When was Mike Tyson's prime?

interesting Trey..

I am also a Tyson fan and I actually think he has become UNDER rated over the years..

he didn't smash through opposition like "you are supposed to" he DESTROYED everyone in impressive fashion and he was a KID.. I think he was such a phenom

anyway... to me his Physical prime ended when he went to jail.

that said.. the douglas fight IMO was where his lifestyle caught up to him. I hate to take credit away from Douglas but Tyson was TOTALLY unprepared.. out drinking all night in Japan, corner was a joke.. he just didn't train like he did when he was young and his conditioning, timing, everything was terrible.

 

I have a newspaper article I found under my carpet as a kid from 1988 in the lead up to the Spinks fight. The whole piece is about Mike's spiralling personal life and all the whispers about his degenerating training practices. That was only late 1988.

By 1990 he was getting his ass kicked in sparring by Greg Page and trevor Berbick and his life was a car crash.

'Prime' is just a word, it's a boring semantic argument. Does it mean this or that, nobody here is an authority on that and it's meaning in boxing terms isn't in the dictionary. But there's no argument that he was a declined fighter, whichever word you choose to use for that change. None.

 

easy question to answer:

1986 to pre-Jail

 

This is one of the stupidest posts Ive seen in a long time. All you have to doo is subject his fights to the "eye test" There are LOTS of people that say that by the Bruno fight in 89 thta Tyson was on the decline. He was rocked for the first time in that fight and his fighting style had changed.

Douglas was at his best and Tyson was slow and plodding and out of shape. and Mike almost still knocked him out.

 

Disagree. Mike simply fought a man with more will that night, plain and simple.

 

Agreed. To add to that, he didn't look that great in the first Bruno fight, which was in '89. Like you said, the guy's life was an absolute disaster.

 

There's a nice book on the whole Tyson - Douglas fight, also tells the story from Douglas's point of view. I enjoyed reading it.

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Great-Fight-Extraordinary-Changed/dp/0312353308

 

He was in his prime, but he came into the fight out-of-shape and unprepared for a motivated Buster Douglas.

 

Mark Breland.

 

Not true. Tony Tucker and James Tillis come to mind.

 

Nunn

 

Not really. Tucker broke his hand early in the fight. Kinda hard to "push"someone with a broken right hand.

Tillis? Cmon man, Tillin came in that fight losing 4 of 5 and couldnt crack an egg. Surely not the type of fighter to break down Mike.

 

I believe there are a number of fighters who could've beaten a motivated, in-shape, focused, Rooney-trained Tyson. Lennox Lewis comes to mind, first and foremost. Buster Douglas put on a hell of a performance that night, and I think that version of him would still have given any version of Mike fits, but the fact of the matter is that he was facing a very degraded fighter from the one that KO'd Berbick, Holmes, and Spinks.

I think the version of Tyson that faced Douglas would've had serious problems with say, Pinklon Thomas.

 

Maybe, but tall fighters who liked to clinch were always a problem for Tyson throughout his entire career. He didn't know how to deal with clinching.

 

This is what I was saying..