Who Hit Harder Deontay Wilder, Earnie Shavers or Wladimir Klitschko?

On paper, comparing opponents, Wlad is the better puncher of the three.

But, on paper, Muhammad Ali was also the greatest heavyweight puncher of the 60s and 70s.

In the 60s, he stopped Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, twice, Cleveland Williams, Zora Folley, Karl Mildenberger, Henry Cooper twice, Archie Moore, Brian London, carried Ernie Terrell so he could torture him. Nobody stopped as many names from that era.

In the 70s, he stopped George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Jimmy Ellis, Jerry Quarry twice, Oscar Bonavena, Ron Lyle, Floyd Patterson again ... carried Buster Mathis when he could barely stand. Shavers was out on his feet at the end. And on and on. Same deal.

So, it's not always about who they KOed.I think people look at KOs, see the reaction of the guy getting hit ... and it's more of a gut instinct than anything else.

Wilder's KO's struck a chord with people.

 

Ray Mercer, who could probably still beat Wilder.

 

I believe he was the only guy to knock Mercer down or stop him.

 

It's probably Wilder but this forum hates him

 

Excellent post.

to cut through the bull, and be straight, there are 2 reasons people repeatedly have double standards with wilder;
1) they just don’t like him and need some agenda to push instead of just honestly saying it’s a personal thing.

2) they have fallen for the social media narrative and jumped on the bandwagon of people in 1)


On a Side note, it’s an interesting point about wlads safety first style… this isn’t the style of a puncher.

If Wlad doesn’t believe in his power, why should everyone else?

 

It's lowkey an another argument for Wlad - his power was so devastating he could knock out a guy cold in 12th round. A guy who never been stopped before or since.

 

The topic of discussion is who hit harder, not who was a better puncher. Sometimes people who don't hit that hard are the better punchers. But shieeet, Wlad still was the more accurate puncher than Deontay and had KO power with both hands.

 

A lot of the points you are bringing up are skill related. I'm talking about power. We all know Wilder wasn't the most skilled but if he landed his power flush, guys normally went down.

 

There's at least two more reasons people have double standards with him...

3) They're unapologetic fanboys who have an agenda to talk him up and will give any excuse necessary, as many times as necessary, to explain away any criticism.

4) They enjoyed watching him and have fallen in with the bandwagon of type 3.

Let's not pretend there aren't plenty of double standards in favour of Wilder that regularly appear on these boards - it's certainly not the case... Even within this thread, there are several.


In the middle there's fair and balanced critique alongside credit where it's due... And, to be honest, there's plenty of scope for both, without being unrealistic in either direction.

Because not everyone with power, even natural power, needs to make it the centre of their game - if they can be effective without it, keep it as a plan B, take less punishment by fighting more conservatively or even just be more effective that way?

There's plenty of reasons any fighter (not just Wlad) might not choose to centre his identity as a fighter around punching power.

 

I never said Wladimir didn't have a great career. I'm saying his resume isn't good due to the era he fought in. What would you say is his best win? People are taking what I am saying to mean Wilder's resume is on the same level. What I'm saying is that Wladimir knocking out the opponents he did doesn't make it some case closed discussion.

 

Then Joe Louis' and Larry Holmes' resumes aren't good either

 

Understand he KO'd more ranked opponents. Never said he didn't. I'm questioning how good those ranked opponents were.

 

Not really - the point was that it's harder to hit better opponents... And by extension, if you're mostly fighting questionable opponents you'll look more powerful than someone who's fighting better guys.

On a continuum from completely static target (the punching machine analogy) to a mythical untouchable slippery evasive opponent who's hard to hit and could KO you everytime you miss... It's obvious that at one end of the scale, you're going to be able to hit harder, right?

Then bring the boundaries in to a glacially slow opponent who blocks with their chin (eg Joyce) at the one end, and a high ring IQ fighter who hits back relatively snappily on the other (eg: Usyk)... And it's still obvious which one you can hit harder?

Then bring it further and further along, and look at levels... And hopefully you'll get the point that this isn't about the punchers skill so much as what they're punching makes a difference in the final analysis.

 

It's harder for Wilder because he had one punch that everyone knew. So when you fight better opponents, you have to have other punches or other ways to set up that punch. Wilder had neither. So in the case of Wilder, you are talking about his skill. Even still, when bringing up the ranked heavyweights he did face in his prime (Stiverne, Fury, Ortiz), he dropped all of them.

Now you brought up we don't know if Wilder was past his prime or not after that but I think it's obvious he was. He took a brutal beating in 2 out of the 3 fights against Fury. When he fought Parker, he was out of the ring for a year and was almost 40 years old. Wilder's style is based on his athleticism. At 39, that's going to decline. Not having that speed made his right hand even easier for opponents to avoid.

 

Wlad was both heavy handed and very sharp. That's a hard combination to beat. Wilder and Shavers are a toss up. Shavers had more oomph in his shots and Wilder was quicker and had more leverage to play with. They were both around the same weight before anyone brings that up.