Hmm, let me expand on that (I'll never pass up a chance to talk about boxing, if you can't tell). Tyson was not nearly as smart a fighter as Frazier, and of course he's as dumb as a box of rocks compared to Ali. Ali and Holmes were able to enjoy some longevity in their careers because they were smart in the ring. Tyson's proved time and time again that he doesn't have the ring smarts to make up for his deteriorating physical skills.

But you can't argue with a guy winning his first belt when he was 20 years old (the youngest ever), or unifying the belt for the first time in a decade. The heavyweight division had sucked before (probably as much as it sucks now, as hard as it is to believe) but no one had done that before. Had he not gone to jail, the 1990s could have been a fucking golden age, with Bowe, Holyfield, even Moorer competing for the belts like Frazier, Ali, Foreman and Ken Norton before.

On the other hand, I have no doubt that a 21 year old Tyson would have beat the living crap out of Holyfield had he put on the few pounds to move up to heavyweight. Dan Duva, I think it was, freely admitted that Holyfield "wasn't ready" to move up from cruiserweight, even though the two of them are more or less the same age (they were in the same Olympics trials together). You can read into that what you will, but I read it (and Boxing Illustrated read it at the time) as him being chickenshit of breaking the 200 lbs cruiserweight limit when Tyson was stalking the ring.

And everytime I looked at Lennox Lewis, I saw the shadow of Frank Bruno. His body looks soft and he's mechanical, I've always thought. He'd be a champion or #1 contender in any era but I don't buy the hype of Lewis being one of the best ever. Maybe one of the top 30, but definitely nowhere near the top 10. I simply don't think his body type would have made much difference: Tyson gave up a fairly dramatic reach advantage in every fight that I can remember.