Punching power: Earnie Shavers or Wladimir Klitschko

You are dulusional if you think any of those men hit as hard as George Foreman!!! When will you learn that punching power doesnt came strictly from weight, seriously learn something about boxing, but i guess you dont like boxing at all you are just in love with Wlad!!!

 

Considering he fought in a talent laden division it's easy to see why he never advanced further than he did. Thing is, Shaver's inability to transform his punching power into results has more to do with his skills than it does his power.

Judging fighters on results is fine, but it doesn't tell the whole story. Vitaly Klitschko officially has two losses on his record but they are both debated hotly; are you going to recalibrate history and claim he woulda shoulda stopped ________ in the next round but because he didn't he sucks or are you going to say that "this result is not reflection of Vitaly's inability to defeat _________." I'm certain there are some that will see the logic in my argument.

If someone were to KO Wladimir Klitschko, a fighter who has shown vulnerabilities with his chin, would you not give them credit for it? Would you say that it doesn't count because he's a 'glass jawed fraud?'

The point is Shavers did get 'lucky' with Ken Norton who is a top 25 ATG HW by the way. You see guys like Ali and Holmes and Wladimir Klitschko for that matter are legends because they don't let fighters get lucky. What you are arguing and what is being asked are two entirely separate issues. His big chance against Holmes was squandered in their second fight because he wasn't a great finisher. Holmes has a great chin, and recuperative abilities that are top notch. Like any fighter though, he can be stopped and it takes a big puncher and an exceptional finisher to get the job done. Shavers only had the former. He was never in the same class as Larry and Muhammad and therefore he lacked the latter. But this doesn't take away the fact that he was a tremendous puncher.

Ali KO'd Foreman, Liston, Frazier, Lyle but he decisioned Shavers and out of all the punchers he faced he lists Shavers as the biggest puncher? Where's the agenda there? Why not list Frazier as the biggest puncher; after all Joe is the only one on that list who holds a win over him.

Some of those undersized men shared a ring with both George Foreman and Earnie Shavers and the fact that Shannon Briggs stated that Foreman hit harder than Lennox Lewis suggests that maybe those "cruiserweights" have little more going for them.

Who punches harder? Vitaly Klitschko or David Tua? Michael Grant or Mike Tyson?

Vitaly is bigger and more athletic than David so naturally it should mean that he can punch alot harder but we both know the answer to the question is that Tua is the bigger puncher just like we both know that Mike Tyson is a bigger puncher than Michael Grant. It appears that the only one with rose tints is you my friend.

Tomasz Adamek a former Light Heavyweight Champion lasted longer against Vitaly Klitschko than the 260 lbs Kirk Johnson did in 2003. In fact Adamek took on Chris Arreola a man known for his punching power and was able to neutralize him score the UD. This is a man who Paul Briggs @ 175 managed to put on the canvas yet apart from Vitaly Klitschko nobody has been able to the same despite Adamek campaigning from Light Heavyweight to Cruiserweight to Heavyweight.

 

Ali also said in his autobiography that Foreman had him out on his feet, 5 plus times in the fight from glancing hits, yet Shavers used his head as target practice and couldn't KO him? how does that make SENSE?.:huh

Fighters' words regarding their opponents are not reliable, they can forget stuff, they can be trying to merely praise themselves through their opponents, they can have agendas which can change with time. (In Ali's case it's possible that he didn't want to praise Foreman as the hardest puncher he faced because people would make a correlation with that and the fact that Ali ducked the rematch with him

And Briggs also said Vitali hits harder than Foreman, and I thought the common consensum was that Wlad is a much bigger puncher than arm puncher Vitali.

Fighters' words while comparing opponents aren't reliable, they can carry bias, agendas, and at the end of the day, they depend on individual perception, which can be affected by a lot of things.

i.e What if the fighter was drained, unfocused or just weaker for a particular reason that night, therefore affecting his ability to take punches? He'd surely feel that his opponents punches are harder than they really are
And what if his opponent was the one underperforming that night? take Foreman-Ali for example, where Foreman ran out of steam abnormally fast, in the final rounds he looked so tired that even a strong wind could have knocked him down if Ali didn't do it first. Did he really felt the full power of Big George?

btw Foreman is easily the hardest puncher from the golden age, and he was coincidently, the one fighter from that era that is closer in size to the current superhw division. Coincidence? I dont think so.:nono

You're forgetting a crucial factor when it comes to take a punch or deliver it called ¨weight¨.

More weight means more mass, which combined with acceleration equals force, more leverage to gain momentum and deliver harder punchers
more weight also means more muscle to absorb punishment.

Tua is short yeah, but he's one heavy ass mfer whose better fighting weight was 237 lbs, he has outweighed even the Klitschkos in some of his fights

Prime Tyson's weight was about 220 lbs, which combined with a broad, very muscular body and legs as wide as tree trunks, gave him some scary speed+power combination.

Short as they are, Tyson and Tua are TRUE HW's, excelently build to deliver KO's, they're by no means modern day cruisers, and they would KTFO all the guys Shaver's KO'd much faster than Shavers did. Tyson even gave us a sample of that against Holmes.

Adamek? LOL. Vitali put him on ***** st. with a jab ffs,:rofl
He had him out on the second round, but spared him, and for the most part Vitali carried Adamek for nine of the rounds, and he did it because the fragile pole was fighting in his home country in front of his adoring fans. Everyone who saw the match knows that what Vitali says it's true.

If anything the Adamek fight did show how FRAGILE are guys who are natural CRUISERS when they face the power of a real hard puncher superHW. Good sample of what would happen to the majority of fighters from previous decades if they were active today and fought a Klitschko. Try again.

