I would love these old school posters to try and tel me how you can possibly rank dempsey above him. A) Tyson had the better title run by far B) Tyson looks better on film C) Tyson has more depth to his resume. Just name the 10 best fighters each man has beat and you would quickly realize its not even a ****in comparsion. Tyson: Spinks, Holmes, Tucker, Ruddock, Berbick, Tubbs, Pinklon, Bonecrusher, Bruno, seldon, Golota. Hell even brian nielson is better than 95% of dempseys opposition. Dempsey: Gibbons, Carpentier, Sharkey, Willard, Firpo, Brennan, Miske, Morris, Gunboat, Levinsky. Tyson tko the overrated dempsey.
Tyson can (and is in my case) be rated over Dempsey without Dempsey being "overated". Dempsey is one of the very best fighters ever to do it. Tyson was marginally better.
How so? i have marciano in my top 10 and tunney as a top 5 light heavy. Its kinda sad that i put up dempseys 10 best wins and 5 of them are light heavyweights, neither one of them can hold a candle to spinks. Hell spinks would probably beat those heavyweight too, except maybe jack sharkey. Thats the 1 good win jack has against a heavyweight.
I won't argue with the case of Tyson being greater than Dempsey, but I do think that Tyson's superior title run has to be taken into context. Tyson had more belts to choose from. In we're going strictly linear terms, Tyson only had two title defenses.
Fine and fair point. Also you have to take into consideration that if there was only one belt, Tyson's whole career trajectory would have been different.
well i can counter that with the fact that the coloured belt existed in dempseys days and he wouldnt fight that champ, so he never realled proved at any point that he was the consensus #1 heavyweight.
In a head to head basis, you gotta go with Tyson. He was alot faster and better technically. He was essentially a better version of Dempsey. I also feel he hit harder than Dempsey.
