Sonny Liston vs. Vitali Klitschko

At no time have I said that DeJohn is a "better" puncher than anyone. But I think he hit harder than Frazier, possibly, and so did Chuvalo, who got hit by both of them:

"5. Joe Frazier: “My eye was already so swollen that my right eyeball was sticking out like one-eyed Marty Feldman—these bulging eyes. So when I got hit with a left hook, it messed up my right eye. That hurt like hell. It didn’t rock me. I just felt the pain of the punch, as it drove my eyeball through the optic floor."

3. Mike DeJohn: “I really didn’t know until I saw the video of it some 25 years later. My legs dipped about an inch when I got hit with a blazing uppercut—like, ‘WHOAW!’”

http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-five-hardest-punches-george-chuvalo-has-ever-taken/

I just cannot understand for the life of me why you are fighting so hard to "disqualify" DeJohn as a puncher. Of course he was a puncher. I have no idea why you think you can just say "oh these are the four punchers he faced and he did badly" and exclude the punchers he did well against for no better reason than it suits you. It's just really bizarre behaviour.

But you yourself, in this thread have posted "fighter opinion" to support your position on Vitali Klitschko being better than Wladimir Klitschko.

Again, you seem to think you can just ignore what you don't like and cherry-pick what you do.

Again, as I stressed, Williams only enjoys a puncher's reputation BY reputation. He doesn't have the record of a great puncher. It's because people SAID he hit hard that he has a reputation for hitting hard.

Earlier you were giving it "what top ten contenders did DeJohn knock out" like it proved he didn't hit hard, when the exact same question is asked about Williams on this forum over and over and over again.

They were both very hard punchers. Obviously. It's only YOU who are trying to exclude a hard puncher from a puncher's list. For some reason.

Because they are better fighters with better summary attacks. Honestly, why do statistics confuse you so terribly? The fighters who knock out men fastest aren't HARDEST HITTING but BEST. They will have SPEED, ACCURACY, WORK RATE **** like that. It's not a video game where they stand and twonk each other and the hardest puncher wins.

But Frazier absolutely COULD have hit harder than DeJohn...that's possible. But it's not stuck-on fact beyond all hope of contradiction.

What is almost certainly true is that BOTH those men are hard punchers. Look at how hard you are fighting to keep DeJohn off Machen's puncher's list! IT's utterly bizarre.

Yes, Williams hit harder than Machen. Williams was a puncher, inarguably, almost. Liston said he was the hardest puncher he ever met. Is this admissible though? Surely you've made that testimony inadmissible with your "fighters bull****" rant?

Well, i'm not going to argue with you about this any more. If you think it is inarguable that Frazier hit harder than DeJohn and this is indisputable fact beyond all hope of contradiction, what is the point?

I will point out that Liston and Frazier are two of the greatest heavyweights ever to have lived. Not many fighters "won a match" with either of them, and Machen met both in their primes. A win over either would have changed history.

I do NOT accept that losing to these fighters (and he lost to Frazier when way, way past-prime) denotes a weakness to punchers.

Johansson made Ring's all time top 100 puncher's list, p4p. He was one of the hardest puncher's of his weight in history. I accept that if such a fighter hit Machen on the button he would go. However, I don't accept that any of Vitali's opponent's (outside of Byrd and Lewis) are necessarily good enough to engineer such an opportunity like he did.

He definitely did not have enough to beat Joe Frazier or Sonny Liston I wouldn't expect him to have much opportunity with someone like Patterson post-hospitalisation, either. I think he would have beaten Williams in his prime (before you start, no, a man days away from commitment due to a mental breakdown is not prime) but that's an opinion, so, hey.

Right. But inarguably a hard puncher. Inarguably a hard puncher. Here you are arguing about it for pages and pages

I've explained already. Your opinion to me on this matter does not interest me at all.

Over rated as in not elite? Because that is what you claimed. You are saying that Sam Langford is not elite because he had lots of losses versus lesser fighters? Is that what you are saying?

I am not mistaken, and I am not talking about "top ten ring magazine rated opponents". I am talking about Vitali going 0-2 versus the ten best fighters he shared an era with, a miserable record, a harsh indictment of his matchmaking policy, and Machen's 4-1-5 versus the ten best of his era (who were better anyway).

Machen's record is vastly superior.

Machen faced better men than Vitali.

And I say Vitali didn't beat the best, and for the most part, didn't MEET the best.

