What made Tyson vs Spinks Interesting?

I remember people thinking Mike and the original Team Tyson were dodging Spinks.

 

Well yknow hindsight

The two holmes wins looked mighty impressive since holmes was unbeaten for a decade plus and champ since 1978. Spinks was an olympic gold medalist and undefeated too. The cooney beatdown was highly impressive

So there was the aura of spinks never being beaten...a feelibg he was a definite up from the guys tyson had beaten ...

Spinks of course knew after summer 1987 his knees were gone....hed already had his career money payday with cooney....he also was the only one who knew deep down inside he feared mike tyson......i do think the knees and inactivity played a part though

 

It was a massively hyped fight at the time, the biggest in the heavy s since Holmes v Cooney. But it also had the lineal belt at stake, held by a fighter with no official alphabet title. Tyson was seen as unbeatable but many saw spinks as at least capable of giving him a great fight. And the closer it got to the fight the more started to believe it could be a classic. A lot of expectation on spinks shoulders to at least give Tyson a battle, after all he'd beaten Larry Holmes twice, how could he not?. It was a fight that had to happen eventually to clear things up and Ironically it was probably Tyson s last great moment in the sun.

 

The Davis fight was almost two years before the Holmes fight. Spinks defended his LHW title twice after the Davis fight -in 1985, scoring KO's in both of them, before vacating and moving up.

 

I picked Spinks. I wasn't confident but I thought he had a good shot. He'd always found ways to win. He was a great fighter just not a great heavyweight.

I saw on one forum where people thought Spinks hadn't trained enough & looked soft. He was a little bloated but I figured he did that intentionally.

Funny story. I couldn't see the fight so I relied on a phone hotline to give results. It was the "Tyson Spinks Superfight Hotline". It was maybe $.75 per minute. I was so excited for this fight. I called once and it said the fighters were entering the ring. I waited a little while, called back, & got this: "Welcome to the Tyson Spinks Superfight Hotline. Tyson Spinks, Oncs and for All is now history". My mouth dropped because I never imagined a blowout. It's funny because my two calls were just minutes apart.

 

As far as Spinks’ manner in interviews, he was always like that. He was as low-key as his brother Neon Leon was off the wall.

Tyson was favored, but at that time (as compared to now) the thought was to some degree that he had mostly gone through a string of lowly-regarded 1980s champs (Holmes aside, but he was coming off retirement with no tune-up or prolonged training camp ... just in it for a payday) — now it seems the Pinklon Thomas/Tony Tubbs/Tyrell Biggs/Trevor Berbick/Bonecrusher Smith club is given more respect than they were at the time.

Spinks was, rightfully, considered to be Tyson’s biggest challenge. Most of them his fights had been against guys on the way down, while Spinks had risen to the top.

 

Looking unbeatable in 91 second fight? He looked unbeatable against Alex Stewart. Mike was a spectacular performer and when you win by knockout it tends to have that effect

 

Tyson v Spinks was the 1980's equivalent event of today's Anthony Joshua v Tyson Fury

 

in retrospect Spinks people did a good marketing job and he was never hurt against Holmes or Cooney or Tangsted. or whatever his name was. So he looked solid and he was so slippery and with Cooney he showed power. People thought if he could do that to Holmes outboxing him, he could outbox Tyson.