Who would you take?

Tyson. All day every day. He might even pull it off without even throwing a punch.

I'd go with Wlad...
I don't think Tyson could land any clean power punches; he is so much shorter than Klitschko. Plus, I could see Wlad's jab frustrating Tyson and throwin' him off his game.

Tyson! he is not afraid of getting hit plus in his prime he was faster than Haye and he could slide under neath punches. Tyson was a warrior and still very much is. I swear that girl who cried rape on him give a bad name to real rape victims and that girl who lied on Kobe. That took Tyson away mentally and from the sport. I hope Desiree is fucking happy! I usually do not call a woman a bitch because I am one but she is truly a BITCH!

C'Mon son!!!

Tyson All Day And Everyday. Wlad would be scared as fuck. He would quickly grab Mike everytime he came in but Tyson would be strong enough to get Wlad off of him and throw in a quick upper cut to end things quickly for The Fearful Russian. Vitali is a different story. It would Iron Mike vs Iron Chin Vitali.

Did you see Tyson-Lewis?

Same fight, but maybe Tyson wins 10-20% of the time on one punch.

I love Tyson, but he was too small.

Tyson-Ali would have been great.

What era in Ali's career would you have liked to see him face Mike? Do you think there'd be any parallels between the Frazier bouts and the fantasy tyson-ali fight?

I'd like to see Tyson try and chase down the 60s Ali...

what Tyson are we talking about? if we took the current Wlad and put him in the ring with the Tyson of the 80s Wlad would have got his ass kicked. i don't see how anyone can say otherwise, Tyson was a machine when someone stood with him. i see Tyson slipping the jab then going to the body, Tyson was too fast and too explosive.

prime undefeated Tyson vs. prime undefeated Wlad

Wlad all day.

People who think Wlad would be scared should just look at Tyson's behavior before the Lewis fight - Tyson was terrified because he knew he couldn't get past that long heavy jab and because he'd never been in with anyone who could punch like Lewis.

Tyson would have been perfect for all those guys - Frazier, Foreman, Ali

Smell yea. Seems to me that any opponent who utilized the jab effectively posed a problem for mike.

Your kidding me right?? Mike was way downhill by the time he fought Lewis. You need to ask the British champ why he never faced Mike when he was at his absolute best. When he had Rooney, Atlas, Cus D'amato and before he went to prison was when Mike was at his prime. None of the other big time fighters wanted a piece of him they ducked him. A Prime Iron Mike would KO Lewis.

You must not watch boxing at all. Prime undefeated Wlad was more of an action fighter who didn't use a jab and fought like a brawler during that time. Why do you think he's not undefeated anymore. Tyson would steamroll Wlad who would come to fight power for power instead of a jab and he's slower than Tyson also and can't fight in the inside as good as Tyson.

The better fantasy match up would be Wlad vs a prime, in-shape Riddick Bowe. Wlad wouldn't have been able to withstand those early rounds against a prime, focused Tyson. He would have been undone by the unrelenting pace and devastating body punches. Wlad probably would have unraveled in those early rounds. Whatever anybody says, he's still very vulnerable mentally.

The thing about these fantasy match ups is that everybody always faces everyone at eachother's best: in-shape, focused, young, fresh, fast, healthy, fit, and with all their outside issues in order. In real life, that isn't always(perhaps not often) the case.

You're confused about who ducked who.

Tyson had no reason to fight any of the top hws like Holyfield or Bowe or Lewis because Tyson could make so much money fighting B level guys and King knew it. King especially knew that it was better to sell the American Pit Bull destroying guys rather than having competitive fights. Everyone believed Tyson would win so why bother taking such a huge risk that would cripple Tyson's/King's money making abilities?

Lewis, on the other hand, labored in relative obscurity and tried to get Tyson in the ring for years. Holyfield and Foreman also wanted some Tyson money.

Just do the math.

And watch Lewis Tyson and tell me what would have been different if they were in their primes? And Lewis is older than Tyson.

Wlad always used his jab and he was NEVER A BRAWLER.

Which fights are you referring to where Wlad was a brawler?

While we're at it, how many great hws in their primes did Tyson ever face, much less beat? And how many of those great hws outweighed Tyson by 30 pounds and towered over him by 8 inches?

I've got a lot of Tyson and Wlad fights on tape and I'd love some reference points.

thats how I knew the story, too. You can talk "primes" all you want. The fact is, when Tyson did fight the tops of his class...he got walloped. Though, if he woulda fought Foreman I don't think Big George woulda made it through the 5th rd.

why do people make boring match ups, a tall fighter and short fighter. it should of joe frazier vs tyson. that would be more interesting to watch

Tyson wouldn't stand a chance against Ali before he got banned. even after the ban it would be hard for Tyson, Ali stayed in the ring with some of the biggest hitters of all times.



when was Wlad undefeated in his prime? Wlad was shitty before his first loss up to the point Steward made a difference with him. either way Tyson kills him, Wlad just doesn't have the confidence to deal with him. and we're talking about a prime Tyson of the 1980s, not the freak show Don King peddled.

