The Myth everyone rated Tyson as an ATG HW after Spinks fight (Video evidence inside)

[JazMerkin]

Mike Tyson is more globally known by the average man of any age in the street than any of those guys!

Well, it might help him that the vast majority of those alive when Johnson, Dempsey & Louis were fighting are now dead. Tyson is still alive. 20 years after all those guys retired, those guys were all huge names just as big as Tyson now & that's without the aid of the internet.

You said there was more excitement about him than all those guys. Sorry to sound like Marble, but read up on this. In fact, it doesn't have to be a boxing book. Johnson, Dempsey & Louis are all frequently used as examples in Universities of the importance of sporting heroes on the American psyche. Although Tyson was exciting & huge at the time, he never had the cultural impact that they & Ali had, simply because by the 80s boxing & baseball had begun to be replaced as the major American sports by american football & basketball

I actually agree with most of the rest of your argument. I personally don't have Tyson that high, but I do rate him above Marciano. I think to say that no one thought he was great is absolute rubbish. However, I don't think that just because he was rated the 4th best HW ever in 1988 means he has to be rated there now. In just 2001, there were many people seriously talking about if Felix Trinidad would have beaten Ray Robinson & his place as one of the best fighters of all time. Does that mean he has to be rated as such now? Rating anyone 'in the moment' is always going to lead to going too far one way or the other imo.