Who has the better singular win, Chris Byrd or Mike Tyson?

Tyson obliterates both Byrd AND Bowe in terms of significance.

 

I voted for Tyson, of course. Ko's over Holmes, Spinks and a host of lesser fighters eclipses Byrd......a very poor man's Jimmy Young.

 

I can't take people seriously who say Byrd was walking Vitali down. But lets not pretend Byrd was a lucky punching bag either as some would want to imply. He may not have been winning the rounds, but he was still scoring with counters and frustrating Vitali as early as the first round. It is an underrated performance that did result in a victory. Nobody else has made Vitali look quite that oafish and miss with so many punches. And Byrd deserves credit for coming strong in the last few rounds and countering Vitali with those left hands.

I think its a masterful defensive performance though Byrd was lacking in offense until the last three rounds.

 

No, I think he is and continue to will be remembered as a greater fighter.

Nah, I disagree. Tucker doesn't have much except Douglas, which was hardly the win at the time that we see it as post-Tokyo.

And Berbick and Smith have good names...but one has to question the worth of short notice ill prepared Spoon, Bruno because he's Bruno, a slumping Weaver, and Ali's final fight..etc.

 

The posts then make it clear ... and ties back to another thread on Ike

To summarize:

A pretty damn good version of the elusive paddy cake puncher Chris Byrd (29 1/2 years) made giant superheavyweight Vitali Klitschko (almost 29 years) miss and struggle enough in a tactical back and forth with frustrating movement and counters for eight rounds until his efforts resulted in a "thrown out" shoulder for his opponent. Vitali was unable to ever find the power deficient ex-middleweight with enough punches to solve the complicated puzzle over eight. He was forced to withdraw with an injury and take the defeat. It was a great win for Chris Byrd.

Similarly:

A pretty damn good version of elusive paddy cake puncher Chris Byrd (28 1/2 years) fought a young (just turned 26 years of age) not yet peak Ibeabuchi in '99 and got lit like a Christmas tree. It took all of five rounds for the tide to have turned into an avalanche as Chris abruptly buckled under the big man's steady round by round measured pressure and was put to his knees, left drooling and staggering, and believing "he didn't drop me ... I wasn't down". The ref was forced to wave it off in five to protect Chris from a real ass kicking and separation from his remaining senses in the next round(s) and a certain inevitable stoppage as Ibeabuchi had already figured him out and determined what was necessary to handle the little tricky fighter. But, this was a meaningless win for Ibeabuchi.

"Ibeabuchi is the most overrated ... blah blah .. no reason to think he would become any good .. blah blah .. Tua wasn't all that .. blah blah ..."

 

On the official cards, after nine rounds, Byrd won one round on one judge's card and two rounds on the other two.

Winning one of nine rounds isn't "masterful" by any stretch. The guy who won EIGHT of the nine rounds suffered an injury and pulled himself out.

I don't know why people try to make it more than that.

It wasn't one of Byrd's "best" wins. He was losing soundly until his opponent HURT HIMSELF.

Byrd showed far more and was far more impressive beating the dangerous David Tua and coming back from a knockdown to outpoint a guy twice his size (in McCline).

But Tua and McCline aren't impressive names like Klitschko and Holyfield, so they try to give Byrd credit for the injuries Holyfield and Klitschko suffered.

Everyone can see through it though ... even the guys trying to do it. atsch

 

Not surprising. Vitali was the home fighter and busier, I don't care much for official cards as some sort of gauge when we have the fight on film.

He was losing but not exactly soundly, he was giving Vitali a very hard time as early as the first round., long before the injury supposedly occured.

You made an absurd claim that Vitali was landing 3/4s at will, and I posted a video of the actual fight which showed that not to be the case. What are these 75% punches you seeing land? Vitali's jabs into Byrd's open glove? They don't count on any system.

 

Ike is a different but not necessarily greater fighter, his two handed volume punching and body attack is more ideal for catching a fighter like Byrd. There's no way a guy like Vitali could effectively emulate the body punch/uppercut combo that Byrd fail victim to.

Byrd was also clowning Ike and getting cute on the ropes, a mistake many would say he learned from and helped mode him into a better fighter.

 

First, don't misquote me and then insult me over a quote you just made up and attributed to me.

I said Vitali was landing at will for three-fourths of the fight. Not that he landed 75 percent of his punches.

And if you count Vitali pawing three or four times with his left looking for an opening - which he did against everyone - as Byrd being a defensive "wiz," that's comical. Vitali did that all the time, against everyone, that doesn't make everyone Vitali fought a defensive master.

I don't know why you guys try to insist on making something out of nothing. Vitali was fighting a near shut-out fight, got hurt throwing punches, and pulled himself out.

That's it. One reason why it was so shocking is Vitali was winning so easily up to that point.

Byrd wasn't a defensive genius in that fight. He lost nearly every round.

I'm not going to argue with you about this. I don't debate people that make up quotes to try to win arguments.

 

That is right. Not necessarily greater but as great and perhaps greater we'll never know. Ike would have been in the mix at the highest level with the best the division had to offer if not for the incarceration.

A fight between Ike and either Klitschko in these years would have been undeniably very dangerous fights for them.

No doubt about it. And, considering the perception of an evolution, progression, or simply continued development over time (as in the other (great) heavyweights and future world champions), there is no reason to believe that IKE would not have improved with the resources that would have availed itself to him as well. His attributes, toolset, and capabilities were his own and together would have been quite an offset and competitive package for any of the others. The hard, and many, clean punches he took from perhaps the best most active version of Tua ever would have been a considerable shock to Wlad - for example - and he would not have taken them half as well (if they could land similarly).

Don't buy or believe this for a second. Nice story though. At 28, there was no further material change in Byrd. That was the reason he was able to go up to heavyweight in an era of much larger heavyweights and compete (especially with no punch). He was already skilled and cognizant of what he was doing in the ring. His amateur work, his pedigree, his experience had already made him "peak" through these years. He wasn't a work in progress the way Ike could be considered comparatively.

His "clowning" is in all of his fights as a motivating factor for himself and as a "performance" or "style". There was no "mistake", there is no excuse for what occurred, there was no out of the norm behavior and there is no reason to believe any other result would have occurred if they fought ten times.

 

Byrd's victory over Vitali was "masterful" in the same way that Maxim's tko over SRR was.

 

I did raise the point earlier on whether Byrd Vitali can even be credited as a victory, seeing as Byrd did JACK throughout most of the fight.

 

And I raised the point in that he did more than JACK. So don't act all victorious when you ducked a pretty clear challenge to that point.

 

I'm not going to argue with someone who wrote a pretty confusing sentence and gets all butt hurt when it is misunderstood. I have less patience for someone that keeps repeating the same claims but can't walk through footage and explain what they are actually seeing.

 

We don't know any of that.


After Ike, Byrd became a "middle of the ring" fighter for the rest of his prime, this has been observed. I don't care if he was 28, fighters have made many dramatic stylistic changes and improvements at that age or later.