re: Mike Tyson vs "Hurricane" Peter McNeeley (Aug 19, 1995)

Just one of the many tomato cans Tyson faced in his career. I didn't watch because I wasn't going to pay for that joke of a fight just like those garbage bouts against Seldon, Mathis and Bruno.

Bruno is probably right but it doesnt sound right for some reason. (Im getting old)

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McNeely had fought a bunch of nobodies to that point. If I recall correctly, he wasn't rated until there was legitimate talk of his being the comeback opponent for Tyson. The various commissions are corrupt and often create bull shite rankings to help the interest in a fight.

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Oh ok. That makes sense. Thnks.

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Remember it well. I spent the money on the PPV. Dont remember how much it was. Tyson in his prime and before Don King I don't think was beatable. He knew defense and could take anyone out with one punch. He also knew how to box though whick I think a lot of people didnt realize.

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Huh? Don King infiltrated Tyson after the Spinks fight. Which was the end of his prime, btw.

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The style that Cus taught him and Rooney reinforced was crazy technical. Constant bobbing and weaving and ducking all while ruthlessly attacking. It was a built-in defense mechanism. It was Cus' peek-a-boo style, and Tyson was put on this earth to fight with that style and Cus knew it.

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This is not inconsistent with what I said.

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I'm not writing anymore, because you are helpless on this subject based on what I've quoted alone.

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It seems that you lack both reading comprehension and intelligence. Quite the dangerous debater there.

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Sorry thats what I meant. I don't remember it being after the Spinks fight. I though it was before.

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It was before, but it wasn't until after the Spinks fight that he fired Rooney. Which was the effective end for him.

Firing Bill Cayton may have come before the Spinks fight, but he could have gone on and been fine as a fighter without Cayton. Rooney was the guy he needed. Rooney was the guy who knew how to train him in the way he'd been taught to fight since he was 13.

See, here's the deal, and this sounds like a trivial point, but it's not. Fighting the way Tyson did in all the fights up to and including that Spinks fight (i.e. the style that Cus taught him). It isn't a natural thing. You don't naturally constantly bob and weave and duck and twist and throw combinations like that. That shite is taught and then reinforced through hours of muscle memory in the gym or it goes away and you just resort to trying to land single knockout punches.

I used to box myself and I can attest to that. The way you move in a boxing ring -- both with footwork (though some people have more natural footwork than others) and upper body movements and throwing combinations as a rule -- is very much a reinforced through practice thing. And especially a style like Tyson's that was so hypertechnical, and especially with a guy like Tyson who was both perfectly designed to fight that style and completley reliant on doing the same.

Tyson was a short fighter, and so he needed to fight the way that Cus taught or he wasn't going to be worth a shite. When you saw Buster Douglas knock him out, or when you saw Lennox Lewis whup his arse for 8 rounds, you saw a guy just walking straight into punches That's not how Tyson fought in his prime (i.e being trained by Cus/Rooney). The only way he could fight was to fight like he did, which was pretty much an exaggerated (and better, because Tyson was more athletic, quick, balanced, and strong than Frazier) version of the way Joe Frazier fought (and, yes, I know Cus trained Floyd Patterson, but Patterson's phsical build was so different from Tyson's that he fought Cus' style in a way that barely resembled Tyson. Frazier is the better analog.)

Can you imagine what a Frazier/Ali fight would have looked like had Joe not been constantly bobbing and weaving. It would have been over by round 5.

And now this is probably where you might say: "okay, but why is it that Tyson needed a specific trainer to be able to fight that way?". And the answer is because Tyson was a freaking lunatic drug addict hyper sex fiend with no discipline whatsoever and who wasn't going to answer to anybody because nobody was going to attempt to be anything other than a "yes man" to Tyson.

So, yes, Tyson was fatally flawed, and maybe doomed to go down the road he went down later even if it hadn't been sooner. But Tyson's boxing style was not fatally flawed. It was technical and ferocious and amazing. And the popular saying that "Tyson got beat because somebody finally stood up to him" is the biggest simpleton load of crap on the planet. Tyson got beat because he fired Kevin Rooney and stopped training properly and stopped fighting like Tyson, and was thus rendered a 5-10 dude walking straight into jabs.

There's no single argument in sports that is more lazy and completely bunk than the nonsense notion spouted off (and as characterized in the above paragraph) by the guy I already called out, and thousands of other simpleton minions just like him.

Just rewatched it, horrible stoppage.

After the Tyson loss, McNeely was beaten by Butterbean in the first round.

On McNeely's plus side, he once knocked a guy out with one punch just SIX SECONDS into the first round.

I remember when I was kid how excited everyone up this way was when McNeely's dad fought Floyd Patterson for the heavyweight championship.

The Walgreen robbery was in Massachusetts, not in Miami as someone posted earlier. He served little or no time as the getaway driver and has been frequently seen in the Boston area for the last several years.

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Where did ya box?

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Knoxville Golden Gloves.

Ace Miller, the guy who ran it -- but who recently passed -- was a fairly well known trainer. https://www.knoxnews.com/sports/legendary-local-boxing-promoter-ace-miller-dies. He was Big John Tate's trainer, and worked with various other guys on more of a short term basis. Tommy Morrison, for example, trained there before the Foreman fight.

I loved that place. It was such an old school boxing gym (I assume it still exists, to be clear).

Illustrative Anecdote: there was this middle-aged black guy who went by "BT" who would come to the gym for a few hours every night. He would work out, and when he wasn't working out he would be hanging around the gym laughing and shooting the breeze with the guys who worked there. He was overtly nice -- I'd occasionally ask if he would do a few rounds on the mits with me, and he never once declined. Anyway, I figured he was just some guy who had boxed a little bit when he was younger who hung out at the gym just because he didn't have anywhere better to hang out.

It was like two years before I learned his name was Bernard Taylor: (a) one of the most decorated amateur fighters in U.S. boxing history, who (b) was heavily favored to win the Gold Medal in the '80 Olympics had we not boycotted (Ace Miller was the coach of that team, btw), and who (c) had a pretty decent pro career as well -- was NABF featherweight champion and USBF super featherweight champion for a time. And retired with a record of 49-4-2.

Anyway, I just thought that was cool. I feel like every old school boxing gym like that has some unassuming guy who hangs out every night at the gym, maybe helping kids with their equipment if they need it, but otherwise just chilling and blending in.....who just happened to be a world class boxer back in his day. Bernard Taylor Wiki