Would Ali have intimidated Mike Tyson?

This is wishful thinking if ever I saw it. The VERY first thing Ali would have zoned in on was that high pitched lisp. After ten minutes of Ali ridiculing that Tyson wouldn't even want to talk to his pigeon's.

 

What's the point of even having fantasy fight discussions involving Ali, when most people on this site consider Ali to be absolutely unbeatable? One guy even said that, with the exception of the Holmes fight, that Ali was undefeated. Maybe Ali would mock Tyson's lisp....maybe that would inspire Mike to kill him.

 

Regardless of how effective it would be, I can bet my life that Tyson would definately respond with **** you till you love me ***got. Would be funny and intimidating as hell to spectators.

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He was drugged up in that interview apparently

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yes and easily

 

I have seen the Joe Frazier fights against Ali, all 3 wars. Tyson is more gifted technically than Frazier.

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Yes, more gifted physically, too.

But he lacks Frazier's in-fighting skills and perseverance - and he'd need both to have a chance. Frazier's weaknesses were such that they were not easy for Ali to exploit, and his strengths were poison to Ali. So just because Tyson has more tools than Frazier does not mean he does better against Ali, because what matters is a particular set of tools that can neutralize Ali.

By the way, I'd take Tyson against Frazier head-to-head - possibly via early annihilation a la Foreman v. Frazier.

But again, none of that matters in this fight.

 

There is more than that going on here. This matchup not only features the comic book tall tale of Ali as Professor X, the genius who manipulated strong men with his mind,but also that of Tyson as the coward bully who shrinks whenever people stand up to him. Lazy halftruths that have long since become the popular opinion among the many fight fans who like to repeat conventional wisdoms uncritically.

 

Joe Frazier was raised as a poor black sharecropper's kid in the deep south in the 1940s and 1950s. Frazier had a difficult time speaking and even looking people in authority in the eye because the sharecroppers he grew up with were used to getting a stick upside the head if they got out of line.

Frazier was so intimidated by public speaking that Ali - a clean-cut kid from a middle-class family who just stole the gimmick of pro wrestler Gorgeous George - ran circles around him in public.

Ali wouldn't get two words out of his mouth reciting his third-grade level poems and his pro wrestler shtick when Mike Tyson would light into him.

Tyson grew up in Brownsville when it was one of the worst places to live on earth. He was surrounded by gangbangers, gun violence and death when he was a child. Rid**** Bowe grew up in the same neighborhood as Tyson and recalled everyone making fun of Tyson when he was in grade school because Tyson was worse off than everyone. They called Tyson "Bummy Ike" because he was so bad off.

And Tyson was violent since childhood. He'd ask old women if he could carry their grocery bags, and when they fumbled for their purses, he'd punch them in the head, knock them out and rob them.

Joe Frazier wouldn't punch an old lady in the head if his life depended on it. That's not something that would even enter his mind.

And compared to Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali was Urkel. Even the scary Nation of Islam were a bunch of guys who wore suits and ties and preached starting their own businesses.

Ali wouldn't have survived in Mike Tyson's world. A kid stole Ali's bike, and Ali went to the police to file a report.

A kid killed one of Tyson's pigeons, and Tyson nearly killed that kid. He didn't file a police report. :roll:

And you talk about the "old white guys" around Tyson ... the old white guys spent a small fortune trying to keep all of Tyson's transgressions out of the newspapers. Tyson was beating up guys in parking lots. And he was going back to Brownsville and stealing and robbing and getting fights when he was a top heavyweight contender.

If "YOU" think that the real Tyson was the guy Jim Jacobs was getting Diet Pepsi commercials for ... and his tough guy outbursts were just an "act" ... you're the one who is being naive.

The clean-cut, polite Mike Tyson of 1985/1986 lasted about a year because it wasn't real ... and Tyson couldn't hold it together because it wasn't him.

Ali calling Mike Tyson "Kong" or trying to come up with some lame "poem" to tease him wouldn't intimidate anyone where Tyson was from. It was childish.

Nobody ever called Muhammad Ali a f@ggot and mocked him, and told them they were going to make Ali their b1tch ... and then charged him and started a fight with him.

Ali was from a different time. He had great heart and great talent ... but he was never in a million years going to "intimidate" Mike Tyson outside the ring. All of Ali's insults came with wink and a smile at the end.

Many of Tyson's insults ended in a brawl and his arrest.

And Ali loved to insult his opponents, because they rarely insulted him back. But Oscar Bonavena got under Ali's skin by just calling him a "cheekin" (chicken) a 100 times. Tyson would've had Ali reeling with some of the smack he and his buddies threw around. And had Tyson followed up those insults by actually punching Ali or biting him outside the ring, like he did with some opponents, Ali wouldn't have known what to do. Ali wasn't a street fighter ever.

Ali would've been completely out of his league. Hell, forget Mike Tyson. Tyson Fury today is more "ghetto" than Muhammad Ali was. Ali would've been shocked by the **** coming out of the mouths of people like Mike Tyson.

When the bell rang for their fight, the guy whose blood was boiling would've been Ali. Not Tyson.

 

Neither would be intimidated they're fighters they can handle smack talk.

 

Great post with some excellent points.

 

While they were poor Frazier's family were not sharecroppers. They had a small farmer and his Dad was a bootlegger. Frazier was forced to leave the south because he had conflict with the wrong white people. Frazier was not cowed by whites or anyone else. Ali even commented that Frazier was too ready to fight whites if provoked.

The fact that Tyson was victimized as a child, and not suprisingly later a victimizer did not maker him stronger or tougher. It made him more vulnerable. It was this same trauma that led many of his subsequent issues.

Ali was not scared of Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, prime George Foreman or the United States government he certainly was not going to be scared Mike Tyson.

Tyson was scared of being made to look foolish or embarrassed Ali was the greatest at this. Tyson fought for his survival. Ali felt he was fight for Allah, something greater and more important than himself.

 

Dubblechin, I salute you, sir.

 

Brilliant post! Ali and Tyson were in two totally different era's. So would Tyson be as harsh in the 60's-70's? Vice versa would Ali be more aggresive with his taunting in the 80's?

I say Tyson's dimeanor would change slightly if he were in Ali's era but Ali would always be Ali.

 

Tremendous ****ysis doublechin. The only counter argument i ve got for that is this. There was definetely something different about ali.

I ve heard a few times now from people that have met him he had an aura of some kind around him. Sometimes Its like opponents froze around him. For me tysons doing the same.

Ali fought a lot of tough people in his career and most of them felt it.