Tyrell Biggs

Tyrell Biggs (born December 22, 1960) is an American former boxer who fought in the heavyweight division. He won the gold medal at the 1984 Olympic Games in the super heavyweight division, after winning bronze the previous year at the 1983 Pan American Games. His professional career spanned a period of fourteen years, from 1984 to 1998.

Early life

Biggs was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, making his sporting debut playing basketball at West Philadelphia High. He was a starting forward for the Speedboys' Public League and City champions in 1978, a team that extended a state-record winning streak to 68 before a regular season loss to Overbrook. In '77, one of Biggs' teammates was Gene Banks, who went on to excel at Duke and play in the NBA.

Amateur career

Biggs' first major success as an amateur boxer was winning the gold medal at the 1981 United States National Boxing Championships in the super-heavyweight division. He repeated this feat the next year, and also in 1982 he won the World Championships in Munich, West Germany, where in the final he defeated Francesco Damiani from Italy on points, who beat the legendary Teofilo Stevenson earlier in the competition. In 1983 Biggs won a bronze medal on the Pan American Games, losing to future professional challenger Jorge Luis Gonzalez in the semi-final. In addition, Biggs won a 3-2 split decision over Cuban Angel Milian, who had beaten Greg Page five years earlier.

Mike Tyson

Michael Gerard "Mike" Tyson (/ˈtaɪsən/; born June 30, 1966) is an American former professional boxer. He held the undisputed world heavyweight championship and holds the record as the youngest boxer to win the WBC, WBA and IBF heavyweight titles at 20 years, 4 months, and 22 days old. Tyson won his first 19 professional bouts by knockout, 12 of them in the first round. He won the WBC title in 1986 after defeating Trevor Berbick by a TKO in the second round. In 1987, Tyson added the WBA and IBF titles after defeating James Smith and Tony Tucker. This made him the first heavyweight boxer to simultaneously hold the WBA, WBC and IBF titles, and the only heavyweight to successively unify them.

In 1988, Tyson became the lineal champion when he knocked out Michael Spinks in 91 seconds. Tyson successfully defended the world heavyweight championship nine times, including victories over Larry Holmes and Frank Bruno. In 1990, he lost his titles to underdog James "Buster" Douglas, by knockout in round 10. Attempting to regain the titles, he defeated Donovan Ruddock twice in 1991, but pulled out of a fight with undisputed heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield due to injury. In 1992, Tyson was convicted of raping Desiree Washington and sentenced to six years in prison but was released after serving three years. After his release, he engaged in a series of comeback fights. In 1996, he won the WBC and WBA titles after defeating Frank Bruno and Bruce Seldon by knockout. With his defeat of Bruno, Tyson joined Floyd Patterson, Muhammad Ali, Tim Witherspoon, Evander Holyfield, and George Foreman as the only men in boxing history to that point to have regained a heavyweight championship after having lost it. After being stripped of the WBC title, Tyson lost his WBA crown to Evander Holyfield in November 1996 by an eleventh-round TKO. Their 1997 rematch ended when Tyson was disqualified for biting part of Holyfield's ear off.

Tyson

Tyson is both a surname and a masculine given name. Notable Meanings of the name "Tyson" include: Son of a German, Son of Tye Fiery, Son of Dye. English meanings include:High-spirited, firebranded.

Surname

Lennox Lewis

Lennox Claudius Lewis, CM, CBE, (born 2 September 1965) is a retired boxer and the last undisputed world heavyweight champion. He holds dual British and Canadian citizenship. As an amateur boxer he won a gold medal representing Canada at the 1988 Olympic Games after defeating future heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe in the final. Lewis became undisputed champion by defeating Evander Holyfield, successfully unifiying his WBC title with Holyfield's WBA and IBF titles. With that victory, he was also awarded the vacant IBO title. Lewis is regarded by many as one of the greatest heavyweight boxers of all time, and also as the greatest British fighter of all time.

Lewis turned professional in 1989, winning his first 21 fights before knocking out Donovan Ruddock in 1992 to take over the number one position in the WBC rankings. He was declared WBC heavyweight champion in December 1992 after Riddick Bowe was stripped of the title. Lewis lost the title to Oliver McCall in 1994, but defeated McCall in a rematch to win the vacant WBC title in 1997. He defended the title four times before becoming the lineal champion when he beat Shannon Briggs by knockout in 1998. Lewis became undisputed champion when he defeated Evander Holyfield in 1999. In 2001 Lewis was knocked out by Hasim Rahman, but again avenged the defeat in a rematch later in the year to regain his titles. After defeating Mike Tyson by knockout in 2002 and stopping Vitali Klitschko in 2003, Lewis retired from boxing in 2004, having beaten every opponent he ever faced in professional competition.

Francesco Damiani

Francesco Damiani (born 4 October 1958) is an Italian former professional boxer. He was the first WBO heavyweight champion and also held the European heavyweight title. As an amateur he won a silver medal in the super heavyweight division at both the 1982 World Amateur Boxing Championships and the 1984 Olympics.

Amateur

He participated at 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, where he lost to the eventual silver medalist Piotr Zaev in the quarter-finals. The following year he won the European Amateur Championships in Tampere. At the 1982 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Munich, he beat the legendary Teofilo Stevenson but lost to Tyrell Biggs in the final. In 1983 in Varna he became European champion for the second time, beating Ulli Kaden. At the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles he again lost to Biggs in the final, despite Biggs' home crowd booing at the judges decision who believed Damiani won the contest (since he threw more punches and was moving forward for most of the contest) which led to the leading BBC Boxing commentator Harry Carpenter, who was commentating for the BBC sport Olympic coverage, to say that "..it the worst boxing decision in all my years of boxing commentating". Francesco Damiani was the Italian boxing team coach for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games held in London.