going to prison must have effected tyson in many ways but do you think that his legacy would have been much greater if he hadn't have taken 3 years out of the sport or do you think that the rot had already set in deep with the douglas and ruddock fights? i heard an interesting theory recently that prison actually saved tysons career and the time out helped re-focus him to come out and fight again like he did in bruno v tyson 2. how do you think tysons prison sentence effected his career, do you think he would have continued his downward spiral if he hadn't been sent to prison or do you think he would have gone on to establish a much, much greater legacy than he did?
I think it's been well documented on this forum that Tyson has declined even before his stint in prison. Even by the time of the Buster Douglas fight, he'd pretty much abandoned his jab and head movement and started looking for that one punch KO.
would you agree that prison helped re-focus him then and that tyson would have gone on to lose a few more fights in that 3 year period if he hadn't been sent down?
hell no.. tysons time in prison, didnt do him any good career wise.. and by the looks of it, tyson was already losing interest in boxing prior to the sentence. i suspect, that his comeback was solely based upon dollars.
He was definitely sliding already, when Rooney was fired he took tyson's jab, combinations and head-movement with him i.e all his best attributes. If he hadn't gone to prison he'd have fought Holyfield sooner, lost in much the same fashion imo, lost a rematch and that would really have been it for him. Maybe he could have fought bowe when he was on the way up and I think Tyson would always beat Bowe but to quote sickboy it would have been "merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward tragectory". Going down helped keep the hype going, when he was inside everybody thought he'd mop up when he came out.
yeah i think it ****ed him up bad. but it was the death of cus that really destroyed him if cus hadve lived for another maybe 5 years tyson probably wouldve been one of the greats
good post mate :good what makes you think that tyson would have beat bowe at that time? i personally think bowe at that time had the attributes to beat tyson in a simalar way to how he beat holyfield.
Just by stacking Tyson's power against how easy Bowe was to hit really. I don't think he had the chin to take Tyson's punches the way Holyfield did either.
i think Tyson was on the slide before prison....spose thats obvious if Buster Douglas could whip his ass. Like many others before him in many other sports...once he got rich and didn't have to do all that disciplined living he reverted to type...which in his case was a nutcase from the ghetto. But even that said I think he was damaged by 3 years out - 3 of what could have been his best years and the timing wasn't there when he came out and the old head movement, jab etc was gone - which as said earlier was showing even before. Still I do hold him in high regard as an ATG. Shame he never was what he could've been.
Tyson did develop bad habits before he went to prison but makes no mitake about it, being inactive for four years, three of them in jail, hindered him as a fighter greatly! I don't care how naturally talented you might be, if you are inactive in any profession for four years, there's no way you can be as good after that amount of time being away! Tyson is no exception to this! However, in my view, although he may have eroded somehwat as a fighter, the guy who fought Stewart & Ruddock was a better fighter than the one who emerged from prison in March 1995!
