Collins2000 wrote:Brocky, if you think the 12 rounds that Tyson went with Boneclutcher were 'hard', I suggest you sit down with your Dad and have him take you through what is actually happening.
Here's a review of that joke of a fight:
Las Vegas, Nevada. 7 March 1987. In a ring still stained with blood from the desperately fought heavyweight match that preceded it, Mike Tyson, World Boxing Council champion, at twenty the youngest heavyweight titleholder in boxing history, brings the fight for unification of the title to James "Bonecrusher" Smith, World Boxing Association champion, at thirty-three an aging athlete, and, yet more telling, the only heavyweight titleholder in boxing history to have graduated from college—but Smith will have none of it. He clinches, he backs away, he walks away, he clinches again, hugging his frustrated and increasingly infuriated opponent like a drowning man hugging something—anything—that floats. Referee Mills Lane calls "Break!" repeatedly during the twelve long rounds of this very long fight but Smith seems not to hear; or, hearing, will not obey. For the most part his expression is blank, with the blankness of fear, a stark unmitigated fear without shame, yet shameful to witness. "Fight!" the crowd shouts. "Do something!" In the ringside seats close by me Smith's fellow boxers Trevor Berbick (former WBC heavyweight champion) and Edwin Rosario (WBA lightweight champion) are particularly vocal, as if in an agony of professional discomfort. For it seems that the superbly conditioned Smith, who had performed so dramatically only three months ago in Madison Square Garden, knocking out Tim Witherspoon in the first round of his WBA title defense, is now, suddenly, not a boxer: though in that elevated and garishly spotlighted ring with another man, contracted for $1 million to fight him, performing in front of a crowd of some 13,600 people in the Hilton's newly erected outdoor stadium, and how many millions of television viewers, he cannot or will not fight. His instinct is merely to survive to get through twelve rounds with no injuries more serious than a bleeding left eye and a bad swelling on the right side of his face; and to go back, professionally disgraced, to his wife, family, and plans for the future ("Being a champion opens lots of doors—I'd like to get a real estate license, maybe sell insurance") in Magnolia, North Carolina.
well i if i did say it, i didnt mean to because tyson defintley did not go 12 hard rounds with bonecrusher. tyson came to fight but bonecrusher came to survive. what was supposed to be a "dempsey firpo" match turned into a boneclutcher fest. still tyson deserves credit for shutting out bonecrusher winning every round.
however, tyson and ruddock fights, though not gruelling were competitive hard 12 rounders where clearly ruddock and tucker came to fight unlike bonecrusher.
the word "hard pace" in my sense does not mean fraizer-ali. thats gruelling. "hard pace " in my sense means a competive fight where both men came to fight and did there best and got in some good licks.
tyson clearly dominated tucker and douglas, but he still went at a "hard pace" for 12 rounds.
