What 21 year old fighter was greater than Tyson from the Spinks fight?

Very true this. He was certainly an amazing, and amazingly dominant fighter at that age.

 

Jimmy McLarnin defeated 8 future HOFers before his 22nd birthday:

Sammy Mandell
Ruby Goldstein
Sid Terris
Luis Kid Kaplan
Bud Taylor
Jackie Fields
Pancho Villa
Fidel LaBarba
(Also fought a draw with Memphis Pal Moore, another HOFer).


Another one with a lot of good wins under his belt, when still only 21, was Billy Conn:

Melio Bettina x 2
Solly Krieger x 2
Fred Apostoli x 2
Young Corbett III
Teddy Yarosz x 2
Vince Dundee
Babe Risko
Fritzie Zivic

 

Liston was old, unprepared and with a shoulder injury when he got beat by Ali.
A 88 Tyson beats any version of Ali, he has a stylistic advantage.

 

24. But he was completely unprepared, so it's not relevant at all.

 

Superb post.

 

Thanks a lot, mate... much appreciated.

 

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Not many at all. Maybe a few of the names given up. But what he did by that age is incredible.
I don't see many, if any replicateing Tyson in our life time.

 

None at heavyweight. Not even Ali or Louis.

 

Les Darcy :
Before his 21st birthday he had beaten -
Jeff Smith
Eddie McGoorty
Jimmy Clabby
Buck Crouse
George Chip
and from memory, had won the Australian WW, MW, and HW titles, not bad. keep well.

 

There's the answer.

 

1. I never said anything about Berbick being pfp. That's your imagination.
2. Holmes and Spinks were hof bound.

Now why would throw around that statement using "fought" instead of "beat?" I find that interesting.

 

I completely agree that the Spinks win was absolutely sensational for Mike. There were knowledgeable people betting on Spinks at the time...I think even Ali.

However, I still don't give Mike much credit for beating a 2 years rusty, 38 year old Holmes. Had it been the Holmes who beat Mercer (and been active in general) it would have been at least a bit more interesting, but even then he would have been beat pretty damn bad.

I think the last time Holmes had a good chance of beating prime Iron Mike would have been the Cobb fight. Cobb was indubitably a legitimate contender, and Holmes looked fantastic. That was well over five years before.

 

Holmes was never beating Tyson. And the version who showed up for Tyson was better than Mercer.