In amongst spam and other bullshit I get in my email there is occasionally some good stuff like this. Not even sure who wrote it and if they’re any big authority on the sport but interesting reading. Apparently six guys in history could have beaten a prime Mike Tyson, as always interested in @raznomore s opinion on this.
A prime Tyson, a Tyson devoted to boxing, coached and trained by Kevin Rooney, would not be easy work for any fighter.
Having said that, styles make fights, and there were 6 great fighters on their best days who i would have bet money on to defeat Mike.
Muhammad Ali
George Foreman
Sonny Liston
Joe Frazier
Lennox Lewis
Larry Holmes
(Before you scream about Holyfield, i do believe a Rooney trained Tyson could have beaten Evander - he gave him a fight at a time when Tyson was partying all night every night - he could and could have done five times better in Rooney days, AND, you cannot ignore the steroid factor - how would Evander done as a heavyweight without PED’s)
First, why Mike Tyson, centered on boxing, trained by Rooney, was dangerous to any fighter, anytime.
Tyson was more than a puncher as the youngest heavyweight champion ever. He was a boxer-puncher of appalling speed, hand-speed, constant movement and power, who threw "punches in bunches" with bad intentions while maintaining superb defense. People who never saw him fight, or who never understood boxing in the first place, like Never Was a coach, cannot tell the difference between a volume boxer-puncher, and a man playing water polo.
Kevin Rooney himself has been very candid about what happened with Mike, and the differences before and after. While he worked with Tyson, from the start of his career up to the Spinks fight, Tyson was trained to be, and was, a volume combination boxer-puncher. Rooney says " he punched fast and hard. That’s a difficult combination to deal with. Especially when those fast punches come in bunches, in good, solid, combinations,"
Rooney goes on to talk about Mike's defense in those days, saying, "he was elusive. The best thing about it was these guys couldn’t hit him. When you can’t hit somebody, that becomes very frustrating. In boxing, I’m trying to hit you, you’re moving your head and I can’t hit you. And I’m like, what the ****. That’s what happened in a lot of Mike’s fights. They couldn’t hit him."
So what changed? Don King and Robin Givens came into Mike Tyson's life, and it all was gone with the wind. Rooney tells what it was like up to Spinks, pre-King, with Mike: "we’d go to a health club at night. Then we’d go do bed. When he was with me there was no partying. There was no, well I worked hard, I’m gonna go have a few drinks and try to pick up a girl. That never happened. Hey Mike, guess what? We got a title to defend and you gotta be in tip-top shape. So that Mike Tyson, if he didn’t cross channels and went with Don King, he would have gone down as the greatest heavyweight in history."
And Robin Givens? Bill Cayton described what her influence was: "Mike was taken to the cleaners by a woman who never loved him, who saw in him an opportunity to become famous – which she did; to make a lot of money – which she did; and to use him. I don’t think she ever loved him for a minute, but he fell for her. I’ve never seen anything like Robin. She got Mike to fire Steve Lott, who had been like a close brother to Mike, but she decided she wanted rid of him so Steve had to go." Between Givens and King, they cleaned out Mike's life of anyone who had worked with him on the way up, and who emphasized that life at the top takes constant work and sacrifice.
King and Givens changed literally everything. Instead of working hard every day, sparring, running, watching film, Mike changed to drugs, drinking, and partying. His boxing style changed with his life style.
Mike, a short, lightning fast boxer with enormous power and incredible handspeed, was always vulnerable to taller rangy fighters who could rotate out and away, and control the fight with a jab. Under Rooney, he neutralized those fighters by being in good enough shape to go the distance, with constant movement, bobbing and weaving, to slip punches, and great defense. After King began and Rooney left, Tyson changed completely. Under Rooney Mike had landed 56 percent of his power punches, which is 15 percentage points higher than the heavyweight average. For instance, against Trevor Berbick, Tyson landed more power punches (46) than the total punches that Berbick threw (43), according to CompuBox. After Rooney, Mike's punch stats showed a complete change, with lesser totals, and lesser accuracy.
Defense also stopped as the party began. Mike went from a boxer-puncher with superb defense to a single shot headhunter, his generations version of Earnie Shavers, looking to put opponents asleep with one shot and go home.
