Mike Tyson, in his younger days, was a force of nature and had the intent to kill anybody he faced inside the ring. The youngest heavyweight boxer was a beast and didn’t respect any of his opponents, as he wanted to beat everybody.
In a famous interview, Tyson went all out and shared his future plans to fight while calling out all the top fighters in the heavyweight division at the time. Tyson claimed that after beating Alex Stewart he would like to go after others such as Evander Holyfield, Buster Douglas, Razor Ruddock, etc.
He said: “After I kick Stewart ass and give him a slow beating nearly death. I’m going to take whoever win after that. The Holyfield Dauglas fight and then regain my title and hopefully I can fight Razor Ruddok or this other guy George Foreman before he dies of you know, rigor mortis.”
The fighter also made fun of the legendary George Foreman and mentioned that he would beat Foreman before he died of rigor mortis, which is a condition in which muscles get stiff. However, Foreman throughout his career was never diagnosed with this condition, it seems like Tyson was just mocking him with that call-out.
George Foreman never considered Mike Tyson one of his top heavyweight boxers of all time
While Mike Tyson is regarded as the most violent fighter of all time, George Foreman was just a different breed of fighter during his prime. Foreman was a machine that dominated everybody who fought him and he was not afraid of anybody inside the ring. When talking about Mike Tyson, Foreman once mentioned that he doesn’t put Tyson in his top five heavyweights list.
He said: “Tyson is not in my Top five world Champs. He could make my top ten. Ali never told me to stay away from Tyson. He did say, “Tyson can punch like a Blankety Blank.” He was really impressed with Mike. But for me, they (heavyweights like Tyson) were real fast (small with muscles). But they were no danger to me.”
Foreman added that Muhammad Ali was always fascinated by Tyson and rightly so. But according to Foreman, no heavyweight boxer of that time would have won against him that includes Tyson too.