Who hit harder - Lewis or Tyson?

I think a prime Lewis beats a prime Ali.

For every 'weakness' a prime Ali had, Lewis glady obliges....

 

Likewise. And don't be fooled into thinking Lummox had no weaknesses. This ain't Ray Robinson.

Ali-Lewis would be a pretty dull fight, but Ali's speed would carry the fight and he'd win a pretty clear decision. I think he'd out-jab Lewis, which would throw off Lummox's whole game. And make NO mistake, Ali COULD and WOULD hurt Lewis. Enough to make Lummox think twice about opening up.

 

I think Lewis could beat Ali, it's hardly far fetched. Ali was the greatest heavyweight ever but he wasn't unbeatable.

 

I think the converse; Mike is lucky he arrived just before heavyweights went supersized. Not once did prime mike look good against a big heavyweight and he never fought any anywhere near as big as say AJ or vitali

 

Hut has seen the light!!!

 

I dunno. Tyson was smaller than virtually all his opponents and Ruddock was a big man and Tyson knocked him down 4 times (well....3 + 1 times). Lewis, Vitali and Wlad were all beaten by non-supersized heavyweights. Y'all overestimate size on this forum.

 

You can make an argument for Lewis, but PLEEEAAASSEEE spare me the Klit sisters and Anthony "Rocked by White" Joshua.

80's Tyson wipes his ass with those three goofballs. Period.

The ONLY one of the three who even puts up a fight is Vitali. Wald and AJ get smoked quickly.

 

Already did the stats, and no, HW today (at least for 2012, when I did the comparaison. Might be different today since AJ and Wilder weren't top 10 at the time. But maybe not, since Valuev , Fury, Vitaly and wlad were in my 2012 sample) are not significantly taller on average than HW in the late 80's early 90's hw.. The standard deviation is bigger, but the average isn't, statistically speaking.

 

Out of top 10 contenders? That seems unlikely

 

indeed, but sometime the truth is surprising. Statistically, there was no mean difference between guys in the top 10 or 25 between 2012 and 1986 (p-value of 42% and 30% respectively, which is not even close to being statistically significant. To have a statistically significant difference the p-value has to be 5% or lower. 10% or lower is accepted sometimes but that's really stretching it).

http://fightbeat.com/forums/showthread.php?47498-80s-heavyweights/page7&highlight=deviation

Weird that you forgot since you were a participant in that thread.

 

just did a t-test (using height as the variable) comparaison between guys from the annual 2015 ring top 10 ranking and the annual 1986 ring top 10 ranking, and still, there is no statistically significant difference.


Variable 1 Variable 2
Moyenne 193,1818182 190,5454545
Variance 53,16363636 23,67272727
Observations 11 11
Différence hypothétique des moyennes 0
Degré de liberté 17
Statistique t 0,997512287
P(T<=t) unilatéral 0,166251784
Valeur critique de t (unilatéral) 1,739606726
P(T<=t) bilatéral 0,332503568
Valeur critique de t (bilatéral) 2,109815578



Variable 1 being the height of the 2015 guys and variable 2 the height of the 1986 guys. As we can see, the mean is 193 cm for the 2015 guys, while it is 191 cm for the 1986 guys. The important part is the underlined p-value. If the height difference between these two populations was statistically significant, it would have been 5% or lower. At 33%, it's not even close to a statistically significant difference.

So ,can we please put to rest the myth that the current guys are taller on average than the guys from the 80's-90's ?

 

tbf tho, fighters don't face the statistical mean to become champ- since Mike went to jail the dominant forces in the division have all been super heavyweights apart from holyfield and the shift seems to be becoming entrenched with this newer generation of heavyweights

 

agreed. Don't get me wrong, size is important, but skills even more so. It's not surprising in the current hw environment that it's the biggest guy's who dominates as they are all basically skilless and rely mainly on their physical attributes to get by. And in this forum, size seems to be only height which is not that much of a deal when someone knows how to deal with it. Especially when it's a guy like Tyson who was always smaller than his opponents and who's style was to get inside and bang. Its gotten so ridiculous that some unproven guy like AJ, who started boxing 8 years ago and who's best win is over a srub like Dillyan White, gets talked in the same sentence as Tyson.

