Measured Against All Time: “Iron” Mike Tyson (2024 Revised)

Revisiting the career of the "baddest man on the planet" on the road to Dallas

On Friday, November 15, 58-year old Mike Tyson will return to the ring for the first time since a lucrative exhibition with Roy Jones Jr. in 2020. That night, fans saw a pair of boxing’s living legends put on a surprisingly entertaining eight-round display with hints of what once made them so special.

Both men seemed to enjoy the event. Tyson, more so than Jones, whipped himself into tremendous shape and his joy in the post-fight interviews was hard to miss. A fighter who once seemed to be careening into the abyss evolved into a subject of award-winning documentaries, the star of a one-man show, and an often hilarious guest on talk shows and podcasts. 

Apparently, the lure of the ring remains. 

This time around is a little different than the Jones affair. Tyson will compete in an officially sanctioned fight, albeit one with unique rules. Tyson will face Jake Paul (10-1, 7 KO), a social media influencer who has carved out his own space in the boxing universe largely facing once notable names from the mixed martial arts world. The 6’1 Paul has never fought above 200 pounds. The bout will be contested over eight, two-minute rounds and they will use 14, rather than standard heavyweight 10, ounce gloves. 

To some it will sound an awful lot like an exhibition, no matter that it will count toward their records. To all, it will be a massive event. 

Tyson-Paul will take place at the AT&T Stadium, airing live on Netflix, with an impressive undercard led by a rematch between World Jr. welterweight champion Katie Taylor and feather queen Amanda Serrano. It’s going to be a media bonanza, a combination of circus, sport, and nostalgia as younger Paul fans combine with a generation of fans who want the buzz of a Tyson opening bell one more time.

Those who lived through the Tyson era will understand what that means. Tyson was more than a fighter. He was pop culture. In the athletic sphere, the late 1980s were dominated by names like Jordan, Bo, and Iron Mike…and Tyson may have been the biggest star of them all at his peak. Tyson’s power, speed, and demeanor made his fights among the best of spectator adrenaline rushes. For a moment, in the aftermath of his knockout of Michael Spinks to lay complete claim to the heavyweight division, it was easy to think we were watching the heir to Joe Louis and Muhammad Ali in the race for the greatest fighter to ever live. 

It didn’t quite turn out that way. The years that followed had their highs, but the lows were dramatic. Tyson’s loss to Buster Douglas, still a leading candidate for the greatest upset in the history of sports, his incarceration, and the infamous “Bite Fight” were among several items that stained his legacy to the point that there is a corner today that recalls Tyson as overrated, a mirage that failed to meet the hype.

What is the truth? With the passage of time, is it easier to look at Tyson’s career without the burden of meeting the legends of Louis and Ali and assess it fully on its own merits? With Tyson-Paul just days away, it feels like the perfect time to revise the previous edition of this series focusing on Tyson in 2010 and ask once more: 

How good was “Iron” Mike Tyson, measured against all time? 

In answering the question, five categories will be examined:

1. Accomplishments

2. Competition Faced

3. Competition Not Faced

4. Reaction to Adversity

5. What Did He Prove?

This revision is not a rewrite in entirety but includes additional fighter rankings, a deeper look at Tyson versus his historical peers, and some realignment of the text. It begins with…

The Tale of the Tape

Born: June 30, 1966
Height: 5’10
Hailed From: Brooklyn, New York
Turned Professional: March 6, 1985 (TKO1 Hector Mercedes)
Record: 50-6, 44 KO, 2 No Contests
Record in Title Fights: 12-4, 10 KO, 3 KOBY
Lineal World Titles: World Heavyweight (June 27, 1988-February 11, 1990, 2 Defenses)
Title Reigns: WBC Heavyweight (1986-90, 9 Defenses; 1996); WBA Heavyweight (1987-90, 8 Defenses; 1996); IBF Heavyweight (1987-90, 6 Defenses); Ring Magazine Heavyweight (1988-90, 2 Defenses)
Entered Ring Magazine Ratings: August 1986 (#7 – Heavyweight; Cover Date - October 1986)
Last Ring Magazine Rating: February 2004 (#10 – Heavyweight; Cover Date - June 2004)  
Current/Former Lineal World Champions Faced: Alonzo Ratliff TKO2; Larry Holmes TKO4; Michael Spinks TKO1; James Douglas KO by 10; Evander Holyfield TKO by 11, DQ by 3; Lennox Lewis KO by 8  
Current/Former Alphabet Titlists Faced: Trevor Berbick TKO2; James Smith UD12; Pinklon Thomas TKO6; Tony Tucker UD12; Tony Tubbs TKO2; Frank Bruno TKO5, TKO3; Bruce Seldon TKO1; Orlin Norris NC1
Record Against Current/Former Champions/Titlists Faced: 11-4, 9 KO, 3 KOBY, 1 NC

Accomplishments

Before he entered the paid ranks, Tyson had a short but accomplished tenure in the amateurs. The 1984 U.S. National Golden Gloves Heavyweight champion, Tyson narrowly missed a trip to the Los Angeles Olympics that year, losing a controversial decision at the Olympic Trials to eventual Gold Medalist Henry Tillman.

