Comments Thread For: Measured Against All Time: “Iron” Mike Tyson

[Lacrimosa]

Great article!

But the funny thing is that after all, Tyson is just a HoF, and Joe Calzaghe is an ATG...

[norway]

Its really no debate that Mike Tyson of young would beat any fighter at their prime with ease. To bad people remember him after his prime and the ear biting made people forget what actually no words can describe. Insane and best in history. Maybee 100 years until the next Tyson comes around.

[crold1]

Great article!

But the funny thing is that after all, Tyson is just a HoF, and Joe Calzaghe is an ATG...

That's my take.

[El Castigador]

That's my take.

Calzaghe IS NOT an ATG Cliff. Especially if Tyson's not.

[crold1]

Calzaghe IS NOT an ATG Cliff. Especially if Tyson's not.

I disagree and gave lengthy reasons as to why I feel that way. Tyson, to me, is JUST outside the all-time Heavyweight pantheon. That's the only place to measure him. Those who feel different are free to do so.

[Dave Rado]

I disagree and gave lengthy reasons as to why I feel that way. Tyson, to me, is JUST outside the all-time Heavyweight pantheon. That's the only place to measure him. Those who feel different are free to do so.

I agree with most of your analysis, but the reason I think you under-rate him is that I don't think you give enough weight to the Rooney factor (in fact you don't explicitly mention Rooney in the article). Some fighters are much more dependent on a particular trainer than others: I don't believe Pacquiao would have done nearly as well as he has without Roach, for example, and Norton wouldn't have beaten Ali without Futch in his corner.

With Rooney, Tyson was a bobbing, weaving, jabbing, combination puncher with real ring intelligence, who regularly out-jabbed much taller fighters, and who always turned up super-fit. Without Rooney, he rapidly evolved into a head-hunting slugger, who rarely used his jab, rarely punched in combinations, and who was frequently under-trained.

You could say it was Tyson's own fault for sacking Rooney, but that was due to the malign influence of King, who was prepared to manipulate Tyson's mind in order to gain a few dollars; and Tyson was still only a kid and therefore easily influenced. He'd recently lost two father figures in Cus D'Amato and Jim Jacobs, and King pretended to be a replacement father figure, but was a malign one.

I therefore don't think his situation is comparable to Liston's, as you suggest in another article. I think his prime ended as early as it did because of the malign influence of King and the loss of Rooney, whereas Liston had no comparable reason for his losses to Ali and subsequent decline.

So I think more weight should be given to the portion of his career while he was with Rooney, and less weight to his subsequent career, in terms of judging his ATG status. Had he had to retire immediately after the Spinks fight, I suspect he'd just have made your top 10, and just inside the top 10 is where I think he belongs, for the above reasons.

Monte D. Cox has him at #10, which I think is about right.

[crold1]

I agree with most of your analysis, but the reason I think you under-rate him is that I don't think you give enough weight to the Rooney factor (in fact you don't explicitly mention Rooney in the article). Some fighters are much more dependent on a particular trainer than others: I don't believe Pacquiao would have done nearly as well as he has without Roach, for example, and Norton wouldn't have beaten Ali without Futch in his corner.

With Rooney, Tyson was a bobbing, weaving, jabbing, combination puncher with real ring intelligence, who regularly out-jabbed much taller fighters, and who always turned up super-fit. Without Rooney, he rapidly evolved into a head-hunting slugger, who rarely used his jab, rarely punched in combinations, and who was frequently under-trained.

You could say it was Tyson's own fault for sacking Rooney, but that was due to the malign influence of King, who was prepared to manipulate Tyson's mind in order to gain a few dollars; and Tyson was still only a kid and therefore easily influenced. He'd recently lost two father figures in Cus D'Amato and Jim Jacobs, and King pretended to be a replacement father figure, but was a malign one.

I therefore don't think his situation is comparable to Liston's, as you suggest in another article. I think his prime ended as early as it did because of the malign influence of King and the loss of Rooney, whereas Liston had no comparable reason for his losses to Ali and subsequent decline.

So I think more weight should be given to the portion of his career while he was with Rooney, and less weight to his subsequent career, in terms of judging his ATG status. Had he had to retire immediately after the Spinks fight, I suspect he'd just have made your top 10, and just inside the top 10 is where I think he belongs, for the above reasons.

Monte D. Cox has him at #10, which I think is about right.

This is what I was trying to avoid. It's armchair psychology based, in part, on the lingering (largely racist) myth of Cus and the Kid and the Black Devil who spoiled the story. Not saying, at all, that this is where you're coming from. It's how I view the narrative. Some of it might be true; other parts probably not. Tyson was blowing camps, according to some accounts, as early as the Tucker fight. Rooney couldn't control him anymore than anyone and it doesn't matter. All we have to judge is what happened in the ring. Mike Tyson was a young, but grown, man responsible for his own outcomes. Everything else is pop culture navel gazing to me.

