workrate or fluidity that he had previousy shown in most of his fights... Even the Tyson who was highly criticized for is lackluster performance against Frank Bruno a year earlier was leagues better than that version of Tyson.... To conlude, It was Tyson's fault that he lost and Douglas deserved the win, but unlike some fans, I refuse to use this bout as a measure for representing Tyson in fantasy fights... It literally would have been the equivalent of using the Muhammad Ali of the Spinks fights, even though both men looked like **** for different reasons..
Tyson was off in training camp, and off in the ring, but I dont buy that he "wasn't there" or offered no aggression. Ali was shot to hell in the Spinks fights, and in several fights leading up to that. Old, and he'd been in several wars over the years. Tyson looked vintage against Carl Williams just 6 months before he fought Douglas. Tyson opponents had excuses too, for losing to him. Tucker had a broken hand before he even got in the ring. Thomas, who was already in decline, had a rough training camp due to a badly injured shoulder. ...... Lou Duva says Holyfield was lazy in training for the first Bowe fight, and sometimes wouldn't turn up to train at all, or cut the sessions short. ..... Frazier was worse in training than Ken Norton (his sparring partner) had ever known him going in to the Foreman fight. Ali, Louis and even Marciano often looked **** in training for fights they ended up winning. But for some reason it's only for Tyson-Douglas where these tales of a sub-par training camp are elevated to a 100% free-pass excuse for losing and treated as something almost completely unique in the history of boxing. There's no athlete in history whose sporting setbacks are alibi'd and excused with the fanaticism that Tyson's losses are. It's phenomenonal.
Seriously Unforigiven, you dont have to be a "Tyson fan" to know that Tyson was ****ing off after the Spinks fight. And it wasnt just leading up to this fight. It was the Bruno fight too where he showed to be a non disciplined fighter and started to change is ways. Tyson wasnt only about aggression either, there was some strategy in his approach, it wasnt the same Tyson in every fight. A blind man knew Williams was dead open for the lefthook, but Bruno and Douglas were a bit more complicated. Yeah Holyfield probably screwed off too, and he lost, but he still had a capable corner on his side and fought a good fight. Holyfields also gotten a lot of passes for his losses and poor performances in the form of hepatitis and shoulder injuries, fighting in front of his home crowd etc etc. The difference with Tyson in training was that he wasnt getting knocked down and handled in sparring in the past, all of sudden he was, so yes there was a clear indication that things werent the same. Sure Ali looked like **** in sparring, but that was pretty consistent with him leading up to many of his fights, with Tyson, it wasnt.
Yes, Tyson got a bit sloppy after the Spinks fight. Still, he beat the **** out of Frank Bruno, and really Bruno's success in the whole 5 rounds boiled down to about 5 seconds in round 1. Douglas came to fight with better tools and better strategy than Bruno, by far, and he wasn't scared like Bruno was. Tyson was sloppy, had an off night, and got his ass handed to him by Douglas. But Douglas came to fight with better gameplan and tools than anyone Tyson had ever beat. There's nothing particularly unique about the situation, it's a familiar one in boxing history, apart from the fact that the over-estimation of Tyson's ability was so ridiculous as to make him a 40-1 betting favourite over a good solid contender who had a good style to beat him with. The mistake people make is believing the odds represented some sort of reality of what "the real Mike Tyson" was capable of doing, and therefore the actual outcome of the fight was a out-and-out abberation, a fluke, an absolute freak event, caused by a cataclysmic degeneration of the man's fighting ability. And people continue to cling to that over-estimation, the myth that has "the real Tyson" with certainty dispatching Douglas in a round or two, and outclassing him. I'm pretty sure Rooney didn't give press access to Tyson's sparring sessions as freely as was done in Tokyo 1990. Maybe that's why we dont know for sure how he looked in training. I remember Mike Williams was reported by the press to be giving Tyson a whipping before the Ratliff fight in Sept. 1986, and it was also reported that the same Mike Williams was dismissed from the Tyson camp prior to the Trevor Berbick fight for doing more of the same.
Sounds like you need to watch Tyson vs Douglas, then take a break for a few days, come back and watch his performances, against Berbick, Thomas, Tubbs, Biggs, and Spinks.. Once you see the difference, you'll start to think that you're looking at two different men...
Actually, you need to realise that it'd be looking at several different men. Tyson's own conditioning and attitude may well be an important variable. But the fact that Douglas isn't Berbick, Thomas, Tubbs, Biggs and Spinks is a far more significant variable. People tend to forget that. Everything is seen from a Tyson-centric point-of-view, and the opponents are supposedly all pretty much the same. It's ridiculous. Tyson's performances even in his '86 - '88 prime varied, and often due to what his opponent did against him. That's how boxing works.
