Why did Larry Merchant accuse Tyson of fighting a carnival parade of handpicked opponents?

Or the Duvas, who promoted at least one of the fights in that period. Or a guy named Mike Tinley, who is listed as promoter on some of Mike’s fights in that period. Or Frank Warren, who promoted the fights in the UK. Etc.

 

Merchant was not objective towards Tyson, everyone knows that. Merchant, Atlas, Bert Sugar, a few others. Tyson was in conflict with everyone, he was arrogant, unpleasant... so he was and is discredited because people like to repeat trends, especially those heard in the mainstream media and from famous people but... in this case I agree with Merchant. Tyson has not won a single valuable fight since 1999. He managed to knock Savarese down in a controversial fight but in every fight he really proved that he is just an ordinary, undertrained brawler who stopped being a boxer a long time ago. Francis was a fake, Nieksen was a crypto-bum and a celebrity, all these fights were really weak and since Tyson in 2002 there were at least 10 better fighters. on the other hand Lewis himself blocked the Tyson-Mercer fight which could have proved something but was risky because probably 40 year old Ray would have destroyed Tyson and we would have Mercer-Lewis II. And nobody wanted that

 

But who was he supposed to face who was more deserving AND available at that time ?
Grant was scheduled to face Lewis.
Tua was waiting his shot and would not have risked his place.
Vitali would lose to Byrd and Wladimir was working his way up to the rankings.
Rahman and Jefferson had just lost to Maskaev and Izon.
Akinwande was sick.

This is why given the context, they weren't that bad of opponents.

 

How was the Douglas fight "stacked" against him? Who stacked what against him?

Don King did everything to get that overturned, even demanding the referee come to the postfight press conference to apologize for his mistake of not picking up the count ... and even convincing the WBC to withhold recognition of Douglas for days until they all got home and learned the US media and fans lost their **** over the WBC deciding to wait.

You can watch Don King leap out of his chair and go after the commission reps at ringside when Douglas was allowed to get up and go back to his corner after he was knocked down. He lost his mind when that fight was allowed to continue. It's on film. He's yelling at them during the entire ninth round.

The last thing Don King wanted was for Mike Tyson to lose the title to Buster Douglas.

Hell, he had to go to court with Douglas just to get a cut of the Holyfield purse, because King didn't bother to lock up Douglas for future defenses in case Buster scored a 40-1 upset.

And WHICH of Mike Tyson's title defenses that were promoted by King were stopped early because the REFEREE was in on a "FIX" and the opponent's people didn't know about it?

 

I think that from a pure technical standpoint, Tyson looked very good against Norris, Francis and Golota. Especially against Norris where his balance and timing were excellent.

 

yes, with Norris he looked very good but again he showed lack of discipline. besides after 1995 he had huge problems with cardio. and Norris in 1999 was already nobody

 

Fair enough

 

I wouldn't say he was a nobody then. He went on to have a very competitive slugfest with Golota, and even went down to cruiser to draw with Jirov a couple years after that. He certainly was a less significant name in the heavyweight game, but a good scalp regardless.

 

Vitali in 1999 would have been a great matchup.

 

Wasn't it the opposite? I thought King did have Douglas locked up, but Douglas sued to get out of the contract, claiming that King breached it by trying to get the result of the Tyson fight overturned.

Not that it changes the fact that King lost his ass on that fight.

 

I agree but he was not a big draw at the time.

 

At that point I don’t think it mattered. His abilities were very clearly diminished so frankly he could have fought whoever he wanted or better yet simply retired

 

1) You’d have to ask Mike, but I think he’s referring to the ‘long count.’ That he believes Buster was down for 10 seconds and should have been counted out. I think that’s ridiculous — Douglas pounded his first on the floor and was clearly cognizant of the count and got up in time to beat it, which is what matters — but that’s my guess at what he’s referring to.

2 a) Tyson didn’t mention anything about fixes being title fights or only title fights.

2 b) Have you missed the fights where Tyson tried to break opponents’ arms (while the ref was looking the other way), threw forearms and elbows, the Ruddock fight (I think it was the second one) where Mike got warned like six times in the first three rounds for breaking every rule short of pulling a gun or mugging Donovan with the corner stool … with no point deductions? Seems like a ref in someone’s pocket to me.

Carl Williams got knocked down, beat the count, looked the ref in the eye and said ‘yeah’ when asked if he wanted to continue … and the ref waved it off. Then there’s the McNeely fight. A wager on a first-round stoppage probably would have made someone a pretty penny in both cases.

Tyson is the one who admits some of his fights were fixed. Don’t blame me.

 

Tyson tried to break Botha's arm multiple times, as well as McBride's, for clarification- And he got off scot free nigh every time this sort of stuff happened- Apart from the Holyfield incident. I remember him jabbing Bonecrusher Smith between rounds, too.
I love Mike, and he's an ATG, but he could definitely fight extremely dirty.

I do wish that the Williams fight could've gone on longer, Carl wouldn't have had any chance in hell of winning, but it likely would've been entertaining.

 

How many Martians do you see every day ?