Oliver mccall vs Anthony joshua

19-0, 19 KO's, 17 in the 1st round Chris Lovejoy superficially had an excellent record.

McCall turned pro at 20.5 and lost to: 3-0 future low-mid level journeyman Joey Christjohn, 9-2-2 journeyman Mike Hunter, 27-4-1 fringe contender Buster Douglas, 25-2 fringe contender Orlin Norris and 44-1 washed up contender Tony Tucker, all before he KO'd 3 defence champion Lennox Lewis as a wide underdog.

During this period he won close decisions over: future low-mid level journeyman Kimmuel Odum on his pro debut (McCall was 3-0) 5-6 mid level journeyman Lionel Butler and 17-5 journeyman Jesse Ferguson.

McCall's best wins over this time were undoubtedly 18-0 fringe contender Bruce Seldon (winning late in a fight McCall was losing) and 30-1 fringe contender Francesco Damiani. No one else was of any note.

His record up to Lewis 1 was 24-5 with 17 KO's, the other opponents he officially beat but couldn't KO were low-mid level journeymen Bashir Wadud, Al Evans, Fred Whittaker and David Jaco. This is surprising for a fighter with an ATG chin who didn't have to worry about what came back at him too much, especially from lower calibre fighters. 4/5 of McCall's pre-Lewis opponents were bums and more than a quarter were sub-215 lbs.

McCall was a rangy, seasoned heavyweight with a granite chin and a decent punch but he was a fringe contender at best with many poor losses, poor performances and a lack of discipline and talent. The primary reason why McCall is considered better than the likes of Gerald Washington and Johann Duhaupas is because Lewis was packing glass and Wilder wasn't. Andy Ruiz is rated highly for the same reason that McCall is: the SHW he beat was vulnerable. But both Lewis and AJ would beat the likes of McCall and Ruiz 8/10 times, even if McCall wasn't coming out of rehab and Ruiz hadn't decided to "train in his larder".

 

Some of what you say I agree with completely. Sure some can have an artificially inflated record, like Peter McNeeley before Tyson. Also Lewis & AJ would beat him & Ruiz 75-80% of the time. But he did not lack talent-he went pretty far WITH a compromised work ethic & periodic drug problems! And at best World Class.

You have still not pointed out a single decision that he received which was not deserved.
Not that some of the best ever like Ali did not get a few of these.
Also you are too harsh re: losing to the likes of Norris, Tucker, Ferguson, & certainly Douglas.
Also anyone at 44-1 is unlikely to be washed up-& Tucker was not.
He was 7-1 in the next 2 & 1/2 years, only losing a decision to an undefeated Lennox Lewis; that is a legitimate contender.

Washington & Duhaupas did not fight as long & do as much...And Lewis twice showed a dubious chin. It was not at all bad overall, since he took monster shots from many big hitters. Rahman you can see he was lax, including not getting there early to train at altitude when preoccupied with making a movie...I think you have to give Oliver some credit for that win.

I do not know if over 25% of a fighter's opponents before a certain period being under 215 is so damning, anyway his average opponent was modern sized throughout his career.
I am not saying he is an ATG: but he was better than the vast majority of fighters, you are doing some cherry-picking.
If you cannot grant him more credit, the only boxers you can celebrate are the minuscule percentage who were ATGs.

"Rangy" puzzles me, usually it means tall lean & long.
For a HW he possessed only one of those traits, assuming that 82" wingspan is accurate.
With a straight head/motivation/no drug problems, he would have been even better.
Still likely the GOAT chin.

 

"World class" is a very subjective label. Pre-Lewis 1, McCall consistently lost to fringe contenders and went life and death with journeymen. Tucker won an SD against Norris a year prior to his fight with McCall when he won another SD and Tucker had drug problems like many fighters of that era, plus the accumulation of damage over 45 career fights in his mid 30's. Aside from Norris, McCall and Lewis, all of the 16 opponents Tucker fought between the Tyson and Seldon losses were bums. So it's very reasonable to assume that he was washed up when contrasted with the contender Tucker who KO'd Douglas in the 10th round of a competitive fight, who himself soundly beat McCall 2 years after that.

