What are you top 5 20th century boxing cards?

[Exhibitman]

I wouldn't put the Tyson in the top 10 cards and certainly not the top five, unless you are starting the list in 1980. As to post-1980 cards I would rank it up there as one of the top five (in date order):

1986 Panini Tyson
1986 Brown's Holyfield
1988 Panini Julio Cesar Chavez
1997 Brown's Mayweather
1999 World Boxing Magazine (Japan) Manny Pacquiao

If we push the start date back to the 1970s I think he'd probably be top 5 (though I could see an argument for one or more Ali cards displacing one or more of these guys):

1973 Panini Roberto Duran
1986 Panini Tyson
1986 Brown's Holyfield
1997 Brown's Mayweather
1999 World Boxing Magazine (Japan) Manny Pacquiao

But if we push it back beyond 1970 Tyson drops off the list of even the most significant cards of heavyweights, even if we limit it to one card per fighter:

E125 Johnson (or T229, T227, etc.)
1921 Romeo y Julieta Jack Dempsey
1935 JA Pattreiouex Sport Celebrities Joe Louis
1951 Ringside Rocky Marciano
1960 Hemmets Cassius Clay (or any of a number of other early Clay cards)

If you add in all of the other weight classes and add in multiple cards of fighters, Tyson is nowhere near the top ten.

As for comparisons with Jordan, I don't buy it. Jordan is on the short list of greatest players of all time. Tyson is not even close to Jordan-esque range even among heavyweights. The IBRO (2005) ranks the heavies as follows:

Joe Louis
Muhammad Ali
Jack Johnson
Jack Dempsey
Rocky Marciano
Larry Holmes
James J. Jeffries
George Foreman
Sonny Liston
Joe Frazier
Gene Tunney
Lennox Lewis
Mike Tyson
Evander Holyfield
Sam Langford
Jersey Joe Walcott
Ezzard Charles
Harry Wills
James J. Corbett
Bob Fitzsimmons

Tyson doesn't have the resume. He didn't face anything like the guys around in the 1970s; but setting aside that era as a special one, he also did squat against the best of his era. On the way up he beat a bunch of bums, blown up cruiserweights, and an elderly Larry Holmes. Then he got blasted out by Buster Douglas? He didn't face Bowe. After he did his rape time he fought bums and tomato cans before losing to Holyfield and Lewis. He wasn't anywhere near as mentally and physically tough as the prewar fighters. When he was in the deep $hit with Holyfield he melted down rather that gut it out. Dempsey and Louis would have ripped him to pieces, Johnson would have taken an easy decision from him, and Frazier and Marciano would have ruined him permanently as a fighter because they fought the same way he did but with much bigger balls; they would have humiliated him. Frankly, I don't think he was blood and guts enough to beat any of the guys above him on that list, except perhaps for Liston, who was a similarly flawed individual and might have been spooked by Tyson's shtick. That said, he was a legit HOFer and he had a puncher's chance with anyone, same as every elite heavyweight does.