Cayton described in 1992 what happened to Mike after King took over: " With Kevin it was not just the fact that he was a great puncher – it was those great boxing moves he made to get into position to deliver those devastating combinations...but then after Kevin was gone, a completely different fighter, he was not elusive, he didn’t slip punches, he didn’t bob and weave – he lost the skills that had been instilled in him under Kevin Rooney."
Hall of Fame Trainer Eddie Futch assessed the before and after Tyson bluntly: "Under Cus and Rooney Tyson was well conditioned and ready to go all night, lots of gas, great combinations, great defense. Under that parade of clowns King brought in, well, no defense, no conditioning, no combinations, if the knockout doesn't come by six, out of gas."
Don King, basically, convinced Mike that he didn’t need to put in countless hours at the gym or to live clean - he could do anything he wanted, not work out at all, and party like it was 1999, and somehow, still manage to win fights.
He did in fact win some, but nothing like what he could have.
So who could have beaten a dedicated, Rooney trained, Tyson?
Muhammad Ali
Muhammad Ali, according to Mike himself.
Mike Tyson has expressed his belief Ali was the greatest heavyweight of all time, and that he could not beat him, saying:
'“Nobody beats Ali,” he said when asked if he’d have beaten him, prime against prime.
And Mike explained that those who grew up in the ’80s and ’90s and perceived Tyson as the winner just because he hit harder and had bigger muscles let themselves be fooled by Ali’s physical appearance. “Ali is a fuckin’ animal,” Tyson said. “He looks more like a model than a fighter, but what he is, he’s like a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a pretty face. And fast, Lord God he was fast!”
In addition to fast, Ali had a world class chin, recovered well, and got up and kept fighting. He would certainly have been favored over Mike.
George Foreman
George Foreman would also have been favored. In 1990, nearly 30 years ago, Mike flatly refused to fight an old George Foreman.
The reason Mike Tyson and George Foreman never fought according to witnesses who heard it is because Mike absolutely refused the fight. Styles make fights, and Mike was convinced - and probably rightly - that George had his number. (A belief 42 year old George firmly shared)
Let us start with Frank Lotierzo, the writer and former boxer who reported that Mike had declined a Foreman fight in 1990.
Frank Lotierzo is one of boxing's most respected journalists. Frank Lotierzo is a staff writer for NY Fights. Over the years, his work has appeared in The Sweet Science, Boxing Illustrated, Fight Game, and Boxing Scene. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, he was an amateur boxer based out of Philadelphia and trained by George Benton. He is a member of the International Boxing research Organization. He has also worked on ESPN radio.
But there is a lot more to the fact Tyson declined a Foreman fight that just Lotierzo's story. George Foreman has said flatly, on the record that Tyson refused to fight him.
George Foreman said on the record with an interview for "On the Ropes" that "There were a couple of times, serious negotiations were going on with the Mike Tyson fight. Mike Tyson just didn’t want to fight me."
George himself continues to say he tried to get the Tyson fight and failed on numerous occasions, something Mike has never denied.
https://www.boxing247.com/boxing...
Frank Lotierzo, on the record for Cox's Corner, said it best 28 years ago: "I haven't a morsel of a doubt that Tyson just doesn't match up with Foreman, and he knows it. If Tyson of 1990 was afraid of an old Foreman, think how petrified he would of been of a prime Foreman, the one who stared down both Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali in 1973 and 1974."
According to highly respected boxing writer and historian Frank Lotierzo, he went to out to eat with Georgie Benton, Lou Duva and Bobby Goodman on June 1, 1990. (all were in Atlantic City for the Holyfield - McDonagh fight) At the time, Goodman was Don King's matchmaker. Lotierzo had known Benton for many years, and through him Duva. He had been introduced to Goodman a couple weeks before Tyson fought Larry Holmes at the Convention Center in Atlantic City in January 1988.
While the group was eating that day in 1990, according to Lotierzo, who has written and spoken about this extensively, Benton said, "Bobby, what's up with Foreman and Tyson, how come they're not fighting each other on the 16th? Isn't that the fight that King was trying to make?"
Goodman then said, "Georgie, You'll never believe this but, Fuckin' Tyson is scared shit less of Foreman and wants no part of him. I was there when Don was trying to make the fight. He was telling Tyson that Foreman represented huge money, plus he was old and slow and would be no problem. Tyson got up and screamed at King saying, 'I'm not fight in' that Fuckin' animal, if you love the motherfucker so much, you fight him!'"
