The Night Douglas Whipped Tyson..........

..........what other former Heavyweight Champions, or even former Contenders, might have turned the same trick?

 

You're gonna have to explain more clearly....

 

Pre-tits Witherspoon might do it

 

Basically, forget Lewis, Holy, Bowe, KLitsckos, anyone who came after 1990 is ruled out

 

I thought Larry Holmes might have done it- he had that same jab and uppercut style that Douglas did, perhaps not as fluid but definitely as tough.

I got to thinking that maybe Douglas vs Tyson was simply a perfect-storm sort of a result.

Douglas was externally written off but internally the guy was on a mission. Tyson was internally falling apart but externally was a 42-1 favourite. If Mike had fought anyone other than the son of a former fighter who had just lost his mother and whose father thought jack-shit of him, and whom the bookies had made a 42-1 underdog, he might just have gotten away with it. Don King was promoting both guys which would have robbed Tyson-and also King, of the natural caution that comes when fighting "somebody else fighter".

To cap it all off, Douglas had great legs and a great jab and uppercut.

You couldn't have crafted it any more precise for the de-robing of Iron Mike.

The Clay that fought Liston actually wanted to quit at one point. I got to contrasting the braggadocio and exuberance of young Clay on one hand with the sheer bitter resolve of Douglas on the other.

There is a difference. Clay would have fancied that he could beat Tyson. Douglas on the other hand decided that he would not be be beat BY Tyson.

The more I look at that fight the more I think Iron Mike just got curve-balled by every possible aspect of the fight.

 

Take your pick...

Ali
Bowe
Dempsey
Foreman
Holmes
Holyfield
Lewis
Liston
Louis
Tunney
Walcott

...most of whom would've beaten any Tyson, let alone the distracted (though not past-prime, as Tyson revisionists would like us to believe) version Douglas bested --- & bested easily, I might add. He didn't beat Tyson, he flogged him all over the ring. Douglas lost exactly one second of that fight --- when Tyson put him on the seat of his trunks. That round was verging on 10-8 for Douglas, BTW.

 

If a guy stops training properly & being trained properly his prime ends, no? Perhaps you have a problem with those semantics, but the bottom line is that he's become a declined fighter.

The notion of Gene Tunney beating Tyson is a little far fetched, IMO.

 

maybe tony tubbs would've won the rematch

 

Ali, Holmes, Frazier, Foreman, Ruddock, Louis, Liston to name a few..

 

Not Ruddock

 

YES Ruddock. There was a good reason why Tyson ducked Ruddock in favour of Douglas that night. Ruddock would have cleaned his clock.

 

Ruddock fought 19 rounds against Tyson in the year after that and won about three of them. He also struggled with likes of Bonecrusher Smith prior the fight. Razor was a myth of a contender if there ever was one.

This slightly declined version of Tyson would have had trouble with moving opponents, not a simple slapper such as Ruddock

 

Based on this photo, if there was a film made about Tunney my casting pic for the lead role would be:



bad acting aside...

 

Not sure about Liston either.

 

Hate to break it to you, but not everybody here wants to see your male nude picture gallery

 

You have no idea what you're talking about. Stick to figure skating.

Tyson of the Douglas fight wasn't a "slightly declined version"....he was a completely under-trained, under-motivated, over-confident fighter with a perm to boot. :atu:

The Tyson that had beaten Ruddock twice would have knocked Douglas out in about 5 rounds.

You're an idiot if you think Tyson was anywhere near his best on the night he fought Douglas.

 

Sorry about that..I forgot it would be such a distraction for you. Surely you see my mistake, I'm used to discussing boxing with a chat room of heterosexuals.

 

Cryson was not nearly as bad as his groupies from the 80s (some of which, like you, seem to like him very much) want to suggest either. He wasn't overweight or anything, his timing was perhaps a bit off. When Tyson didn't find a way to get close against Douglas, he became clueless, but Ruddock didn't have the skills to keep him off, and at close Tyson would still have beaten him up. Keep watching your highlight videos and leave actual analyzing to us experts

 

:atu::Thumbs:

Good one.