Washington, Dauhaupas and Andy Ruiz haven't fought as much as McCall but they've also lost a fraction as many times and haven't lost to as low a level of opposition or struggled as much with it, while racking up some decent wins themselves. Fighters always have excuses when they lose; AJ was coming out with excuses recently regarding Ruiz and Usyk but lightning struck twice with Lewis's chin, just as it had struck in the amateurs. Is there any HW champion in history who got KO'd with one punch early in a fight on two occasions? If some 29-5 journeyman/fringe contender did that to AJ in 2 rounds, the forum would have been screaming blue murder and AJ would be the chinniest HW champ of all time. The fact that AJ had taken monster shots from Wlad (one of the few hardest punchers in HW history) without getting KO'd would be lost in the noise.

McCall deserves credit and I give it to him as it's clear he had the GOAT chin along with prime Wach and a decent HW punch but if he'd been a harder puncher, more athletic or more skilled boxer, he wouldn't have had a 59% KO ratio fighting 80% bums and 27.5% cruisers pre-Lewis. Saying "if McCall hadn't been undisciplined he would have been a better boxer" is like saying "If Usain Bolt didn't have lots of fast twitch fibres he wouldn't be a great sprinter". But this is even less of a good excuse because a litany of fighters back then lacked discipline and were hard drug users, including multiple guys who beat McCall and surely many who McCall beat.

 

These things are matters of degrees & you make good points for your side!
However it would be more credible if you id not ostentatiously avoid addressing what I repeatedly asked-what close decision, let alone a few, did McCall not deserve?

You are right people would scream & shout if AJ was one-shotted...But in both cases if folks called them feather-fisted-especially Lewis-they would be wrong due to the balance of heavy hitters they also soaked up.

If Wach or anyone had an equivalent chin when in his prime that would still make McCall's easily better.
But since he suffered 3 TKOs while still in his 30's, even at prime I have to give Oliver the edge.

The fast twitch muscle fibers analogy is inapplicable, because it relies on native traits. McCall's lack of discipline effects how much he could take advantage of what we are discussing-natural talent. It also applies to other druggies & those lax in training.
You seem to be among the legion who are much too profligate at underrating good-very good fighters by labeling them "bums".
While an amusing moniker, the only guy McCall lost to that could be described this way was in his second pro fight when he fought a 3-0 opponent. Even Mike Hunter had beaten some very good boxers-Qawi, Biggs, Thomas...
I volunteered that McCall could be inconsistent. But you too easily call guys terrible fighters.

You have shifted the goalposts on Tucker, now calling him a bum "compared" to contender Tucker.
But nothing you said about him when he fought McCall when he was 33 remotely qualified him as a bum!
The first time you could argue he was washed up is when he lost to several very good fighters starting with just shy of 3 years after fighting McCall. But Tucker at 52-2 even through 1994, fuhgettibout when he fought McCall...

Was still an excellent fighter nowhere *near* a "bum".
That he beat many softer touches, will Ali who fought some of the biggest monsters ever entertained a bunch of subpar fighters even as a champion-losing or getting gift decisions on occasions-& Ali was not near a "bum" until near the very end.

Start a thread on it, list Tucker's record & who some of the best he had beaten & what their record was then...
I would be surprised if a single person agrees with you that Tucker was a bum or even close to washed up-until the time he was losing to World Class competition starting in 1995.

 

Wilders been stopped two times by a guy he himself labelled feather fisted.

 

Joshua and without too much trouble. McCall lost to a number of guys not even close to AJ’s level. He actually wasn’t too far away from journeymen level.
I like McCall though, atg chin, was in some good scraps, and I always enjoyed watching his sparring sessions with Tyson.

 

Boxers talk a lot of sh*t, Wilder is no exception. And there's a big difference between getting KO'd after taking an absolute battering and being KO'd with one shot. [url]https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/furys-power-the-empirical-facts.672205/[/url]

 

Wilder has been hurt from shots from other fighters too, fighters who hit nowhere near as hard as some of the fighters that Lennox fought and beat. Ali was nearly stopped against Cooper, and then proceeded to take punches well from bigger punchers later on in his career.

Not so sure I'd describe Lewis as having a glass chin.

 

Close decisions are subjective. If I say "I think Lionel Butler beat McCall" then you can disagree and there is nothing conclusive. If you win a close UD, SD or MD against a 5-6 journeyman, it's a very bad result if you have aspirations of being a contender.

The muscle fibre analogy is applicable as discipline is also a biological trait. Like many genetic traits, the environment has an influence but it's unscientific to believe that psychological attributes are not predominately inherited. If McCall was dumb or undisciplined then that was a part of his makeup, just as it was for his opponents who also took drugs. Hunter, Douglas and Tucker for example also had drug problems, no doubt many if not most of the journeymen and club fighters he beat did too. It's not a good excuse for his poor performances.

