That may be, but it's yet another thing that wouldn't show up on stats-guy's analysis, since his method doesn't look at a fighter's punching form in the ring. Just how many knockouts he scored against people with certain numerical characteristics in their records. I don't think he can distinguish between economical guys like Louis and fence-swingers like Satterfield. Just knockouts scored by whatever punches are used.
Absolutely! But what your sophisticated analyses misses is that even more important that the context of factors like opponents & era is that the basic PREMISE of counting knockdowns to record absolute power is totally invalid-nonsensical. There are so many other factors that depend just upon the skills & characteristics of the boxer in question, even before you consider anything else. Which also should include being able to face SHWs: just because Earnie could not face many does not prove he could not hit extremely hard to maybe the hardest ever. While the effect is likely to be less on avergae on bigger guys, other factors besides power are usually more important-at least if you consider them together! It is extremely foolhardy to rate by KO results when that overwhelmingly measures: General Skill. Accuracy. Landing flush & in the most vulnerable areas. Combination punching before a KO. Volume punching. Which often weakens a guy & makes him more susceptible to KO blows. Ditto effective body punching. Ability to not get KOed yourself. Endurance to get to later rounds. Getting away with cheating to set up or weaken an opponent. Length of career to score more KOs. Whatever else does not occur to me now. Should we conclude that LHW sized Archie Moore, great as he was, hit the hardest of all time because he recorded the most KOs at HW? Shavers did not have very good skills *for* a World Class boxer. It is an absolute joke to call Shavers "feather fisted". The opposite of the truth; also completely unscientific-it is complete folly to not even consider & all the pieces that go into *functional* power & KOs, isolating them from brute force... & likely reflects an emotional, era-driven bias. White Bomber also neglects to mention that those who beat AND lost to him share the same opinions about his power. The point that Shavers often swung for the fences is rational. However, many others did, although not usually nearly as often. Given that all the heavy hitters had moments when they did-largely when opponents were vulnerable-& most all had better delivery systems than Shavers... We should take the testimony of virtually everyone who fought him as the hardest hitter they ever faced very seriously.
I have watched them just now, it's not even close. In round five Foreman lands a few body shots, and in round six he lands 2 or 3 decent punches through Ali's guard, that connect on Ali's face, but those shots are NOWHERE NEAR what Shavers landed. Foreman didn't even have proper punching position, those punches had around 40 % of his power in the best case scenario. By comparison, Shavers got to land flush with all he had.
Some fighters are hard punchers through technique, and others because they just hit really hard. It may be true that Shavers needed to wind up more than Foreman in the ring (so to speak), but the result would still be Shavers being the harder puncher of the two, wouldn't it? After all, Carnera would probably hit plenty hard with Shavers's technique. But Carnera didn't hit his opponents with those hypothetical punches, because he never learned to punch his full weight, so we don't count him as a great hitter. Honestly the strongest point against Shavers is probably that Shavers's opponents didn't stay pros long enough to fight modern superheavyweights. The witnesses to Shavers's power basically take you from Liston to Tyson as the best comparison points, but not much later.
But that is not a very strong critique-although a good point from you. Because by the time of Holmes' dominance, let alone Tyson, guys had gotten quite big. That there were less guys who were tall enough to be considered SHW, in part because if they were taller they would have say under 10-25 lbs. more with the same amount of muscle, does not make that much of a difference. If those witnesses & victims only fought & saw him up TO Liston, it woud be a stronger point. They also have been around to see & compare Shavers to more modern SHWs.
Critical thinking is lost on you isn't it. "Around that time" is mentioned and you nominate a fight from a decade and a half earlier. Troll.
Old, decrepit Foreman won the lineal championship in the 90s. He put Briggs and Morrison on the run. Two of the hardest 90s/2000s hitters. By the statistics blog's standards, presumably Briggs's zillion first round knockouts make him the most fearsome puncher of his era. And he ran from the Foreman train. Yet Foreman couldn't put away Ali. And he got knocked down by Jimmy Young. And KO'd by Ali. The solution to this quandary is simple. Henry Cooper was the hardest puncher of all time. This also neatly explains Shavers's poor results against Ali and Young. Shavers was fighting scared. He was facing two murderous, iron-chinned, harder-than-Morrison punchers, and he went into his shell. The poor guy was just fighting to survive.
Ali did a great job using the ropes to take a lot of the flush power away from George's punches (along with other great tactics like rolling and shoulder-muffling). But he got hit...BOY did he get hit. I still find it at least moderately entertaining when certain people choose to fly in the face of decades established wisdom at the expense of looking obtuse and/or cantankerous in a very silly way. Paucis verbis, some people don't seem to mind looking very dense.
Jinn: (The first quote about the Shavers power): Yeah bro man likes to punch. Doesn't like to hurt tho. Got a lot of power. But doesn't like hurting people. Smiles a lot and punches like some ducking Church preacher. Who tf has power and doesn't like to hurt? What kind of boxer don't like seeing blood? Yeah big man knockouts. Yeah talk. But did you ever kill anyone with a punch?
