He seldom sits down on his punches. He's always bouncing up and down on his toes. He's more of a volume puncher. I think he has some pop or all of the guys he fought would've walked through him. Ruslan is probably very durable.
Not really guys like Ezzard Charles and Evander Holyfield have/had small wrists and they were fine even when fighting at heavyweight.
If only statistical evidence weren't to the contrary, you might have a point. Larger hands / bones means more mass. More mass means more kinetic energy. It the same as putting plaster in your wraps, or hitting a guy with a roll of nickels in your fist. Now breakage might be affected as well, I have no idea, but mass X speed X support is the whole deal as far as getting some guy's brain to bounce off the back of his skull.. --------------------- I've been looking at Bradley's technique some more, and maybe osreyes77 is right about his stance. I like Bradleys footwork, but his body does seem to be too far back, or something. So OK I changed my mind. He might also have a small problem with leverage. But really, the problem is mostly just his arm speed.
All his weight is in his upper body and he punches with poor technique. I've explained it in other threads, his arm comes through at the same time he rotates his waist so he doesn't summate the force through the last link of the kinetic chain.
A good boxing coach can change it and a good strength coach can enhance it. In boxing you don't get much of either, hence uneducated opinions like yours.
I was just thinking about this on my morning commute, actually. The mental image of Provodnikov leering at Bradley after eating full-power combos is haunting. Calling Bradley fit is understatement. He was hitting Provodnikov hard, with technically sound venomous punches. No effect. ******* kept grinning. Now, Provodnikov does have a hell of a chin but of course this isn't an isolated case. Bradley has exhibited a relatively toothless offense his entire career. There is nothing terribly wrong in his form. He is obviously in tremendous shape and physically strong. He isn't slow. :huh
There is something VERY wrong with his form that takes away all his power. Look at his waist and look at his fists, they come through at the same time. His fist isn't accelerating as he punches, it's moving with his body. Any good puncher or pitcher you can see that their midsection rotates and stops as the fist comes through, that tendinous recoil through the midsection accelerates the fist through so it gains power and speed even as it's landing. Punching with the fist and the waist at the same time as Bradley does just means that every punch is basically a push, instead of using his tendons to multiply the power he's just using his muscles which can't generate nearly as much power without the tendons input. He has poor punching biomechanics, plain and simple. He punches to the body with a lot more power than to the head because his midsection has stopped moving before his fist comes through. You find that a lot with guys who can't punch to the head, the slight bending forward stops them moving their waist through at the same time so they are far more powerful when punching to the body. His chicken legs don't help either, he could do with losing some upper body mass and focusing on squats and explosive lower body exercises.
Size of hands and bones makes literally zero difference. It's velocity x mass that equals power but a boxer isn't running into an opponent so that simplistic equation makes zero sense when forces are summated at different joints and the effective mass of a punch has nothing to do with the mass of the person. Each muscle produces it's own force and all the different tendons of the body play a role in multiplying and summating that force, the force can be increased or decreased at every link of the kinetic chain. That's why I get sick of people using that ******ed equation as if it means something, Oh you weigh 70kg and your fist is moving at 20m/s at impact so power is this. No it ****ing isn't, what about pennation of muscles, stiffness and compliancy of tendons, SSC activity, level of neural activation/inhibition etc. etc.? The whole leverage thing doesn't make any sense either, the body is a series of levers and the longer they are the more work needs to be done by the muscles to do the same work as a shorter lever.
He sometimes (OK, maybe often) pushes his punches when he is hurrying them, sure - but on a few occasions I saw him plant his feet and really fire off a few bursts with his legs in the heat of desperation to keep Provodnikov at bay, generating as much power as his body is probably capable of. No effect. When I say his technique isn't lacking I suppose I meant the upper body mechanics - ie, he isn't slapping like a Calzaghe or to a lesser extent Malignaggi. He could strengthen his legs and put more follow-through into his punches without getting carried out with the tide, agreed. I still think if he slammed Provodnikov in the face with a perfect textbook shot, holding nothing back, it wouldn't phase the guy. Part of that is Ruslan's outlandish capacity to absorb shock. Part I think is something just missing on Tim's part. I do think power can be worked toward with repetition of applicable exercises and minding fundamentals, but some are just naturally handicapped in that department and can only improve up to a point.
Actually I followed him before he challenged Witter, from the ShoBox days, putting me in maybe the 99th percentile. (anyone claiming they knew of him before 2007 is full of **** unless they're a California resident and go to lots of club shows...as his TV debut wasn't until December '06) The lack of power has always puzzled me.
Bradley threw over 1,000 punches against Ruslan. Anyone who throws that much is obviously not sitting down on most of his punches. And his thin legs don't help either. Neither does the fact that he's always bouncing on this toes, which again means he's not really sitting down on his punches. But i don't think he's feather fisted. He has enough pop to earn some respect from his opponents.