Why do people think Tyson is a top ten Heavyweights?

Tyson is not even top 20, he never defeated a prime great heavyweight in his career.

 

Can you list 20 men who DID ?

 

Good point

 

Neither did Holmes,
Neither did Marciano,
Neither did Holyfield,
Neither did Dempsey,
Neither did Vitali,
Neither did Wladmir

And that's just off the top of my head.

 

It's a simple answer to this question.

Name the ten fighters who displace him.

 

Holyfield beat a prime Bowe, trumps any of Tyson's wins...

 

Well that's what they're in the game for...money. Why fight David Tua for a couple of million when you can fight Holyfield or Lewis for $30m+?

This is the same as the people who accuse Mayweather of ducking Margarito ($8m) when he decided to fight Hatton and De La Hoya for approx $50m combined.

Actually Douglas was in the top ten. Seeing as Tyson had pretty much cleared up the division and was negotiating with Holyfield for their superfight who else was he meant to fight?

Who did you want him to fight after a 4 year absence?

Bruno held the WBC belt, which he won off Oliver Mcall who himself won it after knocking Lennox Lewis the **** out. I find it strange you criticise Tyson for facing Bruno and accuse him of dodging the guy Bruno beat and won the title off?

Once again, Seldon held the WBA strap, and this is directly because of Foreman dumping it (because he wanted to avoid Tucker). Are you saying Tyson should have ignored the opportunity to unify belts?

Tysons first fight in two years, his second longest spell of inactivity hence why the fight was more competitive than it should have been. Botha was a top ten fighter former IBF champion who up until then had only lost once, to Michael Moorer. Directly after the fight with Tyson Botha went on to get robbed by Shannon Briggs, the same Briggs Vitali pulled out of the morgue about a decade later.

It didn't stop Vitali fighting that same Norris did it?

Tyson fought a British heavyweight in his first fight in Britain...what was he meant to do?

And didn't Vitali face this same journeyman?

Savarese also fought Holyfield and Foreman amongst others. Tyson was the only one who sparked him in 30 seconds. And secondly, if you did your research, you'd find Tyson was scheduled to face Buster Douglas in a rematch, but Savarese knocked Douglas out. So Tyson fought Savarese instead.

Not Tysons problem, its not like Tyson was in his prime. And anyway, Golota retired Bowe, so he wasn't no mug.

Nielsen - Terrible opposition faced.

Douglas was in the top ten, he was coming off victories over Mcall and Berbick.

Because most of Ruddocks work was done in the late 80s....

That same Etienne beat Lamont Brewster.....do you know who Lamont Brewster knocked out?

And both of those guys were much closer to their best than Tyson was.

You keep bringing up Mcall? Tyson beat the guy who took Mcalls title. What would he gain by fighting Mcall????

Morrison. Actually, Tyson was scheduled to face Morrison sometime in 95, but Morrison caught AIDs and the fight never went ahead. Morrisons own wikipedia page says this and there's numerous articles for you to look up as well.

Moorer actually was scheduled next for a unification fight once Tyson beat Holyfield, but it never materialised and that's why Holyfield fought Moorer instead.

What happened to Rid**** Bowe after the Holyfield fights? Tyson/Holyfield and Bowe/Golota fights were in 96-97. Tyson got banned for the bite in 97 and Bowe retired that same year....when exactly were they meant to fight?

Sorry, I don't know if you know how this works, in boxing it takes two to tango. Did Sanders team, or Ikes team or Tuas team ever negotiate a fight with Tysons team? To my knowledge they never did. So I ask you the question....why did all these guys duck Tyson?

Tyson was the cash cow, they're meant to come to him, not the other way around.

This must be the tenth time you've bought up the Witherspoon issue, you just wont let it go will you?

Remind me again, who did Witherspoon lose his belt to?

 

Id love to know what accomplishments Bowes greatness was based on.......

 

Tyson beat Golota...

 

No , Tyson is not a Top 10 Heavyweight. I would rate him in 15-11 area.

Most people have not even Holyfield in their Top 10 list.
Its very hard to make a Top 10 list. Tyson is for sure the Boxer who is on
most of pseudo lists on Place 1 and the best argument is

"if Cus" D'Amato was there and Rooney"


If we had a Sonny Liston with modern methods , we would have a Luis Ortiz in Rage Mode
If we had a bulked up Joe Louis
If we had a young Foreman with skills of old Foreman
If.....

 

Erm, no, Theres a fair bit of footage online of them sparring and at no point does McCall hand Tyson his ass!! McCall even gets out of the ring having had enough at one point, so who told you McCall handed his ass? Some guy in the pub? Oh yes must be true!

 

Butter ollox.

 

Beating Holyfield surely. In my opinion that was a great performance against a heavyweight who most would say was a great one.

These are circular arguments though, we could go on and on second-guessing who was great and who wasn't. There's no fixed criteria.

We could do it with Muhammad Ali. He's considered great for beating Frazier but Frazier's considered great for beating Ali, there's no proof either of them were great therefore. So maybe Ali's great for beating Liston, but who did Liston beat who was great ? OK, but Ali beat Foreman. But Foreman's reputation was built on beating Frazier and Norton who were only great because they beat Ali.
There's no proof that Ali was great, if we base the whole thing on who beat who.

 

Such "casual fans" might not have heard of Holyfield at that time either.
I'd seen Douglas on ITV in the UK on at least two occassions, on Tyson shows too, which would have been watched by casual fans.

If Douglas doesn't belong in your "entire division" 1986-89 then it really is a limited sense of the phrase.

I'm not taking it too literally.
I called it out for being an exaggeration. Even in the limited sense it is an exaggeration, or you've purposely restricted it to a half-dozen names or less.

Again, you can list the men who mattered if you want. I'm sure it cannot be many.

Ruddock and Holyfield were relevant in the late 80s.
Douglas was as relevant as Frank Bruno, surely.

The division was "cleaned out" is almost always a meaningless statement.
Besides, many commentators thought it was a desolate and barren wasteland before Tyson came along, and he was the "saviour" who mopped up the remains and the mediorities who were playing musical chairs with alphabet titles.

I wasn't criticizing Tyson for fighting Biggs.
Far from it, I think he faced a good solid lot of legitimate challengers with no real "filler". That's what he did, and it stands up to scrutiny.

My point was during that period 1986-'89, Biggs was no more relevant as a force in the division than some of those other names who Tyson didn't fight.
Therefore Biggs, for my money, cannot be included among the "entire division" who "mattered" (all of which were apparently beat by Tyson) because I honestly cannot rate him above others across the specific period that Tyson never fought.

Jeffries was considered the champion by a lot of people.

I wasn't saying Tyson-Holmes or Tyson-Biggs shouldn't have happened, I'm not sure where you're getting that from.
All I said was that there were guys during 1986-89 who Tyson didn't fight who were as relevant as Holmes and Biggs.
therefore, I take it we can exclude Holmes and Biggs from the ones who mattered.

I'd suggest then that Berbick, Smith, Tucker and Spinks were the ones that mattered.
4 guys with claims to the title. Not great fighters but those titles mattered, and Spinks was linear and RING champion. Tyson beat everyone who mattered then, if we limit it to that.
It's not an entire division, but I suppose in a very very limited sense it is.