Joe Frazier's chin

Joe Frazier’s chin was better than average but a step below elite.

 

No way man! His heart & toughness were A ++.
And it was great how he kept getting up.
But at ATG chin would not have kept getting floored so often-No reason to think say Chuvalo was not hit around as hard by Foreman.
Plus you must now about the other times Frazier was down, including multipe times by Bonovena, & a much lesser fighter in Bruce...

He could take sustained punishment very well, but could be rocked or floored.
Including by Ali in the 2nd round of their 2nd fight.

 

Of course that is very basic.
My point is that Frazier was nowhere NEAR the "Mount Rushmore" of chins as you claimed.

Magoo is exactly correct.
Better than average, less than elite.

 

Frazier didn't fight the other notable big punchers of his era like Mac Foster, Ron Lyle, Earnie Shavers. So we don't truly know how Frazier would fare against other big punchers.

I can excuse the loss to Foreman as Foreman is probably the worst style match up for Frazier possible and his power is on a different level.

So the Foreman loss doesn't necessarily mean that Frazier has a weakness to big punchers.

But it also doesn't answer the question how Frazier would fare against big punchers either.

I would say Frazier has a solid enough chin combined with amazing heart and bravery.

But I wouldn't class Frazier’s chin as granite.

Frazier was decked twice by Oscar Bonavena and once by Mike Bruce.

He was also badly hurt by Ali in the 2nd round of their 2nd fight and luckily the round ended early so Frazier could recover.

Bugner also stunned Frazier a few times with right hands aswell.

So as I said I'd rate Frazier’s chin like a 7.5/8.0 but his heart/bravery is a 10.

 

It's clear as day Foreman wasn't hitting Chuvalo with the same force he was hitting Frazier. The difference in the punches is pretty obvious on film. And that's hardly surprising—Foreman had only turned pro the previous year when he fought Chuvalo and was still developing as a fighter and puncher.

 

Not one of the greatest chins ever. He wasn't Ali, Jimmy Young, Foreman or Chinvalo(RIP). But at the same time there was nothing really wrong.


We've got him being shredded by Foreman whose the only big fighter he punches and doesn't go down for 22 fights otherwise. Fights with Shavers and Lyle would have greatly informed us on how good Frazier's chin was.

Frazier was "fragile" but it didn't show up in the individual fights like he was easy to knock down or damage. Frazier retired during his physical prime after fighting Foreman, Ali and Bugner 5 times in 7 fights. He couldn't handle tough or full fights back to back to back for very long. Frazier needed to space out his damage. Before that he was tough fight,7 fights another tough fight, 6 fights another tough fight. He could never did what Ali did in the 70s where he had like 2 easy fights out of 20.

 

I am not so sure, but maybe I missed that.
One thing that tends to be there early is absolute power & speed.
There are tons of things that are difficult & nuanced, yet usually pure force is there naturally or it is not difficult to modify mechanics to hit at your max-how to deliver it, defense, pacing, counters & many oter things are more difficult to master.

We cannot just go by the effect of the punch.
Guys have widely varying abilities to withstand blows.
Also Frazier's mass was mostly below the waste, Chuvalo was muscular with a thick neck.

If anyone is able to wind up & get more legs into blows in certain fights, then this will produce more force.
I do not know if it applies between these 2 fights.

Another difference that may have nothing to do with absolute power capacity is if one guy like Frazier kept being surprised by the blows-Chuvalo was SHELLED UP for a while, which makes it much easier to withstand blows.

Maybe I will start a thread about it.
But anyone going just by the effect of blows will not be able to judge accurately, since so many other factors go into it.
Like for example RBIs in baseball are context dependent upon offensive/defensive era, home ballpark, & strength/on base capacity of line up.
And that is without even considering fighting different individual guys.

Just the difference in chin between a decent one for Frazier (although easily the better fighter), & a candidate for GOAT chin might account for at least most if not all of the difference in effect.

Athough the shelling up must have also made a difference.

 

Frazier was certainly not in his physical prime at that age.

While Frazier did not have an elite chin, he took many many hard clean hits from Foreman in the second fight. In the first fight, he was caught off guard but in the second fight, he took like 50 hard shots before going down.

 

I think he had a great chin. I would have liked to see him fight Shavers, Lyle, and Mac Foster. I think Frazier had a bit of luck that Jerry Quarry took care of those guys for him.

 

Massive bodyshot from Foreman at 2:09 of that video.

 

But I'm not judging it solely by the effect of the punches. I'm judging the punches themselves. Foreman is visibly putting more into a number of the shots against Frazier, more commitment, more leverage, and in several instances he's practically loading up and trying to take Frazier's head off.

Obviously Chuvalo having a vastly better chin, a thicker neck, and spending stretches shelled up can explain why the punches he did take had less effect. I don't dispute any of that. What I dispute is jumping from "Chuvalo took Foreman's punches better" to "there's no reason to think Foreman wasn't hitting him just as hard." Those are two entirely different claims.

And yes, raw power is largely innate, but that doesn't mean a fighter necessarily knows how to maximize that power from day one. Technique, leverage, timing, balance, physical development and simply learning how to put everything into a punch all matter. Speaking from my own experience when I used to box, I definitely didn't hit as hard in my first year as I did in my third. I didn't suddenly acquire different genetics—the technique and mechanics that allowed me to make better use of the power I already had, improved.

That's hardly unusual. Power potential may be there naturally, but the technique required to maximize it generally isn't something a fighter has completely mastered in his first year as a professional. That's especially relevant with Foreman because he had a relatively short amateur career. He'd been a professional for barely a year when he fought Chuvalo. By the time he fought Frazier, he'd had another 2½ years and roughly 20 more professional fights to develop.

There's actually some evidence from the fighters themselves that the earlier Foreman hadn't yet reached the punching level we associate with his prime. Common opponents who fought Foreman around that period said an aging Sonny Liston hit harder than he did. I highly doubt they'd necessarily be saying the same thing if the Foreman they had been hit by was the 1973-74 version who was demolishing Frazier and Norton.

So I'm not saying "Frazier got dropped and Chuvalo didn't, therefore Foreman must have hit Frazier harder." I'm saying that when I actually watch the fights, Foreman appears to be putting considerably more behind the bombs he's throwing at Frazier. Chuvalo's superior ability to absorb punishment can explain the difference in effect, but it doesn't somehow make that visual difference in the punches themselves disappear.

 

No worries my friend and thanks for the shout out.

 

Yeah, as it so happened, Jerry ran a nice block on those guys for Joe.