Most popular fighter after Ali's retirement

Where would Mayweather jnrs name be regarded in this list of ''Most popular boxers''?

 

again, you are confusing fame with popularity

Tyson was regarded as a crude uncaged animal by the largest portion of the press and the public during his prime years... everyone knew who he was, found his story fascinating, but he was not beloved by most people

Popularity means people LOVE you

Tyson had and still has FAME and INFAMY, but beloved figure? hardly, and he never was to begin with

 

That is certainly true.

However i think you're missing something or we're talking about two slightly different things.

In my understanding of popularity (in this thread) is who has more fans/admirers in total, not on a sort of per-capita type basis.

For example if you asked 100 people who at the very least knew anything about both, i'd stipulate the overwhelming majority vote in favor of Leonard in terms of "likeability".

Now think world wide. Tyson is much more famous/infamous than Leonard. Even if you add all the people who don't have a positive opinion of Tyson, it's probably still more than those who could even tell you who Ray Leonard was.

 

fair enough, I could see that

 

Yeah...so please stop trying to be clever/contrarian for the sake of it. You KNOW what the thread starter meant by popularity. Popularity in boxing is referring to "who the fans follow and want to see..who has the fame". What we individually think about their characters is irrelevant. (People HATE Ray Leonard's character btw...arrogant woman beater)

People HATE Mayweather and adore a guy like Mickey Ward. Is Mickey ward more popular than Floyd...if we were asking for example "who's more popular after the retirement of Oscar De La Hoya...Mayweather or Ward"?

 

First of all, I don't ever NEED to be clever... I simply AM

Secondly, popularity and fame are two totally different things, so nothing I was saying was off base

Finally, Ray Leonard's character wasn't revealed truthfully during his prime years so he was BELOVED as this "good guy" by millions of people... so it is TOTALLY IRRELEVANT to bring it up and it illustrates how badly you missed the point

 

Pacquiao has to be considered as well. I will say that Tyson was the most popular.

 

Wow, seeing Irish and sly use the same racial slur is rather surreal.

 

To refer to Tyson as an "animal" is...well...I'll let that stand on his own.

Secondly, you're still wrong. The public was fascinated with the guy for how he KO'D people.

Put it this way...Tyson was seen (during his prime years) much like Lindsay Lohan is today. No one calls her an animal.

he was all of the above...famous, loved, notorious but to state most of the public considered him an "uncaged animal." Fucking ridiculous during his prime years.

After the rape conviction and biting Holyfield...there's truth in that...prior to...absolutely not. revisionist history and extremely near sighted.

 

They call Lindsay much worse things than animal, justified or not.

 

so Lindsay Lohan is a POPULAR person with the public?

Do you know what POPULAR means?

not FAMOUS, but POPULAR

and it is not revisionist history... maybe you need to REVISIT news items and articles of the day

 

Some of us weren't in pampers or grade school during those years and recall Tyson's impact quite accurately.

Tyson was such an "animal" and despised that "Nightline" showed the post-fight press conference after Tyson KO'd Spinks. When has that happened since?

To refresh your memory, "Nightline" is a hard news program...not a sports program especially in 1988 when ESPN wasn't what it is today.

The "animal" had a top selling video game

The "animal" was the subject of Will Smith's first hit record

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,967765-1,00.html


I think what's probably gone unsaid here is the difference in perspective...I'm sure most white kids were fascinated with Larry Bird at the time. wasn't "cool" to be a Tyson fan.

Plus, let's be honest...we're talking 1985-1988...hip hop wasn't as much of a crossover phenom it is today...the biggest foothold white kids had in hip hop were the Beastie Boys and the "Walk This Way" collabo between Aerosmith and Run DMC.

Anyway...Tyson's popularity was certainly evident at the response to his rape conviction and the trial leading up to it.

 

Absolutely not... It's really America vs. the world here, If i ask my mom or people at Univ who don't follow boxing (around 99%) nobody has heard of De la Hoya, Leonard or any other guy besides Tyson and Ali.

Jordan is almost on that level, though.

 

Dude, I am in my 30s... Incredibly weak of you to try and put an age spin on this... if anyone is more likely to believe that Tyson was this beloved figure, it would be a much YOUNGER guy

BOXING was FAR MORE POPULAR back then ... the heavyweight championship was a BIG DEAL back then... Tyson was incredibly FAMOUS, that doesnt mean people in general LOVED him

Now its a RACE thing?? are you mad? when I was growing up, the most popular basketball players among all the white kids I knew were Magic and Michael Jordan by a MILE... when I was very little, Dr. J was the man... the only people who wanted to be Larry Bird were Celtics fans and middle aged men... kids like flash and excitement and the other three had that in spades... Larry required a deeper understanding of the game to understand his greatness... this was the heyday of the slam dunk, and that is what white kids wanted to see every bit as much as black kids... when I was a kid in the early 1980s, as soon as rap music and break dancing started to become really popular, all the kids went ought and bought fat laces, hoodies and (if they could afford them) Adidas sneakers or any type of basketball shoe that was considered cool... the idea that white kids admiring or emulating black culture is some new phenomenon that originated in the 1990s is incredibly ignorant... my goodness, white kids have been aping black culture in this country for a century or more

when people talked about Tyson in those days, they wondered if anyone would ever beat him, why he talked like that, they made fun of him as much as they praised him and he was absolutely looked at as something of a freakish man-child with an ominous temper... I remember the Mitch Green incident being all over the news, the insanity with Robin Givens, the car crash, all of it... Tyson was never given the pervasive whitewashing that Leonard got... Leonard was seen as the wholesome all-american golden boy, he could do no wrong... the mainstream never knew about what a shithead he was until years later... Tyson's troubles were headline news to a public that found him fascinating, but not a public that thought he was a great guy

 

I skipped most of this...not worth my time.

With that said, the fault in the original statement I took issue with is this...

If you want to say Tyson wasn't universally loved...fine.

However, to say Tyson was considered an "animal" by the "majority of the public is equally as near-sighted as anyone who thought he was "universally" loved.

That's where your post falls apart.

 

well fuck off then... better to just throw out ridiculous, unsubstantiated nonsense than actually debate?

 

It was clear...you refuted a broad statement (tyson was universally loved) with an equally broad statement (the majority of people thought Tyson was an animal).

Wasn't much of a debate. I made clear points, refuted your proclamation swiftly and explicitly while you strolled down memory lane (defensively) when faced with the comment regarding what the country was like at the time. Took it far too personally.

Why waste my time?

 

both famous and popular are synonyms for 'well known'

I think most of us didn't take popular to mean 'well liked' in part because Tyson was brought up.

I guess if the OP meant popular the way you are arguing, he probably should have been clear because most of us would not think he meant it that way.

 

the stroll down memory lane was introduced by you and you made absurd generalizations which I refuted point-by-point... I had no interest in going down that road until you decided that A) I must be 15 like TLC, B) white kids apparently were uninterested in black culture prior to Hammer and C) that a news program covering the heavyweight championship of the world was somehow a unique event at that time and only applied to Mike Tyson (perhaps you are so old, you have forgotten the amount of hype surrounding Holmes/Cooney, to name just one big fight which generated endless news coverage)

you made no clear points at all, merely an absurd attempt to paint me as a kid while portraying yourself as a wise, old sage backed up by nonsense

I stand by what I said... the mainstream focus of the time on Mike Tyson was on his strange man/child persona, his brutality in the ring and his eventful night life.... the general public loved watching him knock people's heads in, but they didn't regard him as a lovable, all-american fella