Prime Mike Tyson in this era

[THE PHILOSOPHER]

Green was never stopped in his entire career and Tucker suffered his first KO defeat 10 years after the Tyson fight. They both had rock solid chins, spoiled and were slaughtered on the cards.

Wlad could spoil, and get slaughtered on the cards, but I highly doubt his definte NOT rock solid chin would have got him the distance.

Tucker fought Tyson only 2 months after winning the title. Catastrophic shortage of time needed to prepare for Tyson that! Even then he had him reeling in the first! I don't think Wlad's chin is as bad as people make out either, it had more to do with conditioning and a leaky defense IMO. Haye and Wach landed flush.


"When Mike started fighting those big guys – and I always keep going back to the size factor. He still was a little guy. He could neutralize his size handicap with speed. His speed was so effective that the big guys were often clumsy uncoordinated who were bigger than him, until he fought those big guys who had skills and were not afraid of him.
But the big guys who were not super skillful, he would neutralize the size disadvantage with tremendous speed, footwork, head movement, and punching from short angles with all different types of punches...

To me Mike Tyson is one of the fighters I respect so much for what he did for being a small man, because he was still a small heavyweight. The biggest thing he had was his speed and intensity over a lot of big guys, when they were not prepared or well enough coordinated to deal with that.But the big guys who were not afraid of Mike and had any boxing skills, he had a problem with because Mike was a little guy…

Mike had problems with big guys! He was still a small guy that was really almost like a cruiserweight, and those big guys who were not afraid of him, all of them he struggled with… So it’s just the case where Mike was a phenomenal fighter, but with the big guys size still matters. You’re going to fight a guy (like Lennox Lewis) who’s 240-250, with skills, solid amateur background, went through 2 Olympics—no, I don’t think he could have done anything.

Evander Holyfield by the same token was just physically too small and Evander always had problems with jabs. I mean I trained him, and I had him sparring with guys who had good jabs, which is something he did have problems with."

Emanuel Steward, Hall of Fame Trainer