By March of the following year, Tyson had moved on. In just over one year, Tyson would win his first nineteen professional starts by knockout, twelve of those in the first round. Distance wins over James Tillis and Mitch Green in May 1986 were followed by seven more knockouts, the last of them a second round destruction of Trevor Berbick on November 22, 1986 for the WBC Heavyweight belt.

The Berbick win made Tyson, just shy of four months after his twentieth birthday, the youngest titlist in Heavyweight history. Following Leon Spinks’s upset of Muhammad Ali in 1978, the WBC and WBA Heavyweight titles were split. In December 1983, the most recognized Heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes, abandoned his WBC belt and accepted recognition from the fledgling IBF to add a third bauble to the mix. Holmes would lose to Michael Spinks in 1985.  Their April 1986 rematch kicked off a tournament spearheaded largely by Don King and HBO to finally unify a division which had not seen a unification contest since the initial 1978 split.

Tyson-Berbick kicked the tournament to a new level of interest.

March 1987 would give Tyson another piece of the crown. Then-WBA titlist “Bonecrusher” Smith clutched his way to a loss and pushed Tyson to the twelfth round for the first time. Two fights later, in August 1987, he added the IBF belt with a decision over Tony Tucker.  

One piece of the puzzle remained.

While Tyson had all of the most recognized belts, Michael Spinks held recognition as the lineal champion due to his wins over Holmes. Spinks, under the guidance of Butch Lewis, had chosen to make a profitable fight with Gerry Cooney rather than make an IBF mandatory and was stripped of their belt. Following Tyson-Tucker, the build to Tyson-Spinks was on, culminating in a showdown in Atlantic City on June 27, 1988. 91 seconds after the opening bell, Mike Tyson had eliminated any remaining dispute about his status as the Undisputed Heavyweight Champion of the world. 

Three days shy of his twenty-second birthday, Tyson was the second youngest lineal heavyweight champion, trailing fellow Cus D’Amato product Floyd Patterson by just more than a month for the record. He would hold the title for two more fights before losing it to Douglas. Including the unification wins, he ultimately made nine total defenses of his initial share of the title.

There would be no Douglas rematch and an October 1991 rib injury scuttled a planned November showdown with Douglas’s conqueror, Evander Holyfield. Tyson’s arrest and later conviction for the rape of Desiree Washington would be the catalyst for a layoff from June 1991 to August 1995.  

Following his release from prison, Tyson was immediately rated as a top Heavyweight challenger by the WBC and WBA. In the years he’d been incarcerated, the division’s belts had again been split and Tyson was positioned to repeat his previous unification run by promoter Don King. As had been the case with Spinks, the lineal championship had drifted away from the sanctioning bodies with George Foreman stripped first by the WBA (for failing to face Bruce Seldon) and then the IBF (for refusing a rematch with Axel Schultz).

Tyson would never regain history’s crown.

Three fights into his comeback, Tyson faced former knockout victim Frank Bruno for the WBC honors. Bettering his first victory by two rounds, Tyson stopped Bruno in the third in March 1996. A proposed unification match with WBA titlist Bruce Seldon was postponed by injury and Tyson was forced to give up his WBC title for failing to make a mandatory against Lennox Lewis. That left just Seldon’s belt on the line in September 1996 and Tyson took the WBA strap in less than two minutes.

It would be Tyson’s last title fight win.  Two months later he would be upset by Holyfield. The Holyfield rematch, the aforementioned “Bite Fight,” led to a lengthy suspension for Tyson and he would fight only nine more times, losing his lone other title opportunity to Lennox Lewis in June 2002.

Among outside the ring honors, Tyson was named in, or as, the:

• Ring Magazine Prospect of the Year: 1985

• BWAA and Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year: 1986, 1988

• KO Magazine Fighter of the Year: 1986

• Ring Magazine Round of the Year: 1988

• Ring Magazine Fight of the Year: 1996

• Ring Magazine Upset of the Year: 1990, 1996

• Ring Magazine Event of the Year: 1995, 1997, 1998, 2002

• All-Time Heavyweight by Boxing Illustrated/Boxing Digest #4 - 1997

• Ring MagazineTop 50 of the Last 50 Years #19 - 1996

• Ring Magazine Top 20 Heavyweights All-Time - #14 - 1998

• Ring Magazine 80 Best Fighters of the Last 80 Years #72 - 2002

• Ring Magazine100 Greatest Punchers of All-Time #16 - 2003

• International Boxing Research Organization All-Time Heavyweight #13 - 2006

• BoxingScene Top 25 Heavyweights of All Time #13 - 2010 

• Ring Magazine Greatest Heavyweights of All Time #9 - 2017

• International Boxing Research Organization All-Time Heavyweight #11 - 2019

• Ring Magazine Top 100 Boxers in the History of the Ring Rankings #55 - 2022

Competition Faced

A cross section of Ring Magazine, KO Magazine, and Boxing Illustrated/Digest rankings provide a reasonable gauge of Tyson’s professional years and the level of the best opponents he defeated. Provided below are the men recognized as champions or ranked in the top ten when Tyson defeated them. Boxing Illustrated ceased publication in 1983 and did not resume until 1987 so there are no rankings from that source in the early part of Tyson’s career. KO Magazine rankings are only included through 1991. Ring Magazine and KO became part of the same publication umbrella in 1989 but the KO rankings are included through 1991 as the two magazines sometimes were at odds early on in their top tens. The cover date for the publications is included for those who wish to locate the rankings.