Your most over rated fighters H2H?

Yeah, there was only room for one star. The ratings was made up of guys going stale not fighting each other. You had Tubbs there, Thomas, Witherspoon, Frank Bruno and nobody was going through them to get to Tyson. No gate keeper. You had shop worn Quick Tillis doing the rounds on the lower fringes outside the top ten. Any one who beat him got a ranking. Once somebody had a ranking they didn’t fight anyone any good. Just waiting for Tyson to get around to meeting them because he was fighting 3 times a year.

This is why it is incredibly hard to assess the attributes of particular challengers of this time. A lot were stale, inactive or under seasoned.

 

RE: Tucker.

You are correct. Tony's dad had sold 125% of him. Early on. This was when he had just turned pro and at the 10 to 15 bout range and trying to move up. . Back then, I recall folks calling it the "Eddie Murphy contract" & all of this was prior to the DKP involvement. There were lots of Tucker stories around back then and not 1 of them good. But he had a following==== it seemed like all the amatuer heavies out of that NYC area had an instant following and foot in the door to a pro career.

Then King came in and bought him. Had a dq loss overturned so he could keep that undefeated record.
then DKP somehow managed to get 2 of his fighters of course, to fight for the IBF title.Tony and Douglas. Interesting at the time just how in the world those two guys--out of all the contenders---were selected.

But the other sheriff in town and up and coming at that time was Tyson. And Tyson went and cleaned up all that mess and there was no doubt who was the best. All the other guys were at least a magnitude or perhaps even 2 full magnitudes below Mike Tyson back then.

 

I think after his fight with Douglas Tucker actually made less money than his dad did. I think Manny Steward had to be bought out of the contract or something.

yes those belts were based on absolutely nothing. The word “world” or “international” should be taken away from their initials unless a fighter has a genuine claim of being internationally accepted as the best in the world.

Yes Tyson certainly appeared to look a magnitude above everyone whilst his challengers were going stale not fighting anyone in the ratings..especially guys like Holmes, Tubbs, Bruno, Thomas And Spinks...who might have looked better had they fought better opponents more recently. It certainly is interesting that Tucker having fought Douglas recently fared better against Tyson, that Bonecrusher made Tyson look more ordinary having also beaten a rated fighter in Witherspoon rather recently.

Interesting that Douglas beat Tyson having fought on the same card as Tyson the last three times. So he was getting exactly the same activity. And Buster was getting better rounds in against McCall, Berbick and Mike Williams than Tyson was blowing out Williams and Spinks where Tyson barely got hit back. The Bruno fight was the closest thing to a competitive fight Mike had in a couple of years. Yet Frank was coming off a huge layoff. Douglas was actually a huge step up From that.

The challengers who either beat or went the distance with Tyson were the ones who were beating actual contenders leading up to the fight. The ones that Tyson was beating largely did not.

So many challengers from the 1980s forward came into title fights with no worthwhile wins. This must reflect on the champions.

 

Yep.

But if you were not following the sport closely at the time, people look at the name value. Not the recent form. It is recent form that counts and more importantly===against whom? And what guys was that particular fighter not fighting? But doing that kind of diligence for bouts is a lot more work than most boxing fans do. We could say it is on par with the amount of jump rope guys from the 80's heavies did. Or, today's for that matter.

 

Still pushing that tired old line.

 

And it still catches me out. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. After the event you can look at the opponents recent challengers had and realise it wasn’t so surprising they did well.

I blame the governing bodies ratings for fooling people. A challenger should only be mandatory if he’s recently beaten a recognised contender. One who actually replaced somebody be beat.

I really love the linear ranking system that @Boilermaker has on his thread.

 

Well so much of it goes back to whomever a fighter's promoter is. Not too many independants through the years ever hit the #1 ranking. It is always an aligned fighter and the pull that promoter has with either the IBF/WBA/WBC/WBO. And their policy of not ranking another champion of a rival organization really stinks & screws things up even moreso.