Joe Louis might have had 35 defenses instead of 25 without the war.

Ali might have bested 25 straight without the draft bruhaha.

Those things didn't happen. Conjuecture is fun. It shouldn't be the basis for weighing the tangible.

As to how to weigh him, at 13 on my list I'm giving much more weight to the early years because he's not top 40 for what came after Douglas and especially after jail. I have no beef with anyone who sees him top ten (at the low end anyways); I just don't agree. Mr. Cox has Holyfield beneath Tyson and I could never agree with that personally.

[Dave Rado]

This is what I was trying to avoid. It's armchair psychology based, in part, on the lingering (largely racist) myth of Cus and the Kid and the Black Devil who spoiled the story. Not saying, at all, that this is where you're coming from. It's how I view the narrative. Some of it might be true; other parts probably not. Tyson was blowing camps, according to some accounts, as early as the Tucker fight. Rooney couldn't control him anymore than anyone and it doesn't matter. All we have to judge is what happened in the ring. Mike Tyson was a young, but grown, man responsible for his own outcomes. Everything else is pop culture navel gazing to me.

Joe Louis might have had 35 defenses instead of 25 without the war.

Ali might have bested 25 straight without the draft bruhaha.

Those things didn't happen. Conjuecture is fun. It shouldn't be the basis for weighing the tangible.

As to how to weigh him, at 13 on my list I'm giving much more weight to the early years because he's not top 40 for what came after Douglas and especially after jail. I have no beef with anyone who sees him top ten (at the low end anyways); I just don't agree. Mr. Cox has Holyfield beneath Tyson and I could never agree with that personally.

I can accept most of what you said, but not the racist narrative bit. It was King who played the race card when trying to prise Tyson from Clayton and Rooney, calling them "white devils", and telling Tyson to stick with his own kind. Futch made Norton, and Futch was black. Manny Steward made Wlad and Lewis, and Steward is black. They were great trainers who happened to click with certain fighters, and I see Cus and Rooney in the same way. I don't see the relevance of colour at all.

[crold1]

I can accept most of what you said, but not the racist narrative bit. It was King who played the race card when trying to prise Tyson from Clayton and Rooney, calling them "white devils", and telling Tyson to stick with his own kind. Futch made Norton, and Futch was black. Manny Steward made Wlad and Lewis, and Steward is black. They were great trainers who happened to click with certain fighters, and I see Cus and Rooney in the same way. I don't see the relevance of colour at all.

We might be talking about different things. I see your point on the trainer (Rooney). The narratives are racist in my opinion. They assume the white folks around Tyson just had his best interests at heart and ignores the giant dollar signs that got them involved. The narrative of Cus and the Kid ignores all the stories which have come out later of people being hushed up, run out, and paid off to protect Mike rather than teaching him to be a better person when he got in trouble as a kid.

Mike was probably messed up long before King got there and ultimately was a grown man who made his own choices...but, again, armchair psychology, don't like it.

Fact is, Rooney was gone after June 1988, the slide starts, and so we're talking about weighing November 1986-June 88 against the rest of his career and the rest of the greats.

He falls short in those comparisons and falls JUST short of my own top ten. Damn good run but it takes a lot of "If...then" conjecture to get where people wanted Mike to go in my opinion. Mike fares better in best night comparisons with some great fighters than he does in measuring his career.

[Dave Rado]

The narratives are racist in my opinion. They assume the white folks around Tyson just had his best interests at heart and ignores the giant dollar signs that got them involved. The narrative of Cus and the Kid ignores all the stories which have come out later of people being hushed up, run out, and paid off to protect Mike rather than teaching him to be a better person when he got in trouble as a kid.

Mike was probably messed up long before King got there

I agree that he was already messed up by the time King got to him (if he hadn't been, King couldn't have got to him). I agree that team Cus were motivated partly by the money they hoped Tyson would make them. I agree that their policy of paying people off to hush them up was ultimately very counter-productive. But I don't think team Cus had any malicious intent, not because they were white, but because they just didn't, or I have heard no evidence that they did. Patterson has never had a bad word to say about Cus. Nor has Tyson. There's a long list of fighters who signed up with King and then became disillusioned with him, and the way he went about prising Tyson from Rooney was sick. And although Tyson was a grown man, he was a very messed up, and still a very young, grown man, and I believe King knowingly took advantage of that.

I think King intentionally exploited Tyson, knowing that it was in Tyson's interests to stay with Rooney; whereas team Cus, while also being motivated to a large extent by money, and while also doing questionable things, did have better motives, not because of their colour, but just because they did.