Edwin Valero is no Mike Tyson. Edwin Valero is no Mike Tyson. Edwin Valero is no Mike Tyson.
There. I said it. Did my penance issued by hundreds of Yahoo! Sports readers, who were outraged that I would dare compare Valero, the power-punching WBA super featherweight champion, to Tyson, one of the hardest-hitting heavyweights ever.
I awoke Sunday morning to a flood of messages commenting on my column on Valero, who retained his title in Cancun, Mexico, on Saturday with a third-round knockout of overmatched Zaid Zavaleta.
The first message called me an idiot. The second a moron. The third suggested I was retarded.
And then they got nasty.
In that column, I wrote, “If you haven’t seen Valero, think of a young Mike Tyson and you’ll get an idea of what you’re about to see. The Venezuelan fights with a fury. Remember Tyson’s famous quote about wanting to drive his opponent’s nose into his brain? That’s the kind of fighter Valero is.”
My comparison was to Tyson’s aggressiveness and the impact his punches had upon opponents.
Valero may be the least-skilled defensive fighter on the planet and he’s faced a bevy of C-list competition. But his power is real. I’m not saying he’d beat Manny Pacquiao, Juan Manuel Marquez, Joan Guzman or Humberto Soto, but I am saying that if he hit any of them on the chin, he’d knock them out.
But I’ve heard you: Edwin Valero is no Mike Tyson. Edwin Valero is no Mike Tyson.