Lotierzo also wrote and has said that all through the lunch Goodman, Duva, Benton, and himself shared stories on the fight game. In addition to what he had already said about Tyson and Foreman, Goodman added later, "oh I remember why else Tyson wanted no parts of Foreman. He said that King had found out from Steve Lott that Tyson and Cus D'Amato used to watch the Frazier-Foreman fight over and over." He went on to say that Tyson loved that fight because he was awed by Foreman's power and Frazier's toughness and how he kept getting up after every knockdown.
Goodman also told the group that Lott told King that Cus sat alongside Tyson saying, "It's suicide against Foreman if you're short and fight a swarming attacking style like Marciano or Frazier." Cus, of course, never dreamed that Foreman could be a possible Tyson opponent so many years later. According to Goodman, Cus said the only fighters who had a chance against Foreman were, tall rangy fighters who could fight him from a distance while moving away from him, and no way any swarmer or short fighter could beat Foreman by going to him.
Lotierzo has written on the record that he subsequently talked to people who were involved with promoting Foreman, including Ron Weathers who promoted some of Foreman's fights after his coming out of retirement. Weathers told Lotierzo the same story. The fight didn't happen because of Tyson's fear of losing to Big George.
Bob Arum also said that he dreamed of making Foreman -Tyson. He said it would be huge money and that Foreman would stop Tyson easier than he did Frazier. Lotierzo also wrote he has heard the same story, of Tyson fearing Foreman from George's brother Roy who was his business manager.
For people who claim this is only "hearsay," a journalist's sources, undisputed by 4 people who were there, including Mike Tyson, for 28 years, and confirmed by 2 more people independently, that claim is absurd. They simply do not want to believe Tyson refused the fight. (Mike himself doesn't deny it!) The story has been reprinted 5 times in 29 years, and discussed on ESPN, with no disclaimers ever.
The original story, well sourced, and undisputed, is reprinted on the Sweet Science, online here:
https://tss.ib.tv/boxing/article...
Mike Tyson, a student of the fight game, watched films of Foreman, and was convinced he was just too quick and strong, and would have overwhelmed the much smaller man. I think he was right.
Sonny Liston
Whatever Foreman could have done to Tyson, Sonny Liston could have done it better.
Sonny was just as strong, or stronger, than George, hit harder, and was a far better boxer.
Sonny was that rarest of creatures, a slugger with all time power who could actually box.
Sonny was a vastly underrated boxer, with excellent fundamentals, a poleax jab, and knockout power in either hand. During the 50's, in his prime, he was avoided like the plague; ie. Henry Cooper said "I don't even want to see him walking down the street, let alone in a gym!"
Sonny Liston was a truly outstanding technical boxer. Despite his awesome strength and power, “he took his time to set his opponents up, to gauge their skills and reaction time, before finishing them,” said Angelo Dundee.
According to Muhammad Ali, the second greatest heavyweight of all time, was Sonny Liston.
George Foreman said "Sonny Liston could whip any other heavyweight in history except for Ali."
Joe Frazier, when asked if Larry Holmes had the best jab he had ever seen, said "nope. Ali's was better." Then he paused and said "and Sonny Liston, of course."
Rocky Marciano said of Liston, "he isn't faking his toughness, and his strength is just something you got to see, and that jab, he can knock a man out with the jab!"
A good barometer of how good Sonny Liston was comes with his twice destroying a very good heavyweight champion, Floyd Patterson, in the first round each time - when he was much older than Patterson!
Nor was it a freak accident when Liston wiped the floor up with Patterson - Boxing writer and historian Bobby Franklin said, while marveling at Liston's skills at such an advanced age, "it is interesting to note that while the fights were blow outs, Liston did not come out swinging wildly. He took Floyd apart methodically, setting his man up with left jabs and solid body shots. Sonny showed fast hands, using an accurate left jab, along with hooks and uppercuts. He had a definite game plan and executed it perfectly. If they fought a hundred times during that period the result would have been the same."
Boxing historians consider Charles ("Sonny") Liston a great heavyweight. Indeed, Ring magazine ranks Liston as the seventh greatest heavyweight of all time, and boxing writer Herb Goldman ranked him second. Boxing writer Springs Toedo, in his book, The Gods of War, lays out a powerful case that Liston, when at his peak in the late 1950s and early 1960s, could be favored to beat just about every heavyweight champion in the modern era with the possible exception of a young and prime Muhammad Ali.
