Did Buster Douglas Kill the Heavyweight Division?

Yeah...I know Marciano was 49-0. I am just talking about the era of boxing after Ali and stuff. Marciano was a hell of a fighter. I was purely mentioning that Tyson had a great start to his career.

 

Mostly against nobodies, has beens and bums. Didn't he fight Homer Simpson?

 

I believe that was Frederick Tatum that fought Homer Simpson, not Tyson . I know that you are bashing who Tyson fought, and I completely agree with you on the fact that he didn't fight anyone worthwhile in the division. But yet again, who does fight great fighters in their first 15-20 fights in the professional ranks?

 

Holmes was so far over the hill he was below sea level.
The other two guys were bums. Tyson's career pre-Buster was perhaps the most overrated athletic performance of the century.

 

Don King did.

How could you take a sport seriously where everyone had a winning record? If you have a guy who is 30-0, you must have 30, 0-1 guys or an 0-30 guy.

It just got too corrupt by King and the other slimeballs, and everyone lost intrest.

Now it is getting passed by cage fighting. Lord, PTI talked about Kimbo Smith last night!!!

I will bet a months paycheck that more people 18-30 know who Kimbo is then who know who the middleweight champion is. Hell, the heaveyweight champ.

27 different champions does not help either. Who actually is the champion?

Boxing is dead.

R.I.P.

 

Plenty of heavyweight champs through the years - Holmes and Marciano to name two prominent ones - have had the quality of their competition questioned. But the champ can only fight the guys that are out there.

The heavyweight division will never see an era like the mid-60s to mid-70s when you had champs like Ali, Frazier, Norton and Foreman and plenty of contenders who would be champs in pretty much any other era like Quarry, Chuvalo, Young, Shavers and Lyle.

Holmes was an all-time great - easily a top five heavy for me - but he was stuck beating up no-hopers like Marvis Frazier and frauds like Gerry Cooney. If nothing else, Tyson saved boxing from that dreary group of fat, boring fighters who followed Holmes like Michael Dokes, Mike Weaver, Tim Witherspoon, Pinklon Thomas, Gerrie Coetzee and Greg Page.

In the circus that his life became it's easy to forget what a terrific fighter Tyson was on the way up and through his fight with Spinks. (To me, Tyson was never better than the night he destroyed Tyrell Biggs - who was supposed to be the Ali to his Frazier.) He had underrated boxing and defensive skills and strung hard punches together with both hands better, I'd argue, than any heavyweight since Joe Louis. But once he dumped Kevin Rooney, Jim Jacobs and Bill Cayton and hooked up with Don King that was it.

Guys like Holyfield and Lewis were terrific fighters but they lacked real serious competition - aside from each other - and never captured the public's imagination like Tyson did. When was the last time a heavyweight title fight not involving Tyson landed on the front page of SI?

 

Drederick would like you to please say his name correctly.

 

The Desiree Washington incident had more to do with killing boxing than Buster Douglas did. Tyson lost four years in the prime of his career (he was 25 when he went into the clink, I believe) after his rape conviction and he was never the same fighter upon his release (destruction of Peter McNeeley and Frank Bruno notwithstanding).

I still believe the death of Cus D'Amato, coupled with entrance of Don King and some other unsavory 'Yes' men into Tyson's life, had more to do with his downfall than anything.

However, when the heavyweight division still had Tyson, Holyfield and Lewis, it was still pretty strong.

Boxing was doing fine until Holyfield got old, Lewis retired and Tyson went crazy. As I once heard Bert Sugar say, though, the best heavyweight fighters in the country are playing linebacker in the NFL right now. He specifically pointed to Ray Lewis as someone he thought could have owned the heavyweight division.


Oh, and Mayfly, it was Drederick Tatum.
[edit] Beat me to it, 93.

 

The MMA catapulted onto a lull in the American males aged 18-34 with the UFC and all of these other leagues. One major problem is that the heavyweight champions are all Eastern Europeaners who no one has ever heard of. I know of the Klitscko brothers, but thats about it over there, and I like boxing.

 

The problem with Tyson was, once somebody lasted more than a round and hit him back, he folded like a cheap suit. He was just lucky he didn't fight anyone capable of doing that for three years. Holmes's competition were thoroughbreds compared to the landfill in which Tyson operated. Tyrell Biggs? Ali? Bite your Everlast.

 

My thoughts exactly. I'm 31 and when I was younger and more impressionable (and less educated about the past) I thought Tyson was the be all and end all of boxing. Then I started reading about and watching older fights and past champs.

 

Looking over Marciano's fights, he actually barely went out of three rounds as it was in his day.