If you frequently lose or go life and death with journeymen, you are going to be labelled a bum or a pudding or a journeyman. McCall was considered to be a journeyman in the 1990's because he clearly fit the bill. Lewis wasn't considered a strong champion at the time but McCall winning was still a huge upset, which goes to show how lowly he was rated.

I never said Tucker was a bum, I said he was a washed up former contender at the time he beat McCall. He was 33.5 years old, had 45 fights by that point and was a crack smoker in a more primitive era of sports science and fighter safety. Between the losses to Tyson and Seldon, 16 of the 19 fighters he fought were bums, so his record around that time was inflated.

I'm not an American or an Ali cultist so I consider the 60's and 70's to be weak eras in sports relative to today, as they objectively are in every sport. I agree though that Ali fought loads of bums and got plenty of gifts from the officials.

 

The difference is that when Wilder got hurt he was always able to recover before he faced round on round beatings from the 6'9, 275 lbs HW champ, while Lewis got KO'd cold with one shot on two occasions in the pros. That's unique in HW history for a champion of note. AJ took big shots from Wlad (who hit harder than anyone Lewis ever fought) as well as Whyte and Povetkin, yet plenty on this forum claim he has a weak chin, while they hypocritically defend Lewis's punch resistance.

Ali's punch resistance improved as he gained weight and matured physically. Contrary to the opinion of many, chins can get better with age.

 

Because Joshua's punch resistance has declined, he went from being able to handle shots from Klitschko and Povetkin to getting punched around by Ruiz and Usyk. Just as you said punch resistance can improve, the inverse is true as well. Lewis took monster blows from Tua, Vitali, Bruno, and Briggs yet got stopped by Rahman who has less punching power than those guys. That points to it being more on the mental side than the physical. Joshua also gets ko'd a lot in sparring which could make it worse

 

Mc call when he is on it mentaly which I know is difficult to imagine as he was a nutter would spark AJ out. When he was off his ti7s AJ wins on points.

 

I appreciate your analytical tendencies! There is much food for thought in your posts.
Yet like many you are resistant to admitting some inconsistencies or changing claims occasionally.
I do not dispute that close decisions to middling opposition effects how good you seem.
But you said that McCall should have lost some close decisions. It does not matter whether i might agree or not-I am asking you to support that claim, which is different from now saying some were close.

A journeyman can be very good indeed-& McCall, World Class at his best, was better than the vast majority of folks who ever boxed.
A "bum" is completely different. You & many are too quick to deploy it. Whether it is a matter of respect or factual, it does not apply as often as you think.
Yes you said Tucker was washed up. Which sounds just like...He became a bum!
Even with your dubious claim that everyone but 3 folks were bums over 16 fights-although granted like the others they were not top competitors-this is true of TONS of champions! You can only beat who is put in front of you, Tucker defeated some elite fighters too.
I do not care if he used all the drugs in Bolivia or was 137 years old: he was 45-1 when he beat McCall, 48-1 when he lost to Lewis, fought 11 times in the 2 & a 1/2 years before he faced Oliver: in no universe is this a washed up fighter!

It is scientific to say psychological traits are strongly influenced by genetics.
It is not scientific to claim that makes up most of the cause of them.
Identical twins can be very different when raised apart.
Someone like Tyson was very different-from Monk-like training & dedication to off the rails-& that is with a single, harsh, broken family upbringing! If D'amato was 20 years younger, lived, & circumstances kept his away from Predators like King & Givens-he could have had a very different career.
Now give him a totally different, stable childhood, therapy...His impulses & how they were channeled & goals & self-insight & control might have been completely different. He & tons of folks can be very shy or aggressive depending on the circumstances-& that is with ONE history.

I am not making excuses for McCall's performances, but partially accounting for them.
I have no indication most used drugs, at least not to the extent he did, I am just saying he was talented, could have been better-not an ATG, but more consistent.

Many people like you use "bum" far too liberally.
OK it is a fun term-but unless the guy is really bad, it is wrong/incorrect & disrespectful to use it when inapplicable.
I do not think everyone but the 3 elite fighters Tucker fought over 16 fights were bums-but they like many in the literal (I mean just what was named; also too harsh) "bum of the month club" that the most accomplished HW ever fought for a good while...

By the way, I do not know that old Wlad hit harder than anyone Lewis fought-like Ruddock-but he blitzkrieged the biggest threats & thus often did not absorb so much punishment.