Would Foreman and Liston really blast out Tyson in two rounds

There have been many fighters that have come off 1 year layoffs, thats not that big of an excuse. Spinks would have lost the same way had it happened 6 months earlier.

 

What did you do -read Suzie Q's post and have some kind of a conniption fit against the whole board?

"Tyson tears apart the old slow bear?" --Is that your best argument? Or is it Tyson's superior opposition (which no one but Suzie disputes)?

Make your point or at least aim your rage at a specific target... or good riddance.

 

1. Mike was in charge the entire fight Vs Green. He was patient and effective enough to win virtually every round. I can't believe you're attempting to deny this.

2. Actually peak Tyson was very systematic. He didn't try to blow opponents away if they were dangerous (e.g., Pinklon Thomas) he gradually broke them down with body punching, didn't overcommit himself looking for a knockout punch, and finished them off when their will was broken and the timing was right.

3. Yes I am fully aware Tyson stopped Pinklon in 6. And no it doesn't disprove my point. He was patient, effective and methodical. He finished the fight at the right moment.

4. Do you realize you're ultimately criticizing a fighter for knocking out his opponents early? As Marciano says, why dance with somoene for ten rounds when you can knock them out in one? It's that simple. It's another absurd criticism Tyson receives on these boards. He could've bided his time against Berbick and knocked him out in ten if HE WANTED TO, but that would be POINTLESS.

5. Your sensationalized definition of adversity means nothing to me. Fact is Tyson reacted well to being hit unless he had the absolute stuffing beat out of him, which was not easy to do. He was nowhere near his peak Vs Buster. Foreman will land, the real question is whether he will land often enough to really hurt Mike. It was no easy feat in Tysons prime.

6. Foreman-Moorer? What the **** I thought we were talking about '73 Foreman, a distinctly different fighter in a number of regards. He was aggressive, marauding, and technically very sloppy - He punched himself out Vs Ali.

 

This point would certainly make for good debate.

This is a terribly one sided and shallow way to look at things Duo. Whatever did Foreman do that demanded Tyson fight him? Talk about a no win situation! If he near kills him he's beating up and picking on old men and a less than stellar performance would see him lambasted from all sides. Holyfield himself copped shitloads. I'd venture to guess Tyson is a long way from your list of favourite fighters.

 

Ever thought of going to Sonny's grave, digging up his bones and stomping them into dust? You'd feel a lot better i'd imagine, jeez.

 

"WORLD CHAMPIONS" .... .. Did someone say something about aggrandizing the mediocre ?

 

Liston beat "B" fighters????? WTF are you talking about? where in the hell did you get this? I agree that Tyson probably beat better opponents, but Liston's comp list deserves way more respect than you're giving it.

 

Indeed, he punches a million times harder and actually sits down on them.

Excuses, excuses, excuses. Fact is that a feather fisted fighter knocked Foreman down. You can call fatigue, but we both know Foreman fought at a terriblly low pace throughout the entire fight. Frankly, if he hardly go 12 against Young at that slow-motion pace, i don't see him lasting 15 rounds with any of the better movers, like Holmes, Tunney, etc.

How many fighters did Ali knock out with one punch (not counting the Liston fix) ?
Hint: zero.

Even during his best accomplishements, after he stunned Lyle, he threw something like 30+ punches against a defensiveless Lyle but Ron remained on his feet. Bonavena kept getting up.

As for Wepner, he has been stopped something like 6 times before he fought Ali and often during the early rounds. Even a three fight Foreman did it. The fact that a journeyman like him went 15 with Ali, the world champion, is not exactly a hard statement about Ali's power.

And if Ali was so powerful, then why could he never knock glass chinned Norton down over nearly FIFTY rounds? Or glass chinned Shavers?


Ali wasn't a hard hitter but he knocked out Foreman in 8 rounds. Deal with it.


And whose to say Foreman somehow is impervious to fatigue when he fights Tyson, who can certainly take a lot of punishement as well as make him miss often?

Again, excuses and excuses. Those excuses do not change that Lyle never knocked out anyone of note out side of the not-durable-at-all Shavers.

Yes, but George's resume during his first career (both, actually) was extremely thin. His record against ranked contenders is something like 4-2. Tyson's is something like 14-3.



And do you really think Norton would make it out of the first round with Tyson?

And Foreman much, much better against Frazier than Ali did against Frazier.
So that means Foreman beats Ali, right?

If Tyson was a contender in '73, you can be pretty damn sure he'd fight Foreman.

