Opinions on the "GOAT" (Boxing)

[samosa4u]

Originally Posted by Dpeck100

I have a neighbor Burch who is 70 and a good friend and he knows boxing and insists Casuius Clay is the best ever. I say Tyson would have knocked him out. We will never know.

Hahahaha!!! When Tyson got put into the ring with solid competition, he couldn't knock any of them out, so how on earth do you think he would have been able to knock out Ali?

Now people always bring up Buster Douglas, but I am not going to go that route because there were a lot of guys Tyson struggled against. Go watch his fight against Mitch Green.

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by samosa4u

Hahahaha!!! When Tyson got put into the ring with solid competition, he couldn't knock any of them out, so how on earth do you think he would have been able to knock out Ali?

Now people always bring up Buster Douglas, but I am not going to go that route because there were a lot of guys Tyson struggled against. Go watch his fight against Mitch Green.

If you have ever watched MMA you would know better than to laugh. It only takes one Tyson punch to go down if it lands.

He may have lost but none of us will ever know. There were a ton of fighters that said they had Tyson's number only to wind up laying on the canvas.

[HasselhoffsCheeseburger]

It only takes one punch from anyone for anyone to go down. I thought we were talking about skill.

Arthur

[Dpeck100]

Originally Posted by HasselhoffsCheeseburger

It only takes one punch from anyone for anyone to go down. I thought we were talking about skill.

Arthur

I don't think Tyson was the most well rounded fighter. You might be able to find a few that argue that but I doubt many. I think why myself and legions of others think he belongs in the discussion is he was a total bad ass and could knock out fighters that had more technical skill than him.

A fight is a fight. Randy Couture was more skilled than Brock Lesnar but it didn't change the outcome and Brock laid him out.

In the lower weight classes most of the guys are extremely technically proficient but lack power. I think of the heavyweight division and power trumps proficiency in my book with the danger level of entering the ring with so much larger fighters being so much higher.

You can watch most 155 pound MMA guys go five rounds. Only a select few have knockout power and that is why their popularity is so high. Lighting fast and deadly.

Look at a guy like Floyd Mayweather. Great fighter obviously but he isn't sending anyone to the hospital.

[Exhibitman]

First of all, MMA and boxing are not analogs, so any comparison with MMA is just pointless. Put the best MMA fighter in a boxing ring under the unified commission rules and he will be out of his depth, as MacGregor was. It isn't the same sport. Michael Jordan was one of the greatest basketball players of alltime but was a sucky baseball player. Irrelevant.

Next, let's talk training, nutrition, etc. You cannot assume that a 1930s fighter would be living and training the same in 1990. The man is the same, the training techniques are not. How about we flip it and put Tyson in the gym in 1930 with crappy food, no A/C, rudimentary medicine, etc.

Knockouts are entertaining but are not the whole story. Not even close. 2018 HOFer Vitali Klitschko knocked out 87.3% of his opponents. Tyson knocked out 76% of his. Does that make Vitali better than Tyson?

Then there is how a fighter 'looks'. David, you've resorted to this eyeball test over and over again. How a guy looks is probably the least useful gauge of performance. Old time fighters didn't lift weights; the trainers believed it would make them too tight to box effectively. What they did was fight. A lot. Most of the guys on the top lists who fought in the earlier days had triple digits in total fights:

Henry Armstrong 181
Willie Pep 241
Sugar Ray Robinson 200
Harry Greb 298
Sam Langford 256
Benny Leonard 95 (in 11 years)
Bob Fitzsimmons 99 that we know of, lots of bouts not recorded in Australia on his way up

and so on. My point being, these guys were hard as a coffin nail and nastier than a rattlesnake. They had to be to survive, and the proof is in the way they responded to the roughest, toughest fighters. Louis lost once as a 22 year old; he came back in the rematch and broke Schmeling's back. Holyfield TKO'd Tyson and Tyson reacted in the rematch with a blatant series of fouls that got him disqualified rather than lose again.

Tyson was a killer as long as he was in with a lesser talent or a has-been, but his record against HOFers speaks for itself: 1-3. He is a legitimate HOFer and a legitimate top 20 heavyweight but he is not a top 10 P4P.