The 400 pound Gorilla in the room part 1: How the NFL killed the Heavyweight division.

It's a common lament that Heavyweight boxing died when Buster Douglas knocked out Mike Tyson in 1990. However you could more realistically say that the Heavyweight era ended when Tyson knocked out Tony Tucker, ushering in a slew of first round knockouts over athletically outclassed fighters.

Tyson, the gifted fighter he was, did little more than showcase the showmanship of the Don King/Bill Clayton rivalry - an athletically superior brawler matched up against lesser athletes. It's an axiom in Thai boxing that first round knockouts are indicators of bad matchmaking, and this certainly was the case for Iron Mike between 1988-1990.

However, despite being easy targets for corruption allegations, King/Clayton did not have an easy job finding opponents for Iron Mike. A man with no professional losses at the top of his division is something the fictional promoters of the 1996 Def Comedy film "The Great White Hype" were faced with. In all seriousness though, with all the flak that Don King gets for ruining heavyweight boxing with Tyson mismatches, you cannot accuse the man of protecting Tyson.

Rewind to 1990 and absolutely no one can honestly claim they said "Iron Mike is ducking Buster Douglas!" It wasn't until the aftermath of that fight that the cracks in Mike's exterior became apparent and his career took an irreparable turn for the worse. Like a racehorse that breaks a leg or a fighting dog that curs, an athletic brawler rarely bounces back to be anything more than a shadow of his former self.

Much has been written about the career arc of Tyson, the original Baddest Man On The Planet, and so I won't rehash that, but I will raise the following question: Why was Mike able to do what he did with the heavyweight division, employing a fighting style based mainly on speed and strength?

The answer doesn't lie in the flaws of the other boxers, but rather within the league of an entirely different sport. The place where tough, big men without boxing gloves go to do battle and get stanky rich.

In 1982 the average salary for a professional football player was 90k. In 1987 this figure nearly tripled to 230k. In the span of five short years, football players were making three times what they'd been making at the beginning of the decade. Juxtapose that against the first big heavyweight fight of the 1980's: Larry Holmes handing Muhammad Ali his ass in an 11-round disgrace. Ali was boxing's biggest cash cow to date, and Larry Holmes could not for the life of him draw similar numbers. Albeit a very technical boxer blessed with great reach, (ESPN's 9th most underrated athlete of all time) Holmes will forever be remembered as a heel.

For sizeable young athletes in the 1980's, the difference was becoming clear. Boxing had cannibalized it's own hero and was desperately searching for the next big draw. The changeover to Pay Per View in 1981 also limited boxing's exposure, instead catering to diehard fans willing to shell out the cash to view championship bouts. All the while, the NFL was getting bigger and more financially sound on regular good old network TV.

Gone were the days of the George Foremans, Joe Fraziers, Muhammad Alis, Sonny Listons, Rocky Marcianos. Instead, the superior big-framed athletes from the 1980's will always be remembered as the Joe Montanas, Jerry Rices, Lawrence Taylors and Walter Paytons.

The massive influx of powerful athletes to the NFL in the 1980's is what allowed a guy like Iron Mike to destroy an entire division of lesser competitors, using speed and punching power - talents many a boxing coach deem "god given".

Next post: The MMA aftermath.