Earnie Shavers - ESB's Undisputed king of power.

Yeah I think @Jel told me about weekly thread Phillyfan used to do. Its shame he doesn't do it anymore, as for having a headache scoring fights. I know few months back, I was scoring Pedroza's fights vs Lockridge. They were so close they gave me a headache aswell.

 

If I'm being completely honest with you, I actually gave up on scoring the Taylor fight. Virtually nothing happened for most of the rounds, Taylor was on his bike too much, and they cancelled eachother out. That one was a bit of a stinker.

I did really enjoy the LaPorte fight, plenty of action in that one. I thought Pedroza won it by a few rounds, but the real controversy is should Pedroza have been thrown out, for all them low blows, and all the other naughtiness he was doing.

 

Eusebio Pedroza vs Juan LaPorte

1 LaPorte
2 LaPorte
3 LaPorte 10-8 point deduction
4 Pedroza
5 Pedroza
6 LaPorte
7 Pedroza
8 Even round 9-9 because of point deduction
9 Pedroza
10 Pedroza
11 Pedroza
12 Pedroza
13 Pedroza
14 Even round 9-9 because of point deduction
15 Pedroza

143-139 Pedroza

So yes another Pedroza fight today, i'm currently going through his career atm.

LaPorte dominated the first 3 rounds, stunning Pedroza quite badly in rounds 2 and 3. And with the point deduction Pedroza was already in a hole being 4 points down.

But Pedroza is such a good 15 round fighter, and after that bad start slowly started to work his way back in the fight. With some tactics that certainly wern't in the queensbury rules. But the fight was still competitive with LaPorte having his moments in spurts, and still being dangerous with his right hands.

But after the 8th round i thought Pedroza controlled the fight, and really took the fight to LaPorte. And never stopped throwing punches and just outworked LaPorte down the stretch.

And even with the 3 point deductions i still think Pedroza deserved the win quite clearly, although he may of been lucky not to get DQ'ed aswell.

But overall a pretty exciting fight, the most exciting Pedroza fight i've seen so far.

@JohnThomas1 this is how i scored the Laporte fight.

 

MASSIVE difference between being an amazing finisher and hitting the hardest.

 

I always thought that David Tua was the King Of ESB.

 

Jerry Quarry ?

 

Or Cleveland Big Cat Williams, Lol.

 

Since this is a Shavers’ tribute thread - some rare vision of Earnie on the heavy bag - unfortunately no audio. A fleeting glimpse of Earnie putting some combos together (the potential of same discussed earlier in the thread) and his hands actually look pretty damn fast:-

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A bit of nostalgia - Earnie and Ali weighing in. Ali saying Earnie rejected the specially made Acorn ring - gee, I wonder why, LOL

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Imagine Earnie Shavers and pre 1964 Cleveland Big Cat Williams in a punch out contest, what a war of atomic bombs.

 

The only thing about Shavers more amazing than his punching power is how polarizing he is. It's absolutely amazing how some people cannot wrap it around their minds that a guy with arguably the most lethal fists in history failed to become champion. For many I suspect it's because they cannot accept that there's more to a fight than power.

Shavers was like a video game character that levels up and puts all his points into power and leaves the rest of the stats alone.

 

I think he was robbed against Ali, but anyway, all one really needs to do is watch his fights with Holmes to see why he wasn't champ. Maxed out power is great, but when you can't hit the other guy, can't finish him when you actually do hit him, and when your defense is lacking...

Holmes had a way of making fighters lacking somewhat in skill look utterly terrible, even when they possessed other positive traits.