 

So you are refuting the word of Ali, Lyle, Norton, Holmes, and Tillis? 3 of those 5 fought both Foreman and Shavers. All 3 said Shavers hit harder. 2 of them fought both Shavers and Tyson. Both of them said Shavers punched harder.

 

Going by some folks logic on here Valuev must be the hardest hitting fighter of all time.

My, how much harder he hit than little Mike Tyson.

:rofl

 

People defending Shavers using Valuev are absolutely ******ed.

Valuev is big, yes, but he is sloppy and one of the least athletic boxers ever.

Wlad is big, and one of the MOST naturally athletic HW's to lace them up. He is 245 pounds of muscle and is very fast/athletic for his size. Combine this with textbook-perfect technique and you have arguably the hardest hitting boxer ever.

Now let me ask you...does this sound ANYTHING like Valuev? No? Ok we can move on.

Shavers had **** poor technique. He was a LOT smaller than Wlad. He fought bums (a "bum" from Wlad's resume would be a "decent win" on Shavers' resume) for the majority of his career. And...he FAILED to knock out ANY of his toughest opposition.

These are the facts. Feel free to ignore them and continue posting crap about how "_____ said Shavers was the hardest hitter" or "everyone knows Shavers is the harders hitter of all time, why are we discussing this?".

 

Nice series of posts from locard and others. Too bad most do not even read them or are unable to comprehend them(far more likely) because they simply repeat themselves, using antiquated examples that were repeatedly addressed in the posts they disputed.

 

:deal..
Being big and heavy doesn't do the trick alone, but being big athletic and well coordinated does..

 

Look at the effect the Shavers right had on Holmes, for instance. Holmes looked like he fell off a cliff. That was from a single punch, not a series of punches, nothing. One shot. Prime Holmes too.
That's a result, surely?

Shavers is a prime example of an extremely heavy-fisted guy who just lacked the other attributes to beat the best. In a punch v chin matchup, chin almost always wins. It's no shame that Shavers could not KO Ali (even that Ali) Holmes or Cobb.

I don't understand why people are so quick to dismiss the testimony of Holmes and Ali. It's nothing but selective bias, I think.
It would have made better copy for them to say that, for instance, Foreman hit harder or that Cooney hit harder.
Those were far bigger fights, and both men won those fights also.
But they didn't.
Both said that Shavers hit them harder than anybody, and why should I dismiss that?

 

Foreman, if you've ever watched him fight, also had poor technique a lot of the time. He'd sometimes throw punches from an off-balance position, with his weight on the wrong foot, his stance too wide, and he'd throw a lot of arm punches as well.
Yet, everyone knows that Foreman was a huge puncher.
He'd shift big, muscular guys with arm punches.

What is my point? My point is that certain fighters carry enough raw punching power that even without textbook form, they hit like hell. Shavers and Foreman are but two examples.

Dude, for "arguably the hardest hitting heavyweight ever", Wlad's not doing so well. He failed to even come close to stopping Haye, a guy stopped by a cruiserweight.
He may have "knocked out" Mormeck, another blown-up cruiser, but Mormeck's eyes were perfectly clear at all times. That was not a knockout.
On the record books it goes down as a KO, but Mormeck was looking for a spot to lie down. His eyes were fine at all times.

How many great shots did he hit Brewster with in the first fight? Who got stopped?
If you're going to say that Shavers FAILED to knock out ANY of his toughest opposition (Which is true) then you could also funnily enough take that same argument and apply it to Wlad.
(But Holmes was a hell of a lot better than any of Wlad's competition.)

Yes Wlad hits hard. Any fool can see that. But I don't think he's close to "the hardest hitter of all time." He doesn't have too many one-punch KO's against credible opposition. (I was impressed with the KO of Calvin Brock though...good demonstration of one-punch power.)

 

Logically yes. But punching power is a funny thing. I don't think anyone can truly fully explain where power actually comes from. (Even though a lot of people, mainly internet geeks who have never actually boxed, think they know. Not directed at you, btw, just saying.)
In some cases, like Tua for instance, it's obvious. But in other cases it's not so obvious.

Why is it a guy like Primo Carnera was a light hitter? He was a huge muscular guy, bigger than Wlad, but he just wasn't a puncher. Jess Willard, a huge heavyweight for his day could punch fairly well, but he wasn't regarded as a huge puncher either.

Now people can scoff and say that Primo was a bum or that Willard was a bum (Not really true in either case, but that's another story) but the fact remains that they were big, strong guys who had been punching for years.
They had at least a modicum of technique and athleticism.
But they were not punchers. Jack Dempsey, little 188 lb. Dempsey, was a puncher. He hit harder than both.
Can anyone truly explain why Dempsey, a man almost 80 lbs. lighter than Carnera, and a good 60 or so lbs. lighter than Willard, could hit harder?

A person can take two fighters who weigh exactly the same, are of the same height, weight and build, are taught the same punching technique by the same trainer, and yet one can hit significantly harder than the other.
On paper, there is no reason for this discrepancy, but it's often the case.

 

Yeah, but these guys had "agendas", Bill.

(As if 99% of this board doesn't.)

 

Didnt even read this thread, just skipped to the last page

All i can say is this is a monumentally ******ed thread, Wlad would chop off his left testicle too punch as hard as Shavers, You Klitschko dicksuckers are going insane with some of the claims you guys have been making

Yesterday someone claimed Wlads handspeed to be in the top 5 of Heavyweights, now his power is on par with Earnie Shavers?, come the **** on poeple

 

Wlad by miles. He has his KOs against much much stronger competition.

Closed.

 

you're all bunch of ****ing idiots for arguing over something that could never be proven.