Which is a greater achievement, Tyson becoming a champion at 20 or Foreman becoming a champ at 45?

there were only 2 titles worth getting at the time, its clear you arent aware. He was lineal, you make no sense in that either.

He had as much a part of the pie than say either K bro ever had, and for much longer with MUCH MUCH tougher opps.

 

joshua koed wlad, who fought to spoil and survive. thats not "nearly beat"

 

any version of Foreman would have beaten the snot outta Tyson

 

Following the sanctioning bodies is nuts. One look at any of their ratings at any given time in any given division should be all it takes to dismiss them out of hand. Boxing is as you say, a mess. And they're why it's a mess.

Patterson did not win a "vacant belt" --you have WBS fever, my man, and you got it bad. Marciano was retired and Patterson and Moore were the top-two contenders in the world, as rated by The Ring, which was the most authoritative ratings out there. Patterson became part of the succession with that win, period. Your line of reasoning allows for an army of illegitmate champions crowding the legit champs over the last 50 years -and it is why we have "established" sports writers mindlessly asserting that Hopkins and GGG had more defenses than Monzon.

Patterson is very obviously the youngest heavyweight champion.

If Marciano "came back" two years later, he would be "coming back" to "reclaim" the title. Louis came back to try to reclaim the title from Ezzard, right? He was not making another defense because he was the challenger. That is where linealists tend to get tied up in knots. I'm not a linealist per se. I'm a common sense man -which is why I'm behind this: http://www.tbrb.org/

As to champions getting "stripped" -who has the rightful authority to strip them? The IBF? The WBC? You do realize that their "rules" are pulled out from their respective anal cavities, right? The WBA and WBC stripped Ali because he gave Liston a rematch -according to their "rules." They've been idiotic from the beginning.

 

OK..

 

Much bigger achievement for Foreman.

 

Hhhhmm, it's a tricky one.

I guess the curveball here is the manner of Foreman's victory, which (playing Devil's Advocate) means you can argue it was a fluke or a freak occurrence. If you do think that, it's not unreasonable to suggest that it detracts from the greatness of the achievement, somewhat.

Had Foreman won a slugfest, outboxed Moorer or simply proved stronger over the course of a competitive fight, then I'd say his achievement was greater without doubt. Moorer was in a different league to Berbick as a fighter, after all.

But whatever you believe on that front, Foreman's achievement was certainly the most improbable of the pair, so I'm happy to keep him ahead of Tyson here, particularly considering that he had to put in some very creditable losing performances before that point just to keep in contention and prove that his comeback was no joke...But it's a little closer in my head than I'd initially thought.

 

Not really the question that's being asked but I'll indulge you. Not only would Tyson beat Prime Foreman, but Old Foreman wouldn't stand a chance.

Power has never been a prerequisite to beating Mike Tyson; neither Evander nor Buster were ever considered big punchers. Their respective wins over Mike took a herculean effort couldn't be replicated by a man with the reflexes of a 2nd career Foreman. As for prime Foreman vs prime Tyson? Tyson had better stamina, speed and matched him in power. He was also a more technical fighter evidenced by the fact that Ring Magazine had Tyson as the #1 p4p fighter during Tyson's reign; in 1989 Tyson was above Julio Cesar Chavez, Pernell Whitaker and Micheal Nunn in the p4p rankings. But I digress since we're getting off topic and discussing something that has already been done to death in these sides.

Riddle me this, whose record is more likely to be broken first, Tyson winning the Heavyweight title at 20 or Foreman winning the Heavyweight title at 45?

 

Foreman was 45 years and 10 months old. That's pretty old. There aren't many 46-year-olds who are going to win the world heavyweight championship. There aren't many fighters older than 46 who won titles in any division. (One.)

Tyson was 20 years and five months old. There have been any number of guys in lower weights who won titles at a younger age than that. Some divisions have several guys who were younger than Tyson was winning titles.

So I'd say Tyson's record will be broken first.

 

Benitez won the jr welterweight title at 17. (-3)
Hopkins won the light heavyweight title at 48. (+3)

But Heavyweights are a different ball game altogether.

 

There have been a lot of guys younger than Tyson. Not just Benitez. Tony Canzoneri won the title at 18. Pipino Cuevas won the title at 18. Fighting Harada won the title at 18 or 19. Edwin Rosario won the title at 20. Al McCoy won the title at 19. Darrin Van Horn won the title at 20. Ben Villaflor won the title at 19. And there were many others.

Hell, Michael Moorer was 21 when he won the light heavy belt. Patterson was 21. Ali just turned 22.

Benitez just turned 21 when he beat Palomino.

It's much harder to win any title at 46 (which is basically the youngest you'd have to be to be older than Foreman), let alone at heavyweight. Not like late teens/early 20s.

Daniel Dubois could probably give Manuel Charr a rough night and pick up a strap now.

 

Foreman. 'Nuff said.

 

Dude, I hate the alphabet rankings. But bottom line, The Ring was a mess as well. Remember Don King's tournament in the late 70's early 80's? Yeah, not as crisp and clean as you make it.

I agree with most of what you typed above. I loved when Ring took over in the early 2000's to implement their own World Champion, because of Don King, corrupt promoters, corrupt sanctioning bodies and back stage politics. However, that was because the alphabet soup chumps were getting worse.

My conclusion: Tyson haters put Patterson as the youngest ever. Tyson fans place Tyson as the youngest. The fans in the middle mostly place Tyson as the youngest. Why? Because he was and still is.

Like I said before, check out Demigawd's posts on the thread. He made some sound and reasonable arguments.

 

Tyson easily.
1.Tyson's is the older record.
2.Holyfield against Valuev was competitive and this fight proved another very old heavyweight world champion is imaginable also.

 

Again, excellent post! Not many can argue against this reasoning.