Mike Tyson has revealed the one heavyweight he believes would not have been able to beat.
Many felt Tyson was invincible in his prime years in the late 1980s, when he became undisputed heavyweight world champion aged just 21.
However, in a clip shared online Tyson states he would not have been able to get the better of the great Muhammad Ali, whom he describes as a ‘f***ing animal.’
“There’s no man like him [Ali]. There just isn’t. Everything that we have, he supersedes us in, even our arrogance and our ego.
He’s fast, but he doesn’t really have any great quality that you can see aside from his agility and he’s not afraid to let punches fly. He didn’t really have a good defence – his speed was his defence, his moves and stuff.
From a boxing perspective, Ali was a f***ing animal. He looks more like a model than a fighter, but he’s like a Tyrannosaurus rex with a pretty face.
He’s just mean and evil and he’ll take you to deep waters and drown you. I can’t beat that man, hell f***ing no! No f**king way!”
From his stunning win over the feared Sonny Liston to burst onto the world scene, an epic trilogy with Joe Frazier that produced arguably the greatest fight of all time and, when thought to be past his best, upsetting the bookmakers’ odds to defeat the fearsome George Foreman in the baying Kinshasa heat; Ali truly boasts a legacy like no other heavyweight since.
Despite still holding the record for the youngest heavyweight world champion in the history of the sport there is still a lingering view that somehow Tyson failed to fulfil his potential, due to the derailing of his career by a jail stint in the first half of the 1990s, which were still some of his prime years.
Tyson was last seen under the lights in an exhibition bout against Roy Jones Jr, and although he has no immediate plans to return, he hasn’t entirely ruled one last dance out.