i remember reading old Boxing magazines and books ….and of Course i read About the marvelous 1970´s Philadelphia middleweights. and, as Kids ALWAYS love the biggest Punchers, i read About Cyclone hart. that he was perhaps the biggest Puncher of all time...….that "when hart hit you, you didnt wake up in the locker room afterwards. you´d wake up a week later, Standing in line at the grocery store wondering what happened to the last week…". and so on, the typical stuff you got to read in ring Magazine. well, These days with YouTube and boxrec, one can form one´s own opinion. personally, i find it crazy to include him in the 100 greatest Punchers of all time. yes, he had a big knockout record, but it was fabricated against handpicked opponents. when he stepped up in Competition, his power seemed to disappear. but that is not to say he wasnt talented……...cause he was. tall, athletic, fast and certainly hard hitting, he oozed class. however, like most great Punchers, he had a weak chin that let him down against his elite philly Competition and kept him out of the world Championship Picture. how would he have done against someone like benvenuti? could he have caused an upset?
Don't think his power was overrated at all. Having great power doesn't automatically mean you're going to be able to knock out great fighters. If anything, having such power is often a weakness because other attributes end up being ignored or under developed. He put Hagler into a shell for almost an entire round, which to me is alone is a testament to how hard he hit.
I'd say he is definitely a huge hitter but other limitations that prevented him from overly cashing in. He doesn't have much notable at all in the win column but has a pretty big reputation with his peers. Scary hitter for sure and really invested in that hook when he threw it. I couldn't see him beating a Benvenuti. Just didn't seem to be able to make that step up.
Seems to be the really big hitters often struggle at the highest level. Probably because their punching power is the result of over committing to it and giving up other things like balance, stamina and combinations for it. I remember reading about Hart and apparently he hit with freakish, paralyzing force. On the other hand movement, defence and a jab often renders these mega punchers impotent. Cue GGG and Saunders vs Lemieux.
sure he was a big hitter…….but 100 greatest Punchers of all time is a different Story. for me, you Need to ko at least a few world Level fighters. but when he stepped up that power just didnt live up to it s rep. sure, nobody can ko hagler…….but he didnt only fight hagler. he fought plenty of guys he should have stopped if he had this insane power. going by gym lore to me is not enough for 100 greatest Punchers. but thats not putting him down.
Cyclones problem seemed psychological if I remember correctly. If you absorbed a few of his big shots he started to break mentally then fatigue would set in.
Yeah, there are big punchers and great punchers. Big punchers hit very hard, but don't consistently translate that into knockout wins over quality opposition. Great punchers don't necessarily hit any harder, but are able to use their power effectively to finish their opponents. Someone like Joe Louis was a great puncher. He obviously hit exceptionally hard, but he was able to use it against world class opposition, both quick blowout wins (Schmeling II, Baer) and landing big shots when he needed to turn fights around (Conn I, Walcott II). Hart seems to fit the bill of a big puncher. He has a high knockout percentage, and his contemporaries gave great credit to this power. However, his list of quality knockout wins is pretty thin on the ground, and as it transpired he was more likely be the one getting stopped when he fought world class opposition. Nino could blew hot and cold towards the end of his career, and wasn't made of granite, so there is a chance that Hart could upset him. It would be an upset though, as everything else points towards Benvenuti being able to do what others did and work around Hart's power and stop him in later in the fight.
Insane power is one thing, but the delivery system counts more. If you can't hit clean with insane power, then you'd be better off hitting clean with merely big power. World class guys have a way of defending themselves against wild swings.
and there lies the Problem: world class guys also have a tendency to have better chins than the lesser guys. it s that Quality that makes a Puncher Special that he is able to ko them. and in this case we just cant tell based on the evidence. therefore including him in a list like the greatest 100 Punchers of all time is just not Logical.
i tend to agree with you. however eugene was not just a wild Swinging Puncher.....the man had real Boxing Talent. good size/Speed and obviously power. he also had good balance……...he only lacked durability. nino wasnt a Puncher and had a bit of a suspect chin. but in the end i agree, nino would have probably stopped him late. but it would have been a great fight imo.
People forget Hart had a draw with Bennie Briscoe, one of the most avoided middleweights of all time. That means Hart at his best was able to mix with Briscoe so competitively that the judges weren't able to separate the fighters work. Sure, he was never a top 10 middleweight but there are plenty of fighters people gush about with regularity on these boards that never actually had a win as good as drawing with Briscoe. It's all in spite of the fact anyway, that Hart had legendary power, fought in an extremely tough and competitive era, and had a story that would make an amazing movie (Being wheelchair bound as a youth and developing freakish power in his arms and upper body) He even has a son who fights at super middleweight now. Hart literally did it all and then some. Vito Antofurmo also marveled at the power of Hart, saying that a faded Hart's power punches were literally lifting him off his feet. Forget the fact that he didn't have a KO list of well known victims and just look at actual footage of "Cyclone". You can tell the man punched like a sledgehammer, he literally spun himself around like a human top at times!