I'm entirely content with this point where both Vitali and Machen are concerned.

We've covered this. Byrd, Holyfield, Adamek, even Haye, briefly, have all proved you wrong.

I am absolutely content that Machen would be top ten at heavyweight today, coming in at about 210lbs. I think the only active fighter that would batter him would be Wladimir.

The specifics of his run, i'm unsure, but would he figure in the top ten? Almost inarguably. The fighters some of the top ten today have beaten to become ranked is laughable.

 

No you don't understand Mendoza. It's in the thread, go back a few pages. He and I aren't talking about Ring ranked fighters. NOT RING RANKED FIGHTERS, okay?

He and I have done seperate appraisals of the ten best fighters around for Vitali.

IN his case, he selected fighters who, in his opinion, were the ten best fighters during Vitali's career.

In my case, I selected the ten best fighters who were ranked when Vitali was ranked. We both came up with the same score for Vitali:

0-2.


You are also confused about:

No I don't, this is nonsense.

I did NOT call it abysmal. I called Vitali Klitschko's opposition "abysmal." For a heavyweight of his stature, it is.

Wrong again; Miteff was also ranked. I would bet there would be others if i could be bothered to check.

Please try to get these things right, they are simple and it isn't fun for me to have to spend time correcting you. Not the ranking thing, but the other things are in the thread, and expressed clearly in English.

 

Yeah, you did mention that I think ...as I think I mentioned, Lewis beat him in the fight they did have. That's 0-1.

Ok, but he got the W against Klitschko, he was lucky, but he got it. That's 0-2.

And these, had they fought him, and had he beaten them, would have been his third and fourth best wins. But neither one of them made either "Ed"'s list or mine. It really underlines how bad Vitali's competition is compared to what was available.

Ike was on EM's list - but he wasn't on mine.

0-2 for both of us.

Williams not in the best 10, Holyfield still would have been one of Vitali's best win (probably his best) and they could have met BEFORE 2000, they were both in the rankings at the same time before that.

This is fair, but every single heavyweight era will have two "best" fighters. Vitali was never tested by the best fighter of his generation and this is significant, even if the reason they met is reasonable.

This is such cr@p. Vitali can fight Timo Hoffman in 2000 but he can't fight Holyfield because he's "shot"? Holyfield beat Ruiz in 2000, a better fighter than Vitali Klitschko EVER BEAT, probably.

It's ridiculous, what you are saying here. Holyfield was ranked five spots above Vitali in 2000, but he doesn't have to fight him because he's "shot". :-(

No you won't; you will massage the statistics and the reality so that they favour Vitali. The above reeks of it, why would I want to read through more of that ****?

Why are you laughing? I corrected you in your thinking that "Ed" was talking about Ring ranked fighters - inarguably.

I corrected you about ranked fighters defeated by DeJohn - inarguably.

I corrected you about what you said I said about heavyweight boxing - inarguably.

So why are you "laughing"?

Yeah, I don't know what your problem with this is really. I think Machen's return from total mental collapse to a championship ring is one of the most incredible things i've heard of, in any walk of life. That's my personal opinion. You seem to find it really bizarre or something? That's fine, I don't mind. But I don't understand why you keep going on and on about it?

Yeah, here's his entry:

#65 – Joey Maxim (82-29-4)
Joey Maxim is perennially underrated as a heavyweight. His thirteen round stoppage of Sugar Ray Robinson at 175lbs is really the summary of his career, a win over perhaps the greatest fighter in history written off by a succession of historians as being down to “the heat.”

“Do they think I had air conditioning in my corner?” Maxim asked in the immediate aftermath as any credit he might have enjoyed for the win evaporated with the temperature. It was a fair question.
Look a little closer and there’s a very decent heavyweight resume fighting to get out, enhanced not least by the early start Maxim got in the biggest division. A champion at light-heavyweight he is quite rightly most often associated with 175lbs but Maxim fought and beat 200lb journeyman Lee Oma, gatekeeper Bill Peterson and former contender Red Burman all in his first year as a professional. The following year he added the terrifying puncher Curtis Shepard, although troubling losses began to creep in too, the first of five to Ezzard Charles, then just 165lbs, a disputed decision to 16-7-1 Altus Allen. In 1943 he was savagely annexed by Shepard who took his revenge in just one round, in 1944 he would lose to the 166lb Lloyd Marshall. But always Maxim would come creeping back and with a sense, too, that he was improving until, in the summer of 1946, he was able to outpoint Jersey Joe Walcott. Walcott was on a twelve fight streak at the time, having defeated name contenders including Lee Q Murray and Jimmy Bivins. An injured right hand may have explained this unexpected setback to a degree. Walcott twice took his revenge over Maxim, but including those losses he went 23-3-4 at heavyweight between the summer of ’46 and his eventual title shot in the summer of 1951, a run that included wins over Jimmy Bivins and a pair over contender Phil Muscato.