Tyson would stop this one early. personally i'm someone that doesn't buy into all the Tyson hype and doesn't think this guy did anything to make everyone except Ali irrelevant. but to think Wlad wins this easy is just blasphemy. the one thing that will stop Wlad is someone taking the fight to him and getting off punches, Tyson did that shit in his sleep in the 1980s.

After watching Wlad against haye I'm pretty sure that a prime Tyson takes him easily. At times Wlad looked very leery of David Haye. People have to stop using the Lewis fight as an indicator of a big man against Tyson. Mike was at least a decade removed from his prime and had zero interest in being in the ring. He just turned up for a cheque.

I think he beats Vitali too, but on points only.

Klit was good enough to completely abuse Byrd for 12 rounds before Steward - and I don't think anyone at HBO or anywhere else would have ever described Wlad as anything other than the next big thing even before Steward. Steward's biggest addition to Klit was that he taught Klit to hold anytime a fighter got inside and he taught Klit to use his weight to weigh smaller guys down on the inside - just like he taught Lewis.

I don't think Wlad beats Tyson easily, just that he beats him most of the time. And it's easy to get off punches like Tyson did in the 1980s when you're fighting B level fighters. He wasn't getting off so many punches against Holyfield or Lewis because there was a price to pay.

I would actually pick Tony Tucker to give Wlad a hell of a scrap.

It's too bad that Tyson never fought Bowe or Lewis or any other top hw in his prime because we'd have a much better measuring stick for him.

Idk in that fight Haye did catch Wald's Chin a couple times with him having that jab and it did look glass if that would have been a Tyson punch Wald would have been ZZZZZZZZ!

Lewis moves way better than the stiff Wald but his brother is another story he's rawer!

Tyson was on that peace my brother medication in that Lewis fight too consider that!

I feel like we're over-analysing Tyson's losses and under-analysing Wlad's losses.

Remember that the Tyson who was walloped by Lewis et al was waaaaaay past his prime.


Yet the Wlad who was spanked by Brewster and Sanders was much closer to his prime. If Sanders was quick enough to dispatch Wlad, don't you think Tyson would have been? Even the more cautious, careful Wlad that emerged following those losses?


And, no, Tyson didn't really beat any ATG's in their primes who outweighed him by 30lbs...but you could say the same for most champions. Lewis didn't. Wlad certainly hasn't.

Whilst Tyson's least favourite opponents were definitely tall, strong jabbers, there is something of a myth being perpetuated that all you needed to beat Tyson was a reach advantage and a jab. Tyson at his best was a hard man to beat. I personally don't think Wlad had the mental fortitude, resilience or physical strength to do it. David Haye gave him a competitive fight, and Tyson would have eaten David Haye alive.


Stylistically, Wlad matches up well. But styles don't ALWAYS make fights!!!

Black

i used to just think Tyson was really overrated before i learned more about him. i don't think he's the greatest ever based on what he did in his mental prime or whatever you want to call it but leading up to Douglas and after Douglas he's kind of like a out of prime Mayorga. they talk a lot of shit and make it a spectacle outside the ring but in reality they're dicking around in training camp and looking to collect a check and win by landing a big shot.



Tyson was sloppy and lazy by the time he got to them. the training that made him a phenom got put on the back burner and he just looked for a big shot. it would be like trying to use Wlad back when Purrity whooped his ass as an example of what Tyson would be facing. and come on, man. Chris Byrd? Tyson had Berbick, Holmes, Spinks and Thomas kill that.

how was it David Haye made Wlad look foolish at times with head movement but Tyson couldn't use the same head movement to come inside and land punches? Wlad gets put down by lesser fights but Tyson wouldn't be able to handle him. the Tyson you're using is like using the current Holyfield as an example of what he's capable of as a HW.

Put more mobility in Haye. Convert his chin to granite. Add a devastating left hand. And you have what amounts to a crude Mike Tyson.

Tyson will beat Wlad because Wlad has to watch out for the left hand and not just the right.

IMHO, if rules of boxing were 100% enforced, Holyfield won't even beat a washed out Tyson. Holy will get disqualified first from hugging even before Mike would have the chance to bite his ear off.

prime vs prime....tyson would chew wlads ass up. he'd make him miss, slide on the inside...kill the body and chop the tree down. klitschko would be exhausted by the 4th or 5th round. tyson by ko.

+1

I dont understand how folks could possibly think otherwise. Fucking Ray Charles could see this sleep while planking in his damn grave with black shades on!