Why should Tyson have fought Foreman in 89?

Foreman had:

-ZERO wins over any contender in the last ten years
-Was a popular ex champ. You know what happened to Holmes after he beat up Ali? To Charles after he beat up Louis? To Johnson after he beat up Jeffries? After Holyfield beat up Foreman?

Beating a former champ is a lose/lose situation. If you win, you beat someone who was way too old, and if you even lose or back up during a second of the fight while easily winning, detractors will say "See! Prime for prime he would've won!".


And whose to say Foreman wanted the fight? It's 100% clear that Foreman's plan was to take no risk against a good fighter, but beat up tomato cans untill he could fight a beltholder. Tyson was not a beltholder between 1990 and 1992 (prison). Although the win over washed up, 3 years inactive after getting beat by a LHW, coke sniffing Cooney does not mean much, this win came only in 1990. That is after Tyson lost his belt.

So you can be pretty sure that Foreman would not risk his entire comeback effort against someone who wasn't champion.

Just because the happy hamburger big mouth said he wanted to fight Tyson doesn't mean he actually did.

Holmes is a frustrated man with a gigantic chip on his shoulder who discredits anyone who beat him, but the opponents that he beat of course were the greatest of all time.

In his own mind.

Have I Am Legend post the gif of Holmes being layed out cold and ask again if Tyson hit hard or not. :nut

Great, and how much did Frazier's heart mean when he fought Foreman ?

And how eager was Foreman to get up after he was down against Ali? He was certainly fully conscious and you could see he accepted defeat when he walked (again, fully conscious) back to his corner after being counted out.

You have a lot of guts to call Tyson. Wow.

You must be one hell of a strong keyboard warrior.


Tyson is a coward because he stepped in the ring with the most ferocious and dangerous heavyweights for 15 years straight? Yeah, that guy who was being pounded by 6'5 245lbs Lennox Lewis for 8 rounds was a real coward.

The bravery that you've shown (from behind your keyboard) is uncanny compared to stepping in the ring with the best fighters in the world and risking your health 50 times.

 

Oh, ****! You just figured out my real identity.:yikes

I will not ever denounce anybody I do not personally know who posts on ESB as a keyboard warrior, because one of them I did know (since passed away) was a sparring partner for Manuel Ortiz, a United States Olympic trials finalist, and someone who laughingly was denounced (not by you, unless under another pseudonym) as a "keyboard warrior" himself (much to his amusement). For all we know, Foreman and Tyson themselves are among the anonymous posters at ESB. Holmes could well post here from his office computer for kicks.

Mike Tyson did not take on either Bowe or Foreman, so he certainly did not take on ALL of the most dangerous heavyweights of his era (anymore than most heavyweight champions have).

 

...You have to love the passion in fans these matchups invoke.

 

True that, we're indeed an amusing lot aren't we.

Seamus has left the board twice now over Liston :yikes

 

I think Holmes is posting under the name Bill1234...

 

Yet he gets tremendous accolades for beating up on Holmes. Larry was coming off an 18 month layoff, while Tyson dropped his title to Douglas in Tokyo the month after Foreman clobbered Cooney so he wouldn't have to defend against George. During the opening seconds of Foreman/Cooney, the announcers declared George did not have to face Gerry to get Tyson, that he'd be getting Mike anyways.

Shitloads of both criticism and accolades. Evander made a lucrative title defense against a future champion in George who had earned his shot, a challenge the public wanted to see. Holmes was coming off his mastery of Mercer.

What kind of person would have somebody like this near the top of their list?

Whether it's 7'1" Tree Rollins trying to bite off the finger of 6'5'' Danny Ainge in a 1983 National Basketball Association playoff game, second baseman Roberto Alomar spitting in the face of umpire John Hirschbeck in a 1996 Major League Baseball game, Bill Romanowski spitting in the face of J.J. Stokes during a National Football League Monday Night Game, or Tyson's cowardly attempt to cannibalize Holyfield before a live world wide audience and crowd which shelled out millions to witness a competitive bout come to an appropriate conclusion, or some National Hockey League goon deliberately using their stick as a lethal weapon, yes, there are some behaviours so despicable that those who use the arena of sports to break laws of civilized conduct and self restraint ought to be banned.

To deliver certain types of fouls and get away with it can require a modicum of athletic ability. Anybody can bite and spit, just as easily as shoot a gun. I could never be a soldier, cop or hitman. To deliberately place myself in a situation requiring the will to kill another human being is beyond my makeup. I'm not so sure about Tyson.

