Mike Tyson shared the ring with a number of hard-hitting heavyweights during his storied professional career and has now revealed the one man that stood out from the rest.
‘Iron Mike’ entered the paid ranks as an 18-year-old back in 1985 and would establish himself as a serious contender at heavyweight within a matter of months, winning his first 19 bouts via knockout with 12 of these coming in the opening round.
He wrote his name into the boxing history books in November of 1986 when he blasted out WBC heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick in the second round of their Las Vegas clash to become the youngest world heavyweight champion of all time.
Tyson added the WBA and IBF heavyweight titles to his collection shortly after with respective victories over James Smith and Tony Tucker, becoming the undisputed champion just days after his 21st birthday.
‘Iron Mike’ would go on to have 59 professional bouts, but has now named the one man who he deemed to be more powerful than the rest.
As revealed on The Big Podcast with Shaq, Tyson made no mistake in naming Donovan ‘Razor’ Ruddock as the hardest hitting opponent that he ever crossed paths with, although he does admit there were many hard punchers that he faced at his peak.
“Razor Ruddock.
There’s a lot of hard punchers out there, this guy that’s taking punches, that’s psychological, everything’s psychological. Holyfield yeah, and all of those guys are hard punchers, but the purpose is they can’t land the punch, I know you look at me, you see me, but I don’t get hit much when I was at my prime, that was the whole objective, you know.”
Tyson shared the ring with Ruddock on two occasions within a several month period back in 1991, defeating his countryman via stoppage in their first encounter before following this up with a unanimous decision victory in their rematch.
Ruddock would end his career with a record of 40 wins, 6 defeats and 1 draw, with 30 of those victories coming by knockout.
