I read "The Last Great Fight" that featured the behind the scenes look at Tyson-Douglas.
It had some great insight into Tyson's sparring sessions while in Tokyo and before his 'decline' began.
First, as many might remember, Tyson was floored by Greg Page while in Japan preparing for Douglas. A lot of press was made of this and still does to this day.
A lot of people (including myself) were shocked when I first read this.
But Bill Cayton pointed out that while a Prime Tyson was never knocked down during his best years in a real fight, he was floored on 4 separate occassions during sparring sessions. Once was by Mike Williams and I believe Oliver McCall and Page (body shot of all things) were the others (can't remember the 4th name).
Regarding Page, several people like to write about how great Page was while he was in his prime and how he could have beaten a prime Mike - most of this talk was due to what happened in Japan.
But several people within the Tyson camp said that Tyson used to beat up on Page all the time. In fact, Tyson humiliated him so bad while preparing for Spinks that Page started training harder on the side to make sure that never happened again.
So Page thinking he could beat a prime Tyson based on his Tokyo performance is, in my mind, all bunk. A prime Tyson was having his way with him years prior.
For anyone interested in that historic night in 1990, I highly suggest reading this book: "The Last Great Fight" by Joe Layden.
It gives some great insight into how Mike was thinking leading into the bout, as well as how Douglas had never trained harder or was more sure of himself. They do a great job to point out that Douglas was a tremendous athlete and boxer when he put his mind to it.
Something that get's overlooked. When you watch that fight Douglas looked fantastic and he really did a number on mike.....he beat him up for 10 rds........
i train in catskill and my trainer told me mike was sparrin some guy and he was hitting on the ropes, and all of a sudden kevein said "oh ****!! he's knocked out" tyson put him out on his fight and took a few extra seconds for everyone to realize the guy was out
i train in catskill and my trainer told me mike was sparrin some guy and he was hitting on the ropes, and all of a sudden kevein said "oh ****!! he's knocked out" tyson put him out on his fight and took a few extra seconds for everyone to realize the guy was out
are you saying tyson knocked his sparring partner out or his sparring partner knocked him out?.
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