{"id":192621,"date":"2025-06-17T20:51:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-17T20:51:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/192621\/"},"modified":"2025-06-17T20:51:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-17T20:51:07","slug":"mike-tyson-says-there-is-only-one-heavyweight-who-could-beat-him-in-his-prime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/192621\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Tyson Says There Is Only One Heavyweight Who Could Beat Him In His Prime"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the peak of his powers, Mike Tyson<\/a> was the most dominant heavyweight on the planet.<\/p>\n

After entering the paid ranks back in 1985, \u2018Iron Mike\u2019 would go on to win his first nineteen bouts via knockout with twelve of these victories coming inside the opening round.<\/p>\n

He captured world honours for the first time in 1986, defeating WBC champion Trevor Berbick in a historic win that saw him become the youngest world heavyweight champion of all time.<\/p>\n

Tyson followed this up with victories over WBA champion James Smith and IBF champion Tony Tucker, winning the undisputed heavyweight championship just one month after he turned 21-years-old.<\/p>\n

In a feature with ThisIs50<\/a>, Tyson revealed the one opponent that he believes would have prevailed against a prime version of himself, naming none other than the late-great Muhammad Ali<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cThere is no man like him, there just isn\u2019t. Everything we have he supersedes us in. He was an animal, he looked more like a model than a boxer.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s like a Tyrannosaurus Rex with a pretty face, he\u2019s just mean and evil, he\u2019ll take you to deep waters and drown you. He\u2019s very special. The best. Nobody beats Ali. I can\u2019t beat that man, hell no. No way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Ali remains arguably the most influential figure in the long and storied history of boxing. He racked up legacy defining victories against the likes of George Foreman, Joe Frazier and Sonny Liston throughout his career, and remains the only fighter ever to win the lineal heavyweight championship on three occasions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the peak of his powers, Mike Tyson was the most dominant heavyweight on the planet. After entering…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":155914,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-192621","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/155914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}