Tony Tucker and the Tall Trees...

Let's be realistic.
Things to note :

1. Michael Spinks ran for the Gerry "White" Cooney money, which was about 7 or 8 times more than Tony Tucker chump change, and originally estimated at even more (over 10x).

(Don King won the purse bids for Spinks-Tucker with a measly 711,000 dollars. Spinks' cut would have been less than 534,000 dollars. He ended up getting at least 4 million dollars to fight Cooney).



2. George Foreman possibly had a bigger aversion to Don King than to old Tucker.
But anyway, old Foreman possibly "ducked" a lot of guys who barely had a pulse (I heard he turned down flat a fight with Anders Eklund around 1989 !) - so that hardly makes Tucker special.
The best you can say is that Tucker was gifted a "mandatory challenger" position that he didn't earn (in fact, he was arguably not even still worthy of a top 10 rating at the time, in reality) and was then ducked by Foreman.
Saying Foreman comes off worse in the affair is correct, but Tucker's place in 1995 is hardly swimming in glory.

 

I wouldn't even count on Tucker beatin old Foreman by 1995. He was well washed up by then.

 

I agree.
I would have serious doubts about Tucker's ability to beat Axel Schulz and Lou Savarese too !
I mean, Tucker managed to lose to Seldon and Akinwande before the year was out.
And the next time I saw him (in 1997) he was blown away spectacularly by Herbie Hide !

In truth, Tucker seemed to have barely anything left when he fought Lewis in 1993. At the time I was shocked because it was the first time I'd seem him fight since 1987.

 

was washed up Tucker (even if he was that washed up) inferior to crawford grimsby, axel schultz, lou saverese and shannon briggs who old foreman could not decisivly beat? Apart from former LH moorer whom old george outweighed by a considerable avantageous margin, old foreman never decisivly outpointed or knocked out a rated heavyweight.

going into the lewis fight tucker did have solid wins over orlin norris and oliver mccall. foreman was coming off a loss when he got his shot at Moorer.

going in against seldon tuckerwas 51-2, had only lost to lewis and tyson - is there any shame in that? he was on a 4 fight win streak.

 

If I ever develop insomnia, I'll order Tony Tucker's career set.

 

None of them deserved to beat Foreman except maybe Axel Schultz, and Schultz at that time was going to split decision with the likes of Michael Moorer who did hold the heavyweight title.

Solid split decisions. Losing to Morrison was more high profile than Tucker fighting no name Dan Murphy in a no name place in Mexico.

Over the usual suspects of the heavyweight division.

Tucker may have deserved a shot up until 1993. After that it was all Don King doing him favours.

 

agreed. same kind of thing as foreman bypassing Lewis and co to meet moorer on the back of a loss though isnt it?

At the time we all thought foreman retired after morrison, he was not ranked or anything.

 

all those fights could have gone either way even the briggs fight that he lost.

 

I disagree about Briggs fight. Grimsley did nothing against Foreman. Foreman actually outworked Savarese.

 

Tell that to Floyd Johnson and Frank Moran.

 

Part of that is because he was criticized for looking "unimpressive" in his wins over Douglas and McCall, but both of those wins (especially the Douglas one) get a different light in retrospect, since both fighters went on to score big upset wins over unbeaten future HOFers afterward.

Having said that, as Unforgiven pointed out, Tucker is remembered mainly for his performances in losing efforts. His record of actual wins is much too sparse to accurately assess his quality or his H2H capabilities IMO.

 

A big man with big padding in his record. As has been noted, he tended to have respectable losses and disreputable wins (he came close to losing to Orlin Norris despite a huge height advantage and he looked awful against Buster Douglas who was having a bad night).

He was a decent contender and until he was shot he was trouble for anyone. The Lewis fight took a lot out of him, especially at about rounds 7-8 which was the first time he took a real beating in his pro career.

Like Joe Bugner, I wouldn't expect him to do better in another era. All the talent of a champion was there physically, but not mentally.

 

they were not clear wins what ever way you look at them. old foreman never won on points clearly.

 

I thought Orlin Norris deserved the decision against Tucker in 1991, and Norris was about 5'10 and had no real power and often fought at cruiserweight.
(Yet some people will no doubt claim that Tucker was a skillful super-heavy who knew how to use his physical size. )
Admittedly, we could say Tucker was past his best post-1987, but that really leaves us just the Tyson loss and the Douglas win to rate him off. Unless anyone thinks wins over James Broad and Eddie Lopez were something special.

It's hard to say how he does against TALL opponents, Seamus listed. It's easy to imagine most of those fights would be disgracefully boring though.

 

But Willard needs to be massively overhyped despite his crapola-crude skills; otherwise how could those same guys continue to preach Dempsey as some magical monster with imaginary awesome skills?