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Tyson Fury ‘generationally the best’ but won’t be able to surpass Mike Tyson, Lennox Lewis and Muhammad Ali GOATs, says Simon Jordan
Tyson Fury says he is going to walk away from boxing whatever the result of his fight with Dillian Whyte this weekend at Wembley.
The Gypsy King has held every heavyweight title at one time or another in his career and he has never been beaten. His trilogy with Deontay Wilder will be remembered as one of the all-time greats and he did defeat a long-reining champion in Wladimir Klitschko - in Germany no less - to first become a world champion.
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It’s a legendary career whichever way you look at it, but has he done enough to be considered among the all-time greats like Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis?
talkSPORT presenter Simon Jordan has been a passionate boxing fan for decades and has been travelling to watch big-time title fights since the 1980s.
While Fury’s name will be certainly cemented in the history books, Jordan says it will be hard for Fury to be considered an all-time great and much of the reason why is out of his own control.
“I think it's very difficult and I've watched all the great heavyweights,” Jordan explained. “From Floyd Patterson to Sonny Liston to Muhammad Ali to George Foreman to Joe Frazier to Larry Holmes on to Mike Tyson into the Klitschkos and I spent time running around the world watching Lennox Lewis fight.
“When he lost to [Hasim] Rahman [in 2001], when he drew with Holyfield at Madison Square Garden [in 1999] but really he beat him, beat him in [the second fight] when probably Holyfield won and I've watched all these great fighters and these great heavyweights.
“It's difficult to make a case for Tyson Fury to be anything else than a generationally great fighter. I don't put him in the same bracket as Ali or Lewis. Lewis is much underrated, he was a fabulous fighter. He could adapt his style to beat the boxer in front of him. Mike Tyson was just a wrecking ball until he lost his way.
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“Certainly in this generation he is by far the best. In terms of his size, reach skill, his movement - all of that makes him generationally the best. But when I go back to what I said which is comparing him to a legacy set of fighters, I think he comes up short,” Jordan reasoned.
Fury has wins over Wilder and Klitschko, two long-reigning champions of his era, but unless he goes on and beats names like Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk, Jordan doesn’t believe he will start to make a case for GOAT - 'Greatest Of All Time' - status. But even then, Fury might not get the credit he deserves.
“When Fury beats Whyte, if he then beats Usyk or Joshua in whichever order those two fights come, then you start to make a case.
“The challenge for me is when you look back on eras when I talk about the great fights for Tyson, there were seven or eight of them in that division that were really, really good.
“In Ali's time; Ken Norton, Joe Frazier, George Foreman. These were legends people had to win titles from. I don't think we have that depth. We're getting more, we've got other people coming through like Daniel Dubois, but I don't think Tyson Fury can get to those levels.
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“I don't think he's at those levels. I don't think his opponents are at the levels that these guys had. But that doesn't alter the fact on the landscape of what Fury can influence, he can be a generationally great fighter and be looked at in 20 years time as in the time of Tyson Fury, from 2010-2025 or whatever it is, he was the legend in that era.”
Another fighter Jordan watched closely was Mike Tyson, arguably the most exciting and destructive heavyweight of all-time at one point when he burst onto the scene in the early 1980s to become the division's youngest champion ever when he beat Trevor Berbick in 1986.
“When Mike Tyson tore through the heavyweight division - he ripped Trevor Berbick to pieces, knocked Michael Spinks into the next life, boxed Tyrell Biggs’ ears off - he ripped through it. He was on the decline when he beat Frank Bruno in 1989,” Jordan said of another big fight he was in attendance for.
Tyson’s career went off the rails in 1990, the year in which he lost his title to 42-1 outsider Buster Douglas.
He says he lacked the discipline given to him by trainer and father figure Cus D’Amato, who died in 1985, which led to him not training properly at the height of his fame. He was also jail in 1992 for rape on top of a messy divorce from Robin Givens who publicly accused him of domestic abuse.
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“Cus D'Amato had passed away before the Berbick fight, so he went on to win the titles, dominate the division and beat everyone up without Cus D'Amato.
“You wonder what he could have become if the discipline could have been there, but in 1990 with Robin Givens in the background etc he was away with the fairies wasn't he.
"He was fighting Mitch Green in pizza bars in Brooklyn and driving his Rolls Royce into trees. He was a lost cause at that particular time,” Jordan said.
However, Tyson is an all-time great to Jordan. Some fight fans say his losses to Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis damage his legacy, but Jordan says his impact on heavyweight boxing was profound.
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“I was a big Tyson fan. How could you not be? We were coming out of the Larry Holmes-era and whilst he was a phenomenal fighter, he just didn't have the charisma following on from Muhammad Ali.
“Then - boom! This 25-inch neck, wrecking machine was knocking everybody out. You go to fights to watch what Conor Benn does recently. You pay the price and you get your money's worth.
“I know I don't really like UFC because it's too brutal, but I want to see people knocked out in heavyweight boxing.
“I was fortunate enough to be at Mike Tyson versus Michael Spinks - that's my favourite heavyweight fight ever, but mostly for the build-up.
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“It was billed as the two best heavyweights in the world colliding. Both of them had belts but Tyson just demolished him.
“Watching Spinks go from being somebody to be perceived as a really good heavyweight to someone who was absolutely beside themselves in fear was something to behold.
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"The fight wasn't as long as I would have liked it to have been given the amount of money it took to get there [laughs] but it was still a spectacle," Jordan chuckled.
Fury has his chance to move a step closer to the legend of Tyson with a victory over Dillian Whyte on Saturday.
talkSPORT will bring you live coverage of the huge heavyweight world title fight between Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte at Wembley on Saturday night, with our coverage starting from 7.30pm and featuring expert ringside analysis from Ben Davison
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