Max Baer and Earnie Shavers in place of McCall vs Lennox Lewis

In my opinion both hit harder than McCall and Rahman, so in the right circumstances, yes they could.

 

No, they couldn't. Baer is too slow and telegraphed. Shavers is too beatable.

 

To McCalls credit, he worked with Manny Steward for that fight and displayed a very nice gameplay of moving around, drawing the jab and shooting the right hand counter. Re-watching that fight you could tell this was what he was trying to accomplish from the start. That was very possibly the most focused and ambitious McCall we've ever seen, not his usual sparring partner rendition.

Baer similarly fought and beat the very promising and tough as nails Pat Comiskey, late in his career. His right hand hit like a thunderbolt and put Comiskey flat on his ass. Baer certainly displayed the power and toughness, but more importantly the strategic mind and patience on certain occassions, to beat a young, developing Lewis.

Shavers, despite his power may be in over his head. Not only was he modestly-skilled at best and at times very wild, but he also lacked the tougness and sturdity of McCall/Baer to really hang in with quick and explosive young heavyweight like Lewis. Despite that, I can't overstate the danger of his punch and what it would do to Lewis if it connected, so there's that.

 

Yes, in theory. Baer and Shavers are both far superior to McCall at setting up and scoring with right hand bombs.

 

I agree though I would add the Shavers of the Ali, Norton, and Holmes fights was very good at slipping that right hand over the top.

 

Put it this way, I don't think that Lewis was unlucky to share an era with McCall and Rahman.

I think that a lot of heavyweights could theoretically have done it, even though they probably wouldn't.

 

Yes, max and shavers had dynamite in there gloves but I don't see either beating him. Lewis took some hard leather in his time, he went up against a few bangers but he was only caught out twice in a long career. So the odds are he beats these two. He may be rocked no doubt, but I see more chance of Max and shavers been kod, than the other way round.

 

To be honest that was as hard of a punch as you could throw even if he only did it once......yes Baer and Shavers could do it but not probable

McCall was a very strong and durable man with skills Baer and Shavers lacked the defense to get past a fairly fast and skilled Lewis.

 

Thing is, you can't just look at guys who you think are harder punchers than McCall and deduce that they would replicate the same feat against Lewis. Lewis himself fought tons of guys that were harder punchers than McCall, and better punchers as well, but in the end only one other man managed to stop him.

If you want to pick a potential Lewis destroyer you can't just look at punching power, because that alone wouldn't be enough. Neither Baer nor Shavers would last long enough to get their shots off. Too crude and slow in the former case, too fragile and hittable in the latter.

 

I think that everybody acknowledges this.

I get the idea that if he had been stopped by Baer and Shavers under similar circumstances, people would argue that McCall and Rahman could not have done it, because they didn't hit as hard as that pair.

The logic almost goes that McCall and Rahman did it, and they had A, so A must have been the magic ingredient.

 

Not in my experience on this forum.

Most people, for some reason, consider Shavers and Baer to be among the hardest hitters in HW history, so it would have been understandable for them to have KOed Lewis, and in fact massively bolstered their reputations.

I think the magic ingredient in both cases was complacency on the part of Lewis.

 

For the avoidance of any doubt, I would not favor either Baer or Shavers over Lewis.

I am merely acknowledging that they could beat him in certain circumstances i.e. complacency.

 

Max Baer ever KO'd a heavyweight remotely in Lewis' class. I don't suspect he was hiding this potential from the world.

 

He KOd the best heavyweight of the decade after Louis. You couldn't really ask more of him.