He would have been out cold if the referee allowed another half a minute. Had it been in the last round, that could make a difference.
Look, he doesn't have great defensive skills, at least from what I saw, so there was no way he could have lasted a complete 15-rounds fight against Foreman or Frazier. But we're still talking about his chin here, and he's a guy who could definitely take punches and remain on his feet. Everything else is irrelevant in my opinion.
I don't think anyone can deny Chuvalo's ability to take a punch. It's never the most admirable attribute to have but he did possess it. The supposed "knockdowns" against Bonavena make no difference as far as I'm concerned since he wasn't exactly hurt by the punches, more off balance so the referee made the right call in my estimation. He absorbed Frazier's left hooks until a broken orbital bone and took Foreman's punches as well as any man had, not that anyone could ever take many of them. Let George Foreman blast a defenseless Oliver McCall, and he will put him out. If Chuvalo ever went into a shell then it wasn't much of a shell to talk about as he would still get lit up with punches and plod forward while swinging wide left hooks.
Jimmy Young had a 'great chin'. But nobody could find it, except Earnie Shavers once, and that's a 'good thing'.
Yeah, Baer sometimes gets overlooked on these all-time chin lists, and he really shouldn't. The guy was stopped ONCE for the count in 84 fights, and that against a prime Joe Louis. Even then, he was conscious.
It's hard to fault Hagler or McCullough's chins. But McCullough gets the vote from me. Why? Because he went out of his depth more Hagler did. It's not a knock on Hagler for not moving up in weight, but more of a plus on McCullough. Same scenario as glass half full, rather than half empty. Hearns and Mugabi for Hagler don't compare to Hamed and Morales for McCullough. Hearns, while still a fine puncher at 160lbs, wasn't as lethal as he was at 147lbs. Mugabi was a lethal puncher at 154lbs, but not a natural middleweight. McCullough was a natural 118lb fighter, who went out his depth moving up to fight a knockout puncher in his prime at 122lbs, and also one of the hardest hitting, 126lb, fighters of all-time in his prime.
he was KOd by Artie Levine , and officially stopped by Joey Maxim . And then he avoided a good few which would have posed a sterner test than most of those he faced , and would have caused more damage , and by doing so they would have shortened his career which shows u that d length of his career is not completely indicative of his quality .
Nobody is denying his ability to take a punch, just that it's exaggerated quite a bit. Knockdowns make a difference, because so many people like to point out that he's never been knocked down officially. I'm doubting Foreman could stop McCall. He has a more solid chin than Chuvalo, is bigger, with better defensive skills, and can hit back much harder than Chuvalo. I think if he met a comebacking Foreman, it's Foreman who is getting stopped, not vice versa. And it's not like Chuvalo was taking a beating for three rounds either, it was a war of jabs most of the time. One left hook to the jaw changed all that, Chuvalo was badly hurt and went into a shell, blocking and deflecting many punches (Foreman was a clubbing puncher, so that simply putting both your hands up was enough to make it difficulty for him to penetrate that). Only two more punches landed cleanly while he was standing in that corner. A couple of hard jabs while they were moving to the opposite corner, and only one additional clean hard punch landed there before the referee stopped the bout, because Chuvalo wasn't fighting back. Basically Chuvalo took four clean hard punches from Foreman in that 3rd round, before he was stopped. How about counting how many clean hard punches Ron Lyle took from Foreman? He took more than four clean hard punches before going down for the first knockdown and they looked more damaging than the ones Chuvalo was hit with. Couple that with Lyle's bout with Shavers and, at least to me, it's clear than Lyle had a better chin than Chuvalo. But it's always Chuvalo who's getting mentioned on these lists.
Never knocked down and spoiling or not he survived against some of the biggest hitters in boxing history.