At the peak of his powers, Mike Tyson was the most formidable fighter to walk the planet.
He exploded onto the scene back in 1985, making his professional debut when he was just 18-years-old before going on to win his first 19 bouts by knockout with 12 of these wins coming inside the opening round.
Just over one year after entering the paid ranks, ‘Iron Mike’ captured world honours for the first time, stopping WBC world heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick in the second round of their bout in Las Vegas to become the youngest heavyweight champion of all time at 20-years-old, a record that remains unbroken to this day.
In the year that followed this historic victory, Tyson defeated WBA champion James Smith and IBF champion Tony Tucker, achieving undisputed status at heavyweight just one month after he turned 21-years-old.
Speaking in footage on YouTube, Tyson gave plaudits to the punching power of late-great heavyweight icon George Foreman, as he claims he ‘could not match’ the formidable power of Big George.
“Yeah, heavy puncher … I can’t match somebody’s power who’s that big with that much mass, you know the only thing that allowed me to be exciting was because I’d do it faster than the other guys.”
Foreman was a dominant force during the early 1970s, defeating the likes of Joe Frazier and Ken Norton during the earlier stages of his career, before suffering the first defeat of his tenure to Muhammad Ali in the ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ in October of 1974.
After taking a 10-year hiatus between 1977 and 1987, ‘Big George’ made a sensational return to boxing, and went on to make history by becoming the oldest world heavyweight champion of all time when he defeated Michael Moorer in 1994.
