ESPN on Tyson

[porkypara]

There has not been a how good or how bad Tyson was debate on this site for a while.


Apart from winning the HW championship at a very young age what other great things did Tyson do?


He was the most exciting fighter IMO who ever put the gloves on but that does not qualify him to be an ATG.


Can sombody tell what Tyson acheved or did to make him an all time great in there opinion?

[Bomp]

There are many ways to look at it. You can look at his early title winning form and say he could have been a legend if he'd kept his head and if certain people and circumstances hadn't got in his way. But you could also easily argue that perhaps his early great form was the anomaly, and it was the cummulation of good fortune that landed him with the perfect trainer to teach the perfect technique for a guy of Tyson's stature, and without that good fortune he may never have been anybetter than the unreliable power puncher he became later in his career.

As for his achievements, I personally believe his wins in the 80s grant him a place in the top 10 in history. He did genuinely clear out the division in those brief years and was a truly undisputed champion for a short period of time. Not many fighters can claim to have done that, Patterson, Liston, Foreman, Frazier never achievd this, and neither did the majority of the champions pre-Louis who pulled the race card to avoid fights (including Dempsey). I'd still rate some of those guys above Tyson as you can give them a pass due to the quality of the division at certain times, but IMO top 10 or 15 ever heavyweight fighter qualifieshim for the tag od ATG.