Marciano vs Frazier: Who had the better chin?

Marciano had a great chin and we never saw him badly hurt on film .. there are reports in early fights he was stung or wobbled but zero we can see ... Frazier had a great chin but had it all compromised by fighting his career with major eye sight compromises .. understand, he was a small swarmer fighting with a serious damaged eye from the start of his career .. his success defies all odds .. Rocky was a great fighter and a great P4P heavyweight but he beat an old 194 pound Walcott, a former light heavy in Charles, a small cruiser in LaStarza, a former middleweight in Cockell and a light heavyweight in Moore at the championship level ... Frazier fought much better bigger men .. in fact at a shade under 6' and 205 Frazier would have been the biggest man Marciano would have fought at a championship level ...

My takeaway is I don't know but both were great fighters and exceptional p4p heavyweight champs ...

 

Ali told me himself he ducked Rocky.

 

Waa?

 

Not to be mawkish but it would be hard to set up a fantasy match between two fighters who were more loved and respected than these two guys.

 

Well, Ali told me last year that he didn't...

 

Do you have stats like these for other ATG HWs ?
Do Tyson and Lewis

 

I have stats for at least 4-5 of the best fighters of each decade from the 1920's until today.

Mike Tyson:

Power: 8
Defense: 8
Hand speed: 10
Chin: 7
Stamina: 7
Foot speed: 5
Combination punching: 8
Punch variety: 7
Physical strength: 6
Technique: 8
Ring IQ: 6
Accuracy: 7
Heart: 5

Overall rating: 7


Lennox Lewis:

Power: 9
Defense: 7
Hand speed: 5
Chin: 6
Stamina: 7
Foot speed: 4
Combination punching: 5
Punch variety: 4
Physical strength: 9
Technique: 7
Ring IQ: 9
Accuracy: 6
Heart: 4

Overall rating: 6.3


The stats are based on the eye test, how they looked in 5-6 of their most important fights in their peak years.

 

Who ranks the highest ?

Here's how I rate the two:

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Power: 8
Defense: 9 (+1 compared to what you have)
Hand speed: 10
Chin: 8 (+1 compared to what you have)
Stamina: 7
Foot speed: 6 (+1 compared to what you have)
Combination punching: 10 (+2 compared to what you have, nobody is a better at this)
Punch variety: 9 (+2 compared to what you have, he had all the punches in the book)
Physical strength: 6
Technique: 9 (+1 compared to what you have)
Ring IQ: 6
Accuracy: 10 (+3 compared to what you have, this was one of his biggest assets)
Heart: 6 (+1 compared to what you have, he stood there while getting battered by Douglas and Lewis, didn't give up)

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Power: 9
Defense: 7
Hand speed: 6 (+1 compared to what you have)
Chin: 8 (+2 compared to what you have; those punches he was KOd by would have KOd anyone)
Stamina: 7
Foot speed: 5 (+1 compared to what you have)
Combination punching: 6 (+1 compared to what you have)
Punch variety: 8 (+3 compared to what you have)
Physical strength: 9
Technique: 7
Ring IQ: 9
Accuracy: 6
Heart: 5 (+1 compared to what you have)

 

I don’t think you can give much credence to eye test stats. It’s not top trumps. But I guess it’s informative for people who haven’t studied film.

If you study film and take best performance of any great fighter it’s difficult to find weakness. On the best performance of any fighter he’s not getting hit as much. So how can you rate chin from the great performance?

especially if it’s prime performance for prime performance. With the Right strategy for the opposition.

take Floyd Patterson. Now there was a great fighter. Nobody rated his chin. But on his best night, he was so perfect, so sharp, so tuned to the reactions of his opponent that chin factor won’t come into it. Can you throw out that performance? It’s his best one!

the one stat you miss is “strategic flaw”. The one thing that catches everyone out. History shows us examples of the greatest fighters, at their best, being exposed by a lesser fighter with the right strategy. Which is what makes fantasy fights hard to predict.

 

People can still get hit even in their best fights. You can see how they react to punches. For example I used Listons fight with Williams to measure his chin even though he won that fight and never went down because it was one of the only times in his prime he got rocked by a strong athletic guy who stood right in front of him exchanging blows. There are better performances such as against Machen or Patterson where Liston looks better but he barely got hit in those fights so it would be cherry picking to only look at one sided matches.

Ring IQ and technique are factors used to determine strategic flaws. I also factor in the clash of styles which is something you have a hard time accepting even though millions of trainers swear by it.

 

Lewis 4 heart? Wtf Lennox Lewis did you watch because it wasn’t the same one as me.
Poor ratings overall but Tyson’s chin was not 7/10, he had one of the most underrated chins in boxing, how can you have Tyson having more heart than Lewis, when did Lewis ever quit in a fight

 

Heart in this case refers to the ability to recover after being badly rocked/buzzed/knocked down. Lewis was brutally KOd in his prime twice and was on extremely wobbly legs.

Tyson showed decent heart in his fights with Ruddock eating nuclear bombs and went out on his shield against Douglas. He can recover better than Lewis but neither of them have outstanding heart ratings.

 

Ring IQ is too broad a sweeping statement..and open to too much interpretation. To some people it just means how technically adept a fighter is. And there are flaws for good as well as bad techniques.

which is my point about prime performances. You really can’t fault somebody when everything is going their way.

Listons chin looked good against Williams but wobbled just as much against unheralded Whitehurst. Maybe Sonny anticipated Williams better than Whitehurst?

People take better shots when they can anticipate it.

So it kind of throws the whole “durability factor” out the window.

since we can’t tie these guys to a chair and get them punched in the face how can we ever really know?

 

That’s what I was thinking.

 

These ratings seem fairly off. I'm not sure Lewis actually hit harder than Tyson. He was a hard hitter and had a great overhand right and a great right uppercut, but Tyson was a hard hitter with a great everything.

How in the world does Tyson barely rate higher than Lewis for chin? The two one-shot KO's that got Lewis would likely not have even rocked Tyson. Tyson took Ruddock's best without issue, and took Lewis's best over and over before he finally was knocked out. Other than right at the very end, it took a sustained beating by a big hitter to take Tyson out.

How in the world does Lewis rate low for heart? Have you watched his fights with Mercer, Holyfield, and Vitali? Lewis may have been an ATG without an ATG chin, but he sure as hell had an ATG warrior's heart.

Lewis had fairly good foot speed. And accuracy. There's a reason he was the best of his era and an easy top 10 ATG pick. He was big, strong, skilled, accurate, fairly fast for being 6'5" and 245, hit hard, had a high ring IQ, and had the champion's heart. In a H2H contestest, who do you really rate above him? Maybe a prime Tyson who might have been able to blitz him? Maybe a prime Louis who might have nailed him with a lucky combo? Maybe, maybe, maybe a Larry Holmes at his very best who could eek out a win on points? Who else?

And let's take a prime Tyson. Let's say he was capable of getting lucky against Lewis. What do you think Lewis would have done to Douglas? I see that one ending only one way, even against Tokyo Douglas. And it doesn't involve Douglas ending the fight on his feet.