Although I don't believe this myself, I know many who hold Mike Tyson personally responsible for the destruction of boxing as a mainstream sport, the anti-Dempsey and anti-Ali. (Rule changes which coincided with Tyson's ascension to the top are what I believe to be truly responsible for boxing's decline.) My feelings about him one way or the other were rather indifferent until that rematch with Holyfield. To succumb to anger over Evander's headbutting is not toughness, but the worst form of weakness.

Tyson's real inspiration for the Holyfield rematch came from watching Bruce Lee in "Return of the Dragon" tell John Saxton that the way to get out of a certain difficult situation with an opponent was to "bite him." He said after his 12 rounder with Bonecrusher that Smith shouldn't get paid. Neither should have Tyson, after Holyfield II and McBride.

Plenty of champions have prevailed against deadly competition, risking their lives in the process. Tyson showed far less courage than many, and did far less with his physical gifts than many who wish they'd been born with his genetics. Just how many beatings did he take anyway, aside from Douglas and Lewis? (Not nearly as many as he truly deserved.)

I'm not great fan of Lennox Lewis or a large number of other prominent boxers. Of course lots of boxing fans don't have a high regard for many in the sport. But Tyson's the only one who usually makes me so sick to my stomach that I feel like I need to vomit when thinking about what he's done to the sport.:barf

 

I agree with much of what you write, Lobotomy.

I thought the "bite fight" episode scrawled a huge line through Tyson's claim to greatness.

The sheer cynicism and "unmanliness" of his actions were tangible, even watching on TV. The post-fight interview with his "manager" John Horne and himself was more sickening that the bite itself.

Tyson came across as the worst type of coward, selfish, dishonourable, insecure and inadequate.

(His excuse of Holyfield's headbutting was ridiculous, seeing as Tyson himself had butted and elbowed his way through many fights)

Teddy Atlas has been saying for years about Tyson's character flaws - and even predicted Tyson would foul himself out of Holyfield 2. Atlas describes Tyson as manipulative. Not just a guy who will do some anti-social act, but a guy who'll make alibis for doing so, blame others, cover it up with another outrageous anti-social action, seeking sympathy, refusing to be 100% responsible and a man about it.

I dont know if Atlas is right, or if Tyson changed considerably since he was an adolescent, and I didnt really care when it was kept out of the boxing arena. Let the authorities and his lawyers settle other matters.

But Tyson-Holyfield 2 brought out those ugly and pathetic qualities in TYSON THE FIGHTER, and I felt personally cheated, I felt the spirit of boxing was tarnished that night It used to be "a real man's game", now you had Tyson (and his manager,Horne) exposed as nauseating whiners, snivelling, despicable inadequates.

 

Wow. Great passion does this topic agitate.

Legend aside, George Foreman was ill-equipped to beat Tyson. Tyson had the tools to brutalize Foreman early.

This fight ends early and the outcome leans heavily on what happens during the first couple of minutes. Notice how nervously unsteady, wide-openly hittable, Foreman looks against Frazier in his championship challenge. In fact, Frazier gets in the first solid blow of the fight, a left hook that wakes Foreman up. Had Frazier been able to keep up the attack, Foreman would have been blasted out; it's just that Frazier had little to offer in an all-time shoot-out.

Tyson, on the other hand, was the perfectly smooth operator, ring-wise and -skilled well beyond his years, immediately proceeding to break down the very durable, brash and crafty champion Berbick, with a combination of old-fashioned boxing skills (the jab and swift predatory circling), astonishing speed, top all-time power in both hands, versatile attacks. No slugger since Dempsey had displayed such a combination of abilities when challenging for the title. The previously unstopped Berbick was rocked, shaky, the outcome a foregone conclusion, by the end of one round.

Foreman was Berbick's size, legend aside. He was not at all a superhuman machine that would somehow, some way just be "too big and strong", "bully" Tyson and "blast him out" in one or two. He had heart, as did Berbick, as did Frazier, but heart didn't help Berbick nor Frazier. In sports, you look good when you can, but, from a strict technical sense (as, regarding intangibles, we are talking about two reasonably strong-willed men, world champions here, who will bring their A-game) Tyson has the upper hand because he has the greater number of tools: power, speed, defense, proper boxing fundamentals for his style, versus power alone for Foreman. And this is just scratching the surface.

Everything else is mostly distraction from crunch time. Like when Holmes ran off at the mouth only to find out, once in the ring, he had nowhere to go against a terrifying human hurricane that left him brutally kayoed on the canvas.