None whatsoever. Tyson was & is mentally weak. Frazier was a dog & on your arse for 15 rounds Tyson would have been questioning himself & his coinfidence would be shot by round 6.



Because he was a fucking amateur at the time? Some wizard you are......

i agree with blackbelt on it. people look too much into Tyson's losses later on in his career, i just think they look too much into Wlad dominating now. the division now is about as intimidating as Richard Simmons. that and Tyson legitimately wrecked his division in the span of like 18 months. he went from Berbeck to Spinks and everyone in between taking fights 2-3 months apart. they weren't B fighters and chumps, when Tyson started having titles on the line he whipped A level ass 4 times a year.



come on, Stevenski. obviously Lennox Lewis was going to come into pro boxing against Mike Tyson.

Wise words from Mr. Black over here.

salvador.. you keep bringing up the lewis fight for tyson... you dont think that was prime tyson do you?... that was a shell of a fighter picking up a paycheck...

I think there's a reason that Tyson never fought Bowe or Lewis in the 1990s when the fights were prime.

Lewis was older than Tyson. Obviously Tyson was a shell, but the fact is that he weighed 215 in his prime and that's too small for a 245 pound hw with a massive height and reach advantage and a great jab and more power than Tyson had ever faced. And King knew it and so did Tyson.

i disagree on two things... first... tysons prime ended the night he fought spinks... everything after that is a slow break down of a great fighter... second... i think a 215 pound great fighter beats a fighter like wlad or vitali klit who are good fighters but not great (tho tysons prime weight was 218)... if one is a potential great its vitali... imo... i think a 212 to 215 lb holyfield in his prime would beat them as well... just saying... the klitschcos are not winning because of their size as much as their is not an opponent in the division that is ready for them skill wise... look at each brothers resume and name me one fighter that they beat that is of high quality... the one quality fighter on the ledger vitali lost to tho i thought had the fight been allowed to continue he may have won but we dont know cuzz he got stopped by the cut... but its still a loss at the end of the day and that was an old out of shape lewis that was on his way out... imagine what a prime lennox would have done vitali... he would have chopped him up and knocked him out... and prime for prime i dont think lennox is better then either tyson or holyfield... but thats a whole nutha argument... lol.. to make a long story short their is not a fighter in the division that is prepared to fight these guys... wish they would have come up during the class of 88 that made for a fun time in the 90's... i think they would have a few more losses had they come out of that era...

I'd also add that Holyfield around 215-220 pounds gave Lewis a decent scrap in their second fight. Ray Mercer also gave Lewis a decent fight. These are smaller men.

the holyfield that fought lewis was def past his best fighting shape and i thought he won that second fight vs lewis... i thought ray mercer beat lewis as well... but that aside it goes to show that weight isnt an issue when you have a truly skilled fighter... there are no skilled fighters in the division today... and i still wonder how odlanier solis fares vs vitali had his knee not given out... the cuban i still feel is the best of the rest of the comp for right now...

ding ding ding we have a winner.

i can assure you stev if tyson wasnt matched with them for that reason in the 90's it is only because his handlers knew that version of mike was on the decline... but you have to remember their was a 3 and a half year stint mike didnt fight... the mike that went to jail was still good enough to beat those versions of bowe and lewis... lewis wasnt that much bigger than mike at that time... he hadnt grown into the 250 lb dominant fighter he would become later and he wasnt with steward at that time who would create the fighter we would later come to know... lewis was still a somewhat green yet very capable fighter at that time but he would have been going in against a tyson that still was at least 85 to 90 percent of what he was as a champion caliber fighter in the 80's... if you are basing the tyson that came back after the prison stint well yeah no way he was ready for any tough fight... he didnt fight the type of fighters needed to get ready for a tough fight that either bowe or lewis would have been at any stage cuzz they where both two very good highly skilled fighters which is also a very big reason the tyson holyfield fight played out like it did... you dont get ready for that caliber fighter fighting mcneely, mathis bruno and seldon... those where setup fights... anyone that knows boxing knows that... you must admit that tyson was nowhere close to his prime at that point...

Tyson would have fucking killed Wlad 100 out of 100 times. Not even close.

i think with or without prison he's going to keep fading out. Givens and King took a lot out of him. you can have all the physical gifts in the world, if you don't have what it takes mentally you can't make it in boxing. when King forced Rooney out it's just going to keep getting worse and worse.

I'd agree and I'll go one step further and give you guys a kinda conspiracy theory that I've alywas had about that whole rape situation.

Tyson was already dangerously spiralling out of control when the rape case came up. King had Holloway and whatever the other guy was as Tyson's managers and they were most definately feeding him the info on how badly Mike was veering off course.

When the rape case came up King got lawyer who was basically a specialist tax attorney, Vince Fuller I think his name was, to represent Mike. Remember Tyson could've afforded anyone in the world and on the advice of King they went for this schlub. Here is where I think King may have got a little tricky. Naturally I'm pretty sure that he didn't plant Desiree Washington but once the situation arose and always the opportunist he played it pretty well.