You're a well-documented Tyson hater, and so your opinion on this matter has to be taken with a grain of salt. If Tyson were a white European you would see it differently (remember your alias "Rudolph Eichmann"?).

Those of us that truly analyzed Tyson in the 80s (and early 90s, before Jail time), knows that the guy who lost to Douglas was very much a different fighter.

 

Name one thing Douglas did better than Tunney.

 

Douglas hit harder and had much greater reach, which was one of his big assets against Tyson

 

Never, especially Dempsey. That's a horrific style matchup for him.

 

Wow, it's amazing how boxing fans continue to try and diminish the performance by Douglas by insisting Tyson was suddenly somehow removed magically from his prime at the tender age of 23.

Bullshit.

Douglas was in the best shape of his life and was the first fighter Tyson faced with the tools, size and motivation to really test the fortitude and mental make up of Iron Mike. And as we saw in this fight and future fights where Tyson was tested, Mike didn't have the ability to fight through adversity.

Buster Douglas did not enter the ring nor fight in the ring with even an ounce of the intimidation that normally gripped Tyson's foes. The normal tact of Tyson's opponents was to either fold or hold. Douglas did neither. He had nothing to lose and just fought. And the style and size of Douglas, when properly trained, would always be the blueprint or recipe for beating Tyson.

It's speculation to say how the Tyson that destroyed Carl Williams less than 5 months earlier would have done in Tokyo against Buster. But the one thing that can't be debated is that the version of Douglas that showed up in Tokyo was the best version of Douglas to ever step foot in the ring. And I personally believe that version of Douglas would beat any version of Tyson.

 

This.

I feel, as stated above, that Tyson simply walked into an unsolvable equation the night he met Douglas.

Most me, even fighters, are rational creatures. They assume fear, acknowledge pain, and weigh up risks and benefits and make decisions accordingly.

For Douglas, none of that applied. He was for one night of his life a pure, unadulterated live-or-die fighter who drew up everything he ever knew or had known and blended it with utter disregard for Tysons reputation or his own personal safety.

And Tyson couldn't live with it.

And it is debatable if he could ever live with it. I'm not sure Douglas fought for the title that night, I think he just fought. An awful lot of fighters, dropped in the 8th round as Douglas was, would have patted themselves on the back and bailed out, safe in the knowledge that their 8 rounds of work was more than enough to satisfy themselves and the press.

Not Douglas.

 

He be-'d 235lb and 6'4 much better than Gene Tunney.

 

I agree.

So to Irish's OP, who else could have pulled it off?

Not very many, I think. Maybe on their respective best nights you could include guys like Holmes, Tucker, Tubbs, Witherspoon, Berbick...

you'll be looking for taller, athletic fighters with good chins, accurate punches, and good volume. Obviously someone like Holyfield showed he could beat Tyson, but that's not what the OP is looking for.

Maybe Bobick? I'm not familiar with him so much, but I think he fits the bill. I guess I'd go with Holmes as my #1 choice to mimick what Douglas did.

 

Ron Lyle might have been big enough and fluid enough to cause some noise, naturally big dude with good legs, would question his resistance though. In many ways Lyle was the Douglas of his time, just without the upset victory. He clearly had natural talent, but had issues of resistance, much like Douglas was touted as having. Clearly was clever enough and hard hitting enough to cause huge problems for Ali and Foreman. He did KO overrated dangerman Earnie Shavers too.

<iframe title="YouTube video player" class="youtube-player" type="text/html" width="425" height="349" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/kh1RjxI7Js8" frameborder="0"></iframe>

 

The same people that think that Tyson was the same fighter on the night he lost to Douglas, do y'all think that Jones was the same fighter in his first fight with Tarver as he was on his best nights (E.g. Hall, Hill, Telesco)?

 

Wow. So now Mike had burned off 25lbs of lean tissue in training camp and killed himself to make the heavyweight limit of....well...whatever the heavyweight limit is. This is a new angle, this is new material- you should get an award for this.