RING MAGAZINE Had Mike Tyson At 72 In Their All Time PFP Ranking. That's Absurdly Low

Is it? The only way? Without context or consideration as to why they were no longer at their best?

Buster Douglas at his best has one of the best wins in HW history. Should we rate him as one of the best HWs in history accordingly?

Tyson at his best absolutely dominated the HW division for 2 to 3-years. Joe Louis at, and beyond, his best, was just as dominant over the HW division for 12-years, making more than 3 times the number of successul title defences than Tyson did during that period and more than 12 times the number of successful lineal championship defences. Should those two achievements count equally, when ranking boxers all time, just because each was broadly equally as domimant at their respective peaks?

If Tyson retired immediately before Tokyo, he still wouldn't be close to Louis and Ali on my list, as he comes nowhere near close on factors such as title defences, number of ranked contenders beaten and number of times he beat the highest ranked contender aside from himself. That's before we consider losing to Douglas at age 23, which detracts from his standing, in my view.

I agree we shouldn't factor losses and performances when boxers were past their natural physical primes too heavily against them, but losses during their physical primes are a relevant part of assessing their careers, imo. If a fighter is past their best by age 23 due to a lack of dedication, then the resulting performances will impact on how I assess their all time standing.

Again, if your criteria for all time p4p rankings is based on how good you think they were at their absolute peak, that's a different matter, because only their absolute peak would count.

In summary, the above is why a p4p h2h list would look very different to more conventional ATG p4p lists.

 

Agreed.

Tyson's losses to Lewis, Williams and McBride don't impact on how I rank him all time.

His loss to Douglas, and to a lesser degree, his losses to Holyfield, do.

FYI, I rank him #10 all time at HW, higher than I do Holyfield, even though for the majority of the time they both spent at HW Holyfield was the better, because during his peak years Tyson was far more dominant over the division than Holyfield ever was.

P4P though, I rank Holyfield higher, on account of his CW career and viewing his HW accomplishments in the context of his natural size.

BTW, SRR was 129-1-2 at one point, which further strengthens the point you make on him.

 

@The one I'm going to pick fighters in each weightclass who i rank above Tyson P4P off the top of my head to give you an idea 72 isn't that bad for Tyson.


Heavyweight

Ali
Louis
Usyk
Holyfield
Lewis
Holmes

That's 6 names

Light Heavyweight

Spinks
Charles
Moore
Tunney
Bivins
Loughran
Conn
Langford
Fitzsimmons
RJJ

That's 10 names.

Middleweight

Monzon
Hagler
Greb
Ketchel
Toney
Hopkins
Canelo

7 names.

Welterweight

Napoles
Hearns
SRL
SRR
Crawford
Tito
ODLH
Gavilan
Armstrong
Griffith
Mayweather
Pacquiao

12 names.

Lightweight

Whitaker
Leonard
Gans
Walker
Williams
Ortiz
McFarland
Chavez

8 names.

Featherweight

Sanchez
Pep
Saddler
Dixon
Saldivar
Nelson
Fenech
Morales
Barrera
JMM
Arguello

11 names.

Notable names at the lower weightclasses.....

Inoue
Gomez
Olivares
Jofre
Wilde
Canto

6 names.

So i think i've listed about 60 names here and this is just random names off the top of my head so that gives you an estimate that top 70 for Tyson isn't bad at all.

 

Do you have like a top 200 list or something?

 

That's absurdly high considering he got battered by bums like Buster Douglas, Danny Williams and Kevin Mcbride, and fought in the weakest ever HW era, was multi flawed, had the shortest prime ever, and lost convincingly to every top, prime HW he fought.

 

Good post, DP.

As a minimum, I'd add:

Tommy Gibbons
Jack Dillon
Mike Gibbons
Tommy Ryan
Charley Burley
Holman Williams
BJW
Jack Britton
Jimmy McLarnin
Barney Ross
Tony Canzernori
Abe Attell

As clearly having had greater careers than Tyson.

Personally I'd also rank the likes of Marciano, Harold Johnson, Freddie Steele, Carmen Basillo, Manuel Ortiz, Pascual Perez and Jung Koo Chang higher than Mike, too.

 

Canelo and Inoue presumably? Possibly Crawford, Lomachenko and Ward at a push.

 

So the odd poster might agree with Boxrec having Tyson at 215 on the all time P4P list.

 

Tyson is now looked upon as a guy who folded up when things didn't go his way! He wasn't mentally tough...

 

Which is BS looking at his Ruddock fights. Even in the Douglas and first Holyfield fight, he was coming strong and trying, even tho he was getting his ass soundly whooped.