It was in King's best interests for Mike to lose that case. If he had the inside juice on how much Mike had slipped then he may have had an inkling that he could well lose the Holyfield fight. This way he gets to take him off the shelf, takes control of Mike's finances and even better when he comes out of prison Mike is an even bigger PPV attraction than he was before.

Of course Mike needs to fight on because King pretty much got all the money and now King has the bonus of getting Mike mega bucks against C class opponents because he has to allow him to lose the ring rust, which of course the public accpets and tunes in in their millions.

All in all this helps enlongate Mike's career before the inevitable happens against Holyfield. But by this stage King has squeezed millions more out of him which he probably wouldn't have got had Tyson not gone to prison and faced and got beaten by Holyfield.

i agree he would have kept fading as a fighter but it would have happened at a lot lesser pace.... he would never be the same when he came back from his prison stint... he was a good fighter when he came back had he been tested and brought back right but not the same fighter as he was even after the ruddock wins... even that tyson was still good enough to rule the division and that wasa shell of a fighter even then...

interesting theory... lol... but thing is the tyson holyfield fight before prision is a much different fight then the first meeting we saw after prison... what finally saw was two fighters past their primes fighting each other with one fighter better prepared because of the comp he had been fighting leading up to that particular fight in holyfield then the other guy which was tyson... i will always feel that tyson went into that fight ill prepared for the kind of battle holyfield has always brought into the ring by not being prepared for a tough fight and you only get ready for a tough fight by fighting tough fighters... while holyfield had been in with riddick bowe and moorer and the rest of the top heavies he'd been fighting tyson had been off 3 ad a half years and had 4 or so set up fights.... that dont get you ready for that type of fight and fighter rather holyfield was shot at that time or not (which king and crew figured him to be)..... with that said im not saying tyson ever beats holyfield but i am saying that at his best or near his best its a different fight then the fight we saw cuzz at the end of the day of the fighters that beat tyson holyfield is the only fighter who's career really meets him prime for prime or you cold say they where at the same point in their careers at the time of the fight... the difference?... holyfield was ready and tyson wasnt ready for the kind of fight that would take place...

Are you shitting me Sherlock?? Wlad's jab was shit before he was with Steward. He use to fight offensively more often during his undefeated and prime career and he was some shit!! check the Sanders fight for evidence. He was going toe to toe with Sanders and he got decked like some poker cards.

The reason Tyson never faced those other big time HW's was because they ducked him!! ever wonder why he was the most feared man in the planet at one time?? It's been in many articles that opponents were scared to fight him. Show me 1 article or claim of where Lewis, Bowe,Moore and etc. in the 80's were trying to fight Mike when he became the youngest heavyweight champ in history. Where? I'll be waiting...............forever..

Vitali vs. Tyson would've been a better match-up. Prime Tyson was too good of a finisher for any version of Wladimir.

Vitali had enough of a chin to possibly take Tyson late, where he would have started to punish him.

I hear you but then King was probably a lot more confident Holyfield could be beaten post prison because of all the wars he went through when Mike was locked up. I bet King thought that it had worked out real well. As you say they severely underestimated how prepared Holyfield was for that fight.

But then again I also think Tyson just brought out another level from Holyfield. Remember Tua and another guy were supposedly beating Vander up pretty good in sparring. And that wasn't pre-fight mindgames that is something which Vander has admitted to since the fight.

This is silly. Fighters like Spinks and Bruno and all the other b level guys were terrified of mike - guys like Holyfield, Lewis, and Bowe WEREN'T because they were A level fighters and A level guys don't lose fights in the stare down.

And NOBODY was saying Tyson was a different fighter after prison until he got exposed by Holyfield - the first A level fighter of his career. People were very afraid for Holyfield's health going into that match. A huge part of why Tyson wasn't as dominant a fighter after prison because he lost his confidence - he didn't KNOW he was going to go into a fight and destroy the guy, which is what he learned fighting Holyfield.

Wlad's jab was great before Steward. He used it both as a pawing mechanism to blind fighters and set up right hands and he also used it as a weapon. Sanders caught him with a huge straight left hand early because Sanders was aggressive, lucky, and willing to stick his chin out to land that one punch. Wlad never chose to trade with anyone in his career because he never had to. Stalking and dominating guys with a huge jab and a huge right hand isn't the same thing as brawling.

In any event, the fact that Tyson ducked the prime fighters of his day is deeply unfortunate for boxing historians and these kinds of debates. Your argument would be a lot stronger if Tyson hadn't waited until the end of his career to fight Lewis, but for some reason he did wait. And it's a simple matter of fact that the two times Tyson fought A level guys he got ko'd.