 

yeah, and you think that Mike has no chance against porcelaine wlad, Vitaly (who looked like shit against small ass Byrd, and Chisora), AJ (bum beater) or wilder (who struggled mightily against polish bum because of polish bum head movement)?

 

Anthony Joshua's accomplishments are not so dissimilar to Tyson's at the same stage of their careers. AJ had a much better amateur career and Tyson had a similar, but better pro career. The main difference is that Tyson gets the boost for being so much younger.

Today's heavyweights are generally bigger than what Tyson faced. More who are taller, a lot more who are heavier. There are more who are taller, there are way more who are heavier. Average height is just a stupid quirk that JOM clings to in order to sound clever. Plus, it really is statistically meaningful when you are talking about an inch of height difference and how it might affect a shorter fighter. Every inch of difference makes more to overcome when you are a 6 footer because the slope showing difficulty in dealing with height doesn't flatten out at these differences. It's still rising noticeably. Imagine this graph has height on the bottom axis. Difficulty is the left axis. A one inch height advantage is generally very minimal and would be down in the left corner, but 3, 4, 5 inch height differences are going to be in the middle, where it says "Time". I don't exactly know where (or if) the axis actually start flattening out again as it does on the upper right. Perhaps a 9'1" guy is basically the same as fighting a 9'2" guy. But, a 6'7" guy generally will present more difficulties for our 6' guy than a 6'6" guy, all other things being equal.

Only JOM is claiming height should be the only metric for 'bigger'. That's just convenient bullshit. Bigger includes both height and weight. I'm not saying Tyson couldn't beat these taller guys. There is obviously a lot more to being good than size, but today's bigger guys start out with an advantage that a lot of his opponents didn't have.

 

If you don't like using height for size, you're welcome to propose another proxy. As I said to you before, I don't think weight is a better one, since being fat doesn't equal size imo. A guy like Whyte would benefit from shedding the fat he has, it would not hinder him. And I don't think that the current HW are more muscular than the 80's/90's one (roids were very prevalent in that era, and there was no drug testing). And no, the T-test shows that an inch in difference is not statistically meaningfull, whether you like it or not. This is not something that you can dispute unless you want to argue that the whole scientific methodology is flawed.


As for your graph, it's cute and all, but it's something that you took out of your ass and it has no empirical basis

 

No, I think height is best starting point when talking about size, I just don't think it's appropriate to make it the only consideration. Especially, when the short guys from these recent days are wide tanks, not 215 lb guys.

The graph is out of my ass, but it's there because it helps demonstrate my point, a point, I agree, that I am just speculating about. If someone wishes to argue that a 6'3" is no easier to fight than a 6'4" guy for a 6' fighter, I'm listening.

Here's one of your quotes from the other thread "wich doesnt' prove a thing, only that there's more freak in the hw division than they're was, and more smaller guys too, but the 80's boys were more uniform, as you can see by the way smaller standard deviation." But, as Hut pointed out above, "tbf tho, fighters don't face the statistical mean to become champ"

 

yeah, and these giants hw are not exactly frightening, as I said previously.

And I'd say that your whole logic is flawed, since I would argue that a guy like Tyson, who was used to always being the smaller fighter, would have less of an adjustement to make fighting 6feet5+ guys than a 6feet3 guy would have to, because the 6feet3 guy would be in a position he don't often faced (being smaller than his opponent), while for Tyson, it would be business as usual (getting inside a taller fighters reach was his bread and butter)

BTW, who are these current, wide, tank-like short HW? Andy Ruiz?? Chagaez? I persnally consider them fat slob, not big HW.

 

I picked Rahman to KO Lewis in the first fight because I reasoned Rahman would be able to jab with Lewis long enough to hang around and catch him. Hard to see how Ali loses to a tall outside guy that can be out jabbed and neutralized like Lewis.