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Originally Posted by Wagner
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I enjoyed this one a bit more than the other one.
I still say to this day that for the 5 year period between 1985 and 1989, Mike Tyson was the best heavyweight ever to step in the ring. Unfortunately, a combination of personal/marital problems and then going to prison shortly afterwards resulted in him not fighting during his late 20s (normally considered a fighter's "prime"). And after getting out of prison, while he was still a good fighter, he was just a shadow of his former self.
During that 5 year period, he embarrassed fighters who otherwise had great carrers, like Michael Spinks, Bonecrusher Smith, Tony Tucker, Larry Holmes, Frank Bruno, and others. In several of these cases, he was the only one these fighters ever lost to in their entire career, and they lost on the embarrassing end of a first or second round knockout.
As he held all 3 belts at the time, he put quite a few talented up and coming young fighters into retirement, since there would be no point of them continuing to fight after getting embarrassed by him -- it was expected at the time that he would probably hold the belt for another 10-15 years, and who would want to see a rematch if he knocked them out in the first round in an earlier fight.
Just a really sad story. Someday they will make a really good movie about his life. There is certainly no shortage of drama there...