I was watching some of Tyson's early fights from around 1985 when he was destroying cans in like 30 seconds. In more than one fight the announcers mentioned that Tyson had been a converted southpaw. In his third fight against Don Halpin he goes four rounds most likely by choice and he fought a good portion of the fight southpaw. Unfortunately in this video the brittish announcer doesn't mention that Tyson may or may not be a converted southpaw but in the american broadcast they did. Anyway you can see him play around with his southpaw stance here and I was wondering if anyone had heard anything before about Tyson being a converted south paw. Going back and watching Tysons early fights he does switch from time to time especially to land a big right hook. See for yourself fight starts @2:28 [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eE69xeqAvIo[/ame]
I didnt remember good eye. Mikes early fights were interesting seeing him develop he did a lot of unorthodox things early on.
I think he is left-handed naturally, but I'm not sure he ever fought as a southpaw. The Cus D'amato style was quite ambidextrous anyway. There's often no front hand and back hand in that style. I won't even mention the feet.
I try to emulate the peek a boo style and I like that its ambidextrous, I like to throw hooks and uppercuts so being more square helps torque those punches better. the disadvantages are your there to be hit and the footwork can be awkward. I am a converted southpaw I write with my left hand but early on trainers taught me from an orthodox stance. I wonder if the same happend to mike. Also his signature combo the right hook to the body and then right uppercut to the chin he often switches stances before throwing that so look for that too [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1bkMtrPZwY[/ame]
He's a right hander.... everybody just thought he was alefty then because of his left hook a pretty dumb thing to think, so so so many people were comparing him to Joe Frazier i think the line blurred a little on what was him and what was Frazier. Tyson himself says his best punch was his right hand
I remember Tyson talking about his left hook, everyone trying to put focus on it as "his punch", despite that every punch was kind of his punch, and he'd said his best punch is from his right but he just didn't get the opportunities with it that he got with the left. It was harder for him to get full-force openings than it was the hook. So, the hook was the bigger star, due to that. Tyson wasn't flawed in the way a lot of aggressive punchers are, in that he was typically pretty focused on accuracy, making each punch count, rather than throwing the kitchen sink to get at somebody with cuffing shots because that's what was there. Great combinations were there, but not wasteful ones. So, if the right isn't getting opportunities, he might look more left-hand dominant, by calculated decision. There were many times when he'd tag a guy with what was called a jab, but it was a straight left power punch while totally squared up.