Sonny would have had an incredible 13 inch reach advantage over Mike, and could and would have controlled distance.
And power? You want an impressive knockout? How about Sonny Liston knocking out Wayne Bethea in 1958 in 69 seconds of the first round? Liston dropped Bethea for the first time in his career, knocking out 7 teeth, with 9 more broken! 16 teeth knocked out or broken with one punch!
Neither Mike Tyson nor Rocky Marciano, nor George Foreman himself ever managed that much damage with a single punch.
Bethea, never the same again, said of Liston "he must have hit me with a horseshoe in his glove!"
Nor was that the only time Sonny hit men with unbelievable power that eclipse's anything anyone else has done - in the mid 60's, Sonny sparred with Ray Shoeninger in Denver, and he hit him with a jab so hard, the stitching in Ray's protective headgear literally tore and the headgear came apart with the blow, which getting through, knocked out three teeth!
Mike himself, a big fan of Sonny Liston’s, says he would “not want to be in a ring with Sonny Liston!”
Sonny would have controlled the distance, hit Mike when Mike was out of punching range, and stopped him.
Lennox Lewis
Lennox Lewis beat every man he ever faced, avenging his two knockout losses with emphatic destruction of both men in the rematches. Lewis defeated every professional opponent he faced, one of only three World Heavyweight Champions to do so, with Rocky Marciano and Ingemar Johansson being the other two.
Three fighters retired after losing to Lewis, Andrew Gerrard, Noel Quarless and Zeljko Mavrovic.
Lewis recorded five first-round knockouts and 15 knockouts within three rounds.
The Olympic Gold Medal Winning Lennox Lewis is in the Hall of Fame, and as Emmanuel Steward said, "is the most complete big man to ever compete in boxing."
The first of the "super-heavyweights," Lewis was 6'5" tall, a rock solid 250, with an 84 inch reach, an inch longer than Wilder's. He was a truly outstanding boxer, with athletic ability, excellent fundamentals, great footwork, an educated, heavy, vicious jab, and power in both hands.
Lewis was an ultracautious boxer-puncher who used his huge size and 84 inch reach to keep opponents at bay with a pole ax left jab, and a potent, deadly, counter right. However, he was highly adaptable. When Vitali Klitschko was beating him to the punch in his last fight before retirement, he moved inside and beat the hell of Klitschko with a vicious inside fighting style.
Lewis faced, among others, Hall of Famers Holyfield, Vitali Klitschko, Mike Tyson, and then highly respected contenders like David Tua, and Henry Akinwande, and former champions, Shannon Briggs, Frank Bruno, Tony Tucker and Razor Ruddock, among others.
Lewis is undefeated (3-0-1 (2 KO's) against fellow Hall of Fame members: he won against Evander Holyfield, Mike Tyson and Vitali Klitschko. He faced a wide variety of styles in his career, and defeated every opponent he ever faced. Even those two, who, before Emmanuel Steward improved his defense, who had knocked him out, he beat up, and knocked both out in rematches.
How would a Rooney trained Tyson have done against Lewis?
Lennox's size, fundamentals, sound jab and power punching would have always been problematic, but, it would have been a much closer, if not different, fight had they met early in their careers - a fact Lewis cheerfully acknowledges!
First of all, Mike was best at a fighting weight of around 215. He came into the Lewis fight at 234, the heaviest of his career, and his speed, and movement, were gone. Once a fabulously conditioned volume punching speed demon, Mike was a relatively slow, fat, one shot puncher.
A young Rooney-trained Tyson, at 215, would have been a completely different fighter, and Lewis acknowledged that.
Lennox said, "Mike at the age of 19 ruled the world, but like a fine wine, I came along later on and now I'm the ruling man."
Emmanuel Steward, who trained Lennox Lewis after his stunning KO defeat by Oliver McCall, who Steward had trained for that fight, said he believed a prime Lewis still could have defeated a prime Tyson - but he acknowledged prime Mike's speed and intensity. He felt Lewis's sheer size and power would have still triumphed - but it would not have been an easy fight.
Mike Tyson so eloquently said "don't nobody enjoy a night of fighting Lennox Lewis!"
