What if? Tyson had fought Holyfield before Douglas?

Mike lost to Hemry Tilman while he was sparring with Holyfield.

I'm sure there would be a good reason for Tilman to have Mike's number, and if the fight hadn't happened in 1990, it's proof that Mike was afraid of Tilman. If he was afraid of Evnder because he sparred evenly with him, imagine how afraid he must have been of Tilman

But wait...

Holyfield had Tyson's number, but he didn't want to use a challenger and tried to stay away from Tyson as long as possible. Hokeyfield's fans believe in him more than he does.

https://www.deseret.com/1990/12/12/18895705/tyson-climbs-into-legal-ring-with-holyfield/

 

Holyfield signed to fight Tyson in 1990 tho, but Mike wet the bed against Buster.

 

Douglas was scared of mike fi you watch the first two rounds. It's just that he gained confidence as he realized Mike was hittable. Lewis was also scared of mike in the first few rounds.

The only guy that never was afraid of Mike was Evander,

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if you watch at 6:25 Mike has a look in the first round of "WTF is going on" . I have seen all of his losses and all of his fights, he never had that look on his face this early.

 

Lol at 21 being a "boy" when compared to a teen.

 

But Tillman didn't take a pool cue out of a 17 year old Mike's hands.

 

Yes, Evander threatened Tyson with a pool cue. Imagine how scared Mike must have been to Teddy when he threatened 16-year-old Mike with a gun. Yeah, Teddy always had Mike's number. Tyson avoided him his entire career.

 

Mike's downfall was due to not having Teddy. Cus had little to do with it. Teddy told me so.

 

Imagine how scared Teddy's 11 year old niece must have been while being molested by 16 year old with a muscles of a grown ass man

 

Holyfield over Tyson all day, any day (don't know about today, though.. Holyfield always older than Tyson.. must be in his mid-60's by now).

 

Mike had been sparring with pros for 2-3 years before Evander pool cue’d his ass when he was 17.

Funny how George Foreman was like one year older than that when he was sparring Sonny Liston and you don’t get a lot of man-vs-boy takes on that.

Evander was an amateur light heavyweight. Mike was a semi-pro heavyweight. And they had to pull Holyfield off him after like 90 seconds when he pinned Mike in a corner in Olympic camp sparring because little toddler Mikey was just a child and the mean man was going to beat him to a pulp, lol.

 

While Evander raised the cue at Tyson, he was also beaten by Henry Tilmann in the official fight—twice. Tyrell Biggs was harassing him.

What does that mean? What effect did it have? He must have been afraid of Evander when he held the cue, and he certainly was afraid of Henry when he was in the ring with him. Maybe he even avoided him for all those years.

 

I think it was Emanuel Steward who said that Mike really was impressed with Evander when Holyfield beat Ricky Womack (twice) in the Olympic Trials/box-offs. Whether it was Manny or someone else, they said that everybody was afraid of Womack and when Evander overcame him that Tyson really took note of that and was very respectful of Holyfield after that.

 

Even worse for Holyfield. Tyson respected Larry Holmes greatly, but had no respect for Buster Douglas at all.

 

Source of this? Love this kind of backstories and anecdotes

 

This link relates both stories (sparring and pool cue) with Evander talking about the sparring (oddly, I cannot find Mike ever talking about it) and quoting Ron Borges (Boston Globe reporter) on the pool cue incident:

https://talksport.com/boxing/816952/mike-tyson-evander-holyfield-sparring/

Here’s Evander relating the pool cue story:

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Here’s a long interview with Emanuel on Tyson. You have to scroll pretty far down to get to Evander. But a couple of things stand out from what Manny says:

1) Mike Tyson came up through a very weak era in his prime.

2) He thinks Larry Holmes would give Tyson fits in Larry’s prime, and that boxing people like him don’t really credit Mike’s win over Holmes much because ‘Larry wasn’t Larry’ coming off a layoff with no tune-up.

3) He thinks Evander beats Mike 10 times out of 10 because of his mental edge and determination.

https://www.boxing247.com/weblog/archives/136350