That title shot, against his unfailing tormenter Ezzard Charles, underlined his limitations. Neither a big nor a fast heavyweight a turgid certitude on the inside in combination with technical excellence if not transcendence on the outside would only ever carry him so far, but discipline, a great jaw (he was stopped only once) combined with the most professional of attitudes made him an over rather than an underachiever.

I'm betting it makes more sense than your entry for Ike Ibeabuchi, if you had one, which you don't, because you just wrote a big long list of fighters.

Read this very careful Mendoza: this is the list time i'm going to correct you on this. Really, really try to read this and understand:


I am NOT SAYING THAT DEJOHN IS A BETTER PUNCHER THAN FRAZIER. Got that bit? Good.

I AM SAYING:

That DeJohn MAY have punched harder than Joe Frazier, best for best.

These are two different things. The first one could never be true; the second one is arguably true and was argued as true by someone who was hit by both.

But just remember:

NOT SAYING A BETTER PUNCHER

SAYING ARGUABLY A HARDER PUNCHER, HARDEST PUNCH FOR HARDEST PUNCH.

Got that?

Well you haven't understood the third one, and i've done more work in defence of the second one than you've done on your entire list. So, you know, apples and pips.

Here's my entry for him:

http://www.boxing.com/the_100_greatest_heavyweights_of_all_time_part_eight_30_21.html

I certainly think I've been fair to him as one of the highest ranked generational number twos in history,but I have no doubt you would disagree (tbf, I would now rank him at #25 if I were writing it again).

Well it might astonish you, but i did know about Wladimir.

It's just that, it doesn't work 100% as an excuse. Vitali was tested against the best heavy of the prior generation and was beaten. Then he never tested himself against the best fighter of his own generation. This leaves him "incomplete" in a sense regardless of who that potential opponent was.

Now please try to read and understand that before you go on a rant about how "LOL Vitali was never going to fight his own brother McGain." I know that. I'm not saying he should have. Have another read before you reply.

I think that Vitali has two reasonable excuses for his losses, have said so here and elsewhere.

I think that Machen has one great one for everything that happened post-comeback.

You can't say both of these things because you have worked like a ditch-digger to "validate" Machen's post-breakdown fights for your position.

That's a shame.

 

Yeah, it's just a bit of colour for the thousands or readers Mendoza, it's not an important part of the reason for his ranking at the weight or anything.

The rest of the text, the text you didn't quote, where I detail his HW resume (best wins inarguably better than Vitali's!) that does that.

Nor mine.

He spent about as much time at HW as LHW. At HW he beat Jimmy Bivins and a red hot Jersey Joe Walcott. Walcott made my top 20 all time, almost certainly top 30 all time on any sensible list. There are loads and loads of guys on the 100 who don't have wins that good.

Including every single Vitali victim and Vitali himself.

Yeah, lots of these guys were. When you say that you are saying nothing. Literally. Loads of the heavies ranked 100-40 were beaten by the best guys they fought. They were those type of guys. Fulton's entry:

#59 Fred Fulton (79-16-2; Newspaper Decisions 5-2-2)

Fred Fulton was a legitimate rarity on two counts. First of all, he was an excellent “White Hope,” turning professional during the frantic search for white men who might be competitive with the majestic Jack Johnson. Secondly, he was even by modern standards a big man, standing 6’6 with a reach listed at 84” by BoxRec, a frame that was legitimately capable of holding the 220 lbs. he often brought to the ring. Unfortunately for Fred, he ran into something even rarer, a legitimately lethal heavyweight who butchered the opposition like so many steer. Jack Dempsey annexed any hopes Fulton would ever have of holding the title aloft withinin mere seconds of the beginning of their June 1918 encounter – but that doesn’t mean Fulton wasn’t special. Up until that devastating change in fortune it was he, not Dempsey, who was regarded as champion elect and had Dempsey never been born it is very possible he would have fulfilled that destiny.