Joe Frazier
Mike Tyson and Joe Frazier both used a highly demanding style - though both styles were different - but burn out was not the reason for what happened to either.
There is a huge misunderstanding that Joe Frazier took four to throw a punch.
He did not.
In fact, Joe had the best slip and duck rate among all heavyweight champions, according to boxing historian Monte Cox, who went back and studied film on all of them, and ranked them accordingly.
Further, Joe’s highly effective use of the bob and weave, coupled with his excellent slip and duck skills, gave him a first rate defense.
Joe’s style was not to stand in front of an opponent and exchange, it was to bob and weave inside, and, as Jerry Quarry said after Frazier twice stopped him, “he attaches himself to your side and beats the hell out of you!”
Joe used a vicious two handed body attack to chop down opponents like trees.
Did his style require more energy than the style of a standup boxer-puncher? Of course, because the bob and weave requires constant movement, and constant exertion.
Moreover, Joe’s body attack required volume punching, which took a tremendous amount of energy as well.
As for why his career was shorter than many of his contemporaries, Marvin Hagler said it best: “It's hard to get out of bed in the morning to go for a run when you're sleeping in silk sheets”. The sentiment being, of course, that once a fighter is on top of his sport and has made his money, they no longer have the drive or passion to put in the work required to stay there.
Joe grew up the child of sharecroppers in the south, working on a farm from the time he was a child, and worked himself in a slaughterhouse from the time he was 15 years old. Forced to leave home at 14 because of his mother’s fear a white farmer might harm him, Joe had been on his own since he was a child, literally. His harsh life left him both strong, and tough as old shoe leather.
Joe came from nothing, and his fierce burning desire to build a better life for his family drove him to put in the endless hours a fighter using his style needed in order to succeed.
But success tempers even the fiercest of drives.
And that happened to Joe. He admitted in his autobiography, “Smokin’ Joe” as he aged, and as he achieved the comfortable life he wanted for his family, it got harder and harder to put in the endless hours needed to stay in tip top shape. His weight began to climb, and he found it harder and harder to keep the energy for his style - and he retired.
Joe was also a harder puncher than Mike - though his KO rate was a little lighter percentage wise, Joe recorded five first-round knockouts and fourteen knockouts within the first three rounds, more KO's in the early frames than Tyson had. He had a KO percentage of 73% against all time great competition, including Ali, Foreman, Foster, Bonevena, and Jerry Quarry.
In the end, I think Joe’s chin - he was never knocked out, and the times he was knocked down by two fighters, Foreman and Bonavena, he got up and kept fighting, winning the later; Joe’s enormous heart, and his body punching would have prevailed. But this one would depend on which man imposed his style on the other.
Larry Holmes
Mike beat Larry, people say. Yes, and Larry had been retired two years, was fat as a hog, and only had six weeks to train.
Larry in his best days was a boxer of great ability and Mike Tyson could be beaten, as Holyfield and Lewis proved, one of two ways. A great in-fighter, a Holyfield or a Frazier, would get inside his comfort zone, and beat the hell out of him. A lengthy and rapid boxer would stay outside that comfort zone, that range he was so deadly at, and jab and uppercut him as he sought to find his range.
Holmes was the later kind of fighter, a tall, 6'3" heavyweight with a 5 inch height advantage, and a foot, 12 inch, reach advantage over Tyson. In his best days, he had a hard, rapier like jab, good movement, and decent power in either hand. He was a skilled boxer, though, as Johnny Walker says, a somewhat angry and miserable man to deal with back then.
Holmes also took a great punch. How many heavyweights get up from the right hand Earnie Shavers dropped him with in the seventh round of their title bout?
Holmes ability to work his jab at first in his fight with Tyson, and the fact he was old, retired for two years, overweight, and took the fight with short notice all lead most historians to believe that had he met Tyson in his prime, he would have been able to stay on the bike, stay out of mid-range, and beat Tyson up with his jab, and perhaps KO him late in the fight with uppercuts.
Other historians believe Rooney-Era Tyson would have bobbed and weaved into range, and beaten Larry like a giant bongo drum.
In the final analysis, a match between the two in their primes would have come down to the simplest equation in boxing - who would have been able to impose his style on the other? Outside Larry or mid-range Mike?
I would have bet on Larry, but as with Frazier, we will never know.
