Why do people say Tyson was visibly out of shape against Douglas?

I believe he weighed 250lb a few weeks before the fight and was draining himself badly to get to a reasonable weight. That's the story anyway.

However I think Douglas' excellent movement behind the jab was a style that would have always given Mike trouble. Douglas was also beating Tucker before he gassed so it's not like he was a bad fighter in general.

 

One of the best and most balanced posts I've read on this sunject.

 

That's what it really came down to. He was in decent enough physical shape but not motivated mentally and it showed in his face even before the bell sounded.

 

That's a load of rubbish, in the footage of him getting knocked down in sparring Tyson is not overweight at all.

 

He sure as hell would have been motivated after round one that's for sure....

 

Yeah, Tyson seems to exaggerate a lot about his weight/weight loss between fights. Read somewhere where he claimed to have been up around 280+ less than a couple months before one of his later fights, yet nobody has every seen Tyson looking anywhere near that heavy.

 

Good post, good questions...

 

:good

 

watch the fight, he wasn't doing his usual style.

Mentally not there, Iron Mike's weakness was his pulpy ego.

 

Yeah because Douglas didn't allow him to.....

 

It really was. It addressed the fact that Douglas was a tough opponent and also that there were visible signs that Tyson was simply not there that evening. Another misconception that most have is that James Douglas was a "bum." The reason for this fallacy is likely due to the fact that he was such a heavy underdog. But that doesn't make it so. He was a ranked contender for the better part of four years with several decent wins.. At 29 years of age he was in his prime and stood 6'4', 230 lbs with a a fair amount of boxing ability. So what we had was a seasoned contender in his prime with good blend of size, power and skill. That's a tall order for any champion coming at less than 100% on any given night.

 

Tyson wasn't even there.

He was probably back at his hotel ra*ping someone.

Tokyo Douglas was such an amazing phenomenon he could conjure up a phantom Tyson with his jab, a Tyson we could all experience as mass hallucination existing on the end of the supernatural jab which bewitched us all.

 

At that age, I could go on a month long boozer and still look great. I wouldn't put too much credence on the eye test.

Reports from his training camp were not encourage but then he had been going off the rails since around the Berbick fight.

 

just the fact that he got knocked down by an over the hill Greg Page is an indication he was ill prepared for the fight.