International Boxing Hall of Fame Induction Weekend

Image credit: boxrec.com

They are three more big names whose careers will be enshrined within the confines of a small-town museum. This weekend, Mike Tyson, Julio Cesar Chavez and Kostya Tszyu will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, located in Upstate New York in Carmen Basilio's hometown of Canastota.

Here's a sampling of what writers are saying of their accomplishments. And for a full list of this year's inductees, please click here.

Let's start with Bernard Fernandez of the Philadelphia Daily News, introducing the legend of Chavez:

"Tales of what Chavez did, or was capable of doing, grew so tall south of the border that they took on a mythical quality, something akin to the legend of towering woodsman Paul Bunyan in the upper Midwest. And the thing is, most of those stories were true, or mostly so."

Graham Houston, writing on ESPN.com, expands on why:

"At his best, Chavez was an almost perfect fighting machine. He was a relentless aggressor who punched hard and fast, and never seemed to tire. If Chavez got caught by hard blows, he could shrug them off, as he showed when withstanding a full-impact right hand from Roger Mayweather -- something of a Thomas Hearns of the lighter weight classes—in a 1985 bout.

"No, Chavez said afterwards, Mayweather hadn't hurt him. "I have too much chin," he said through an interpreter.

"Too much chin, too much everything, for the opponents who faced him."

Dan Rafael, in an entry on ESPN.com, has Mike Tyson reflect on his own career:

"I'm going in with guys like Stanley Ketchel and Jack Johnson, guys who lived colorful lives," Tyson said. "I wanted to be like them even though they were tragic at the end. But what lives they had. They had interesting lives. I wanted to live like them, like Mickey Walker, Harry Greb. Those guys had no boundaries. That's who I wanted to be. I wanted to be heavyweight champion. I wanted to conquer everyone. I looked at boxing different than most people. It was about destruction and pain and 'nobody can ever stop me.'

"Back then, I lived by those comments. I was the best in the world and nobody could beat me. It was a weird journey."

And Greig Johnston of Sportal in Australia said Kostya Tszyu defined himself by what he did after his first pro loss:

"With those around him urging him to quit, Tszyu, at 28, did the hardest thing of all – he changed.

"The second part of his career was even more impressive than the first, as Tszyu reinvented himself as a more intelligent fighter, no longer content with trying to bludgeon his opponents into submission.

"He embarked on a 13-fight unbeaten streak, the high point of which was a second-round knockout of Zab Judah in 2001 to unify the junior-welterweight division, something no man had been able to achieve in over 30 years."