Henry Tillman

Henry Tillman
Data
Birth Name	Henry Durand Tillman
Weight class	Heavyweight
nationality	US-american
birthday	August 1, 1960
place of birth	los Angeles
style	Left delivery
size	1.90 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	31
Victories	25th
Knockout victories	16
Defeats	6th

Henry Tillman (born August 1, 1960 in Los Angeles ) is a retired American boxer.

amateur

Tillman, who had come into conflict with the law as a youth, found amateur boxing and was second in the heavyweight class up to 91 kg at the 1983 Pan American Games in Caracas . The following year he got two victories over Mike Tyson in the US preliminary rounds , the second and decisive, however, highly controversial, with which he was able to qualify for participation in the 1984 Olympic Games in his hometown of Los Angeles. There he boxed his way through to the final and won the gold medal with a point victory over Willie DeWitt from Canada , to whom he had been defeated in 1982.

professional

In December 1984 Tillman played his first professional fight, which he won against Uriah Grant, a later short-term IBF cruiserweight title holder, by technical knockout in the second round.

He had the problem of having typical amateur talent, that is, he had good boxing skills but little punching power and poor taker qualities. In addition, he came from a weight class of amateurs, which at that time did not correspond to any class in the professional field. The 91 kg boxers either had to fight heavyweight opponents who weighed 105 kg and more or, and Tillman went this way, boil down to 86 kg, the cruiser weight of the time (the limit has now been raised to 90 kg), and then they were additionally weakened from weight gain.

In 1986 he suffered his first defeat on points against hard hitting Bert Cooper after being down twice. But he defeated a later World Cup challenger with Bash Ali and a later WBO title holder with Tyrone Booze .

On February 14, 1987, he challenged the unbeaten Evander Holyfield , ex-teammate on the Olympic team and bronze medalist a weight class lower. Holyfield was then the bearer of the WBA cruiserweight title; Tillman lost by technical knockout after he was knocked to the ground three times in the seventh round and thus the fight was automatically canceled in Holyfield's favor according to the rules of the WBA. This was Tillman's only major title fight.

He then boxed in the heavyweight division until 1992, but without being able to achieve any notable success. In 1987 he lost to an opponent with a negative match record prematurely, he also lost to his former amateur opponents Willie DeWitt (on points) and Mike Tyson, who knocked him out in 1990 in his first fight after the sensational defeat against James Douglas in the first round .

Others

Tillman was charged with murder in 1996 for allegedly shooting a drug dealer outside a Los Angeles nightclub . Tillman denied this, but was convicted and spent six years in prison .