ALI VS TYSON DEAD LEVEL! The Boxing GOAT War Opens With a Split Decision

Ding ding, fight fans! The bell has barely rung on the biggest argument in the sport and nobody's backing down. In the blue corner, The Greatest. In the red corner, Iron Mike. The crowd has picked its fighters for boxing's greatest of all time, and after the opening exchanges the scorecards say exactly nothing. It's level.

Here's the tale of the tape. According to Wikipedia's entry on Muhammad Ali, he went sixty-one professional bouts, won fifty-six of them, thirty-seven by knockout, and lost five, and one sanctioning body ranks him its top heavyweight champion of every era. Not everyone is buying it, though. ESPN reported that Floyd Mayweather dismissed Ali's claim, pointing out that Ali fought in a single weight division and lost to Leon Spinks. Mayweather wants the crown himself, and Evander Holyfield told the ABC he doesn't think Floyd has earned it.

So where does that leave Mike Tyson? The research doesn't give us his career numbers. What it does give us is a dream fight: in a hypothetical ESPN matchup of Ali against a twenty-one-year-old Tyson, the experts had Ali winning on points or by a late stoppage. Experts in a studio, though, aren't the ones holding the scorecards here.

The crowd is. On the Morfi opinion markets, where people put real money behind what they think, Ali sits at 50% consensus with 9 holders, and Tyson matches him at 50% with 9 holders. Call it a dead tie. That's 11 traders and $33,275 on the line in a market that opened less than a day ago, and it's a straight two-way fight, so Floyd isn't even on the card. He'll hate that.

My card, for what it's worth: Ali, and it isn't close. Tyson was pure terror, the most frightening ninety seconds in sports history every time he walked out. But GOAT means the whole fight, not just round one, and Ali beat everyone in a stacked heavyweight era with his legs, his jab and his mouth. Tyson backers will tell you peak Mike knocks anyone out. I'll tell you peak Ali just never stands still long enough to get caught. That's my opinion, and I'm sticking to it until the final bell.

What to watch: this tie won't last. The first real swing in conviction will tell us whether the crowd wants Ali's legacy or Tyson's knockout power, and whether Floyd Mayweather Jr. fans start making noise from the cheap seats. The judges haven't handed in their cards yet, fight fans. Join the market on Morfi and get your score in.