Well, the sports being different are what makes this fun.
What I can’t shake about Tyson - and everything you say about him is true - is that it seems impossible to me that a person who is somewhat distracted and undisciplined can truly be the GOAT. If one reads the biographies of almost every other GOAT candidate in a sport - Woods, Gretzky, Federer, go ahead and name others - it’s their remarkable level of ironclad dedication to greatness. They’re always the harding working men (or women - Serena Williams, Martina Navratilova, and Steffi Graf, to name three ultra elite tennis players, were famed for their training regimens.) Babe Ruth was perhaps an exception, but 1. He was a complete freak, 2. in an earlier, less talented era of his sport, and 3. even he fell back significantly when he lost discipline, and had to work hard to get back to being an elite player.
Tyson was not quite on that level.
You guys make A LOT of good points - definitely have me leaning towards Tiger in the comparison I set up.
Let me add one more against Tyson - his height. Golf and boxing are among the sports I’ve personally participated in the most (tho with horribly limited skills in both.) And there IS a reason they give the tale of the tape. No, the bigger, taller boxer won’t always win, but size DOES matter. I think that if Tyson had had more talented AND bigger contemporaries, he would not have faired as well as he did.
Just consider if Tiger’s wife/girlfriend scandal/chaos had happened when he was just rising in the pro tour. You can dismiss most of Tyson’s early fights as training, the championship matches would be the equivalent of pro golf tournaments. Tiger might have won just a few and steadily run downhill the way Tyson did.
The trouble with this is I have no idea how good Tiger was compared to his contemporaries or past masters of golf. But I think at least Tiger was facing the best available when he won. Boxing just doesn’t work that way, Mayweather never faced the very best competition available, he fought smaller guys as he moved up in weight and waited until his most serious challengers until they were on the decline He still tore up several weight classes though, he had an excellent chance of ending up with the same undefeated record if he did face the best opponents available, but we’re just left wondering. I think you certainly can say Tyson was just as dominating in boxing as Tiger was in golf, but not against the level of the best competition of earlier and later days.
The “more talented” part is a tautology. Anyone will do worse against more talented opponents, but that doesn’t mean that the Bum of the Month Club (as Joe Louis’s opponents were deemed) had more talent than Tyson’s opponents.
The “bigger” part is apparently due to a misconception on your part that Tyson didn’t fight big men. The reigning heavyweight champs he beat were Trevor Berbick (6-2), Bonecrusher Smith (6-4), Tony Tucker (6-5), Michael Spinks (6-2), Frank Bruno (6-3), and Bruce Seldon (6-1). And he beat several other men of comparable size who tried to take the title while he was champ.
Am I the only person who thought this thread was going to be about Mike Tyson fighting a tiger?