As it stands, Fulton’s often under-regarded win ledger is deep enough to warrant his high placement. Even his early career is littered with the names of very reasonable heavyweights, including Al Kaufman who he beat over short distance in 1914, Kaufman having already met Jack Johnson in a world heavyweight championship match. He had been a professional less than two years.

Era mainstay trial horses Dan and Jim Flynn followed, Dan twice outpointed over twenty although he twice dropped Fulton to his knees. The giant had yet to nail down his control of range and was forced to outfight his more experienced opponent. Jim was smashed out in just two rounds, and despite dual DQ losses to fellow white giant Carl Morris, his first four years as a professional were an enormous success.

Maturing, he learned to bang out Dan Flynn, a favor he did the Boston man twice over ever-shortening distances, a measuring stick for his maturity as a fighter. Charley Weinert and Gunboat Smith followed, as did a bizarre revenge DQ win over Carl Morris. Perhaps best of all was the 1917 stoppage victory over Sam Langford, delivered behind a jab against an out of shape “Black Death” who was blinded in one eye during the match. Langford, faded but still dangerous, reportedly hurt Fulton once during the second but otherwise was unable to do anything with the giant.

A draw with Billy Miske and a three-round stoppage of a faded Frank Moran preceded the first round knockout loss to Dempsey, Jack becoming the only fighter in forty attempts to get over on Fulton by a method other than disqualification. Fulton’s inability to get control of his wilder side may have been his most significant weakness.

Certainly no other fighter was able to take advantage of that, or his allegedly middling chin in the matches that followed, until Harry Wills, the era’s other great heavyweight, banged him out in three. Before and after, Fulton beat everyone who stepped in with him, adding Willie Meehan and John Lester Johnson to his résumé. Time finally caught up to him in the mid-twenties, which were not good to him, and account for most of the losses on his record. Between 1915 and 1921, only great heavyweights and his bad temper were able to get over on him – this aside, Fulton dismantled all-comers.

I'm sure, but you can't really believe it matters. You've had your bottom spanked here in this thread - you're not going to go out of your way to say nice things are you?

I mean you've given up on Vitali and just started raking my HW list, like that's valid or relevant. You must see how childish you look?

Sure, low nineties. Based upon his resume and performance.

Well he wasn't a lightheavy when he won all those heavyweight fights, you know? Why are you making me type this, it's obvious?

Loughran at heavy beat:

Arturo Godoy
Jack Sharkey
King Levinsky
Steve Hamas
Paul Uzcudun
Ernie Schaff
Max Baer
Jack Renault

He has victories over three lineal HW champions. And your bleating about him being just outside the top fifty? I might have underrated him, but if you think he's overrated I don't really know what to say.

I like guys who have great resumes at the weight and beat champions and top contenders. I'm less interested in their size and punching power than who they beat. You seem to think this is strange or something, to me it seems rather natural.

But yeah, h2h and losses do temper their positioning. If I were ranking purely on resume, Loughran would be higher than Vitali, for example. How could he not be with a resume so vastly superior?

 

1 - I don't care

2 - You're wrong about Loughran, and I think seeing Maxim's resume would convince a lot of people also.

You see things back to front.

There are absolutely nowhere near 100 heavyweights who don't have "multiple losses". Unless, for some reason, you want a list of superheavyweights who don't have a lot of -- ah!

No I don't.

That would be a head-to-head list, not an ATG list. I act like light-heavies are GREATER than SOME modern heavyweights, and they are.

It astonishes me that even though I just went out of my way to explain criteria to you you are still confusing these issues.

If Loughran beats more champions than Tua, Loughran has a very good case for being ranked above Tua on a HW list that stresses acheivement.

But you seem to think that just because Tua is modern, he should rank higher, even though Loughran beat more better guys.

I've already listed them in this thread. You've already tried to refute a number of the names on the list and failed miserably, as detailed above. If you want to "rip me" some more, just find the post, it's only one or two pages back.

Very little. That's all just a guy's opinion you see, whereas research of the significance of a given scalp is based primarily upon at least a semblance of fact.



It's really really weird the way you've just ended up trying and failing to undermine this list. I find that really, really odd. It's a really strange way to behave. It's a discussion about Vitali - it's not going well - now it's a discussion about my HW list. Which you haven't understood at all even though it was explained to you

It's also recieved so many hits now that it's the #1 HW list you find when you google, and is the biggest ever attraction on boxing.com, bar the p4p list I did which did about double those numbers. The reaction to both has been overwhelmingly positive :good