Joey Maxim couldn't punch?

Possibly so but he was also a much lesser fighter than them as well.

I mean Ernie Shavers probably hit harder than Joe Louis but it doesn't mean he was even remotely as good a puncher or fighter.

Same thing with Sheppard and all those fighters previously mentioned.

Sheppard was a journeyman who also happened to be a very dangerous puncher,a little like a bigger Darryl Pinckney if you will.

 

Great story.

Maxim was all fighter.

 

1. "you are confusing having a good chin with being tough to stop"

Time has passed since my last post and I have tried to put my thoughts into order on this point. "Being tough to stop" is a concept I consider real or concrete. It can be measured, if not perhaps precisely, at least with some accuracy, taking into account fights, age, number of punchers faced, etc. We know Maxim was only stopped once in 115 fights despite fighting an awesome number of fights against top punchers. "Having a good chin" as described by you seems to me to be abstract. We are no longer evaluating the fighter as a whole, the real fighter of history, but on rather ethereal criteria which separates chin from total performance. And the criteria are arbitrary. For example, Moore did not fight LaMotta but he did fight the similar Marciano. Did Moore punish Marciano more than he did Maxim. I'm not certain of that. Marciano's aggression put Moore on the defensive. Maxim did not have the punch or strength to do that. Moore was on the offensive practically all the time against Maxim, off the films I have seen.
LaMotta also put his opponents on the defensive quite a bit and a fighter fighting in retreat normally does not punch as hard. Robinson was at least partly an exception to this rule.
Maxim rather rarely put his opponents on the defensive and so was almost always fighting aggressive opponents who were throwing thier best punches.

2. Maxim was stopped 1 time in 115 fights. LaMotta 3 times in 105 honest fights. That pretty obviously points to Maxim as being harder to stop, especially given that he fought more top punchers. Turning this on its head by saying LaMotta was nevertheless the man with the better chin because he was aggressive I find too abstract and arbitrary. I just don't agree with your premises.

3. Tiger--His ko and knockdowns came at a far more advanced age than LaMotta fought to. I consider Tiger as being tougher to stop.

4. Gavilan--A good ring general, yes, but I don't know if anyone had a stronger chin.

5. Basilio--Well, he was hurt pretty badly by DeMarco and Fullmer. He recovered against DeMarco. They stopped the first fight against Fullmer, which was a close call. Their second fight seems a very arbitrary stoppage. Basilio was also down twice against Pender. Certainly a top chin, but not one which couldn't be dented.

6. LaMotta--certainly had a top chin, but he is often put at the very top and I would question whether his record really justifies that. I just have a difference of opinion with you.

 

If we're evaluating one single aspect of a fighter (as chin is), then it should be separated from total performance. The only thing that matters when looking at a fighter's chin is how much direct punishment it(the chin) can withstand without the fighter going down or being KO'd. If a fighter is battered into a technical stoppage, but keeps his feet under immense punishment, the chin still did its job regardless of the outcome. If a fighter is blasted into unconsciousness in under a minute (as Maxim reportedly was by Sheppard) then it's the chin that let the fighter down. You can find clubfighters that are relatively easy to stop but actually have solid chins, while you can find world class fighters that are difficult to get a stoppage win over but actually have much lesser chins.

 

1. Nobody was cleverer than Willie Pep, but he was stopped quite a few times. Same with Benny Leonard. Some of the clever guys have been stopped often. Some not.

2. The Sheppard fight seems a fluke, but these things happen. Sheppard's record doesn't seem to indicate that outstanding a puncher, but I remember quotes from Moore and others which Susie-Q posted praising Sheppard as the hardest puncher they had faced. One thing is certain. He was a bigger man than any good fighter LaMotta faced. Maxim seems to have gotten trapped in a corner. My guess he just got caught in a bad situation in which he could not really defend himself.

3. "invincible"--odd word for a man who was stopped three times.

4. There just are fighters that to me seemed to have better chins than LaMotta. Paulino Uzcudun comes to mind. He was in against giant heavyweights like Baer and Wills, and pound the hell out of you guys like Schmeling, and yet never tasted the canvas until Louis got him when he was 36. And Uzcudun was a come forward plodder.

 

On the Sheppard ko. It seems to have been one of those fluke things. No one seems to have a better chin than Tua, but I saw him put away by Felix Savon. One thing is certain---guys like Sheppard and Savon are a lot bigger than the opponents LaMotta was in against. The chances of one of these big fellows catching you just right is probably much greater than the same thing happening if you are in against a 155 pounder.

By the way, if there is any knockout which might be fluky it is probably the first round job. I remember Jack Gibbons saying once that you see guys go from punches in the first minute or so which would never have taken them out later. They were just caught cold.

All that said, there is no doubt that Maxim's chin failed him against Sheppard that night. It just never failed him at all any other time despite being in against a hellacious list of punchers which dwarfs those that LaMotta faced.

 

But that's still a significant point given that LaMotta's chin never failed him in that way, even early or late in his career; and Sheppard doesn't appear to have been any more feared or touted for his power than the big punchers that wailed away on LaMotta's chin.

 

"Sheppard doesn't appear to have been any more feared or touted for his power than the big punchers that wailed away on LaMotta's chin"

I have to disagree. He was a heavyweight. LaMotta never fought a good heavyweight. Size does matter.

The biggest punchers LaMotta faced--Robinson, Satterfield, Nardico, Murphy--Maxim also faced. Robinson, Nardico, and Murphy stopped LaMotta. None of them stopped Maxim. As a matter of fact, Maxim ran the table on them with four victories and no defeats.

 

But was Maxim's chin actually tested as much or more in those fights as LaMotta's was? Having seen their respective fights against Murphy and Robinson, I can say that in those at least, LaMotta took far more punishment on the chin and stood up under it.

 

No one in my lifetime could take a punch like Lamotta...As a youngster Lamotta faced his own " Murderous Row ", against Jimmy Reeves, Nate Bolden, Jimmy Edgar, Bob Satterfield ,etc...He passed the test, and how...There were times Lamotta stuck out his chin to give his opponents a clean shot, nothing happened...Throw out the last fight with Robinson, in 1951,Jake being tko'd...As I posted before,Lamotta was drained going into the bout from losing a lot of weight....His 2 ko.s at the hands of lt. heavy Bob Murphy, and lt.heavy Danny Nardico, [ both great punchers ], came at the tail end of his career...Graziano called his friend Lamotta, "Hammerhead", for good reason...As for Joey Maxim who I saw dec. a young Floyd Patterson, Brooklyn, 1954, he could also take a great punch...No doubt...However he was a great and cautious defensive boxer, who was able to evade many bombs that Lamotta, had to absorb...Thus I believe that Jake had the superior chin....

 

You have to admit, though, that Maxim survived all, or at least most, of LaMotta's "murderer's row" while at the same time surviving Charles, Moore, Lesnevich, etc whom LaMotta did not fight, not to mention a lot of big heavyweights. Maxim was not stopped by either Nardico nor Murphy.

"there were times LaMotta stuck out his chin to give his opponents a clean shot"

Whom was this against, exactly. Somehow I find it difficult to believe he would have done that against Hatchetman Sheppard or Archie Moore or Ezzard Charles or for that matter Olle Tandberg.

I agree that Maxim was very elusive and hard to hit or put together a combination against. He was in against many more big hitters, though, and was fighting much of his time all the way up at heavyweight.

 

1. "If no one ever hurt a prime LaMotta then who is to say that anyone had a better chin than his?"

I have never seen a good film of a LaMotta fight prior to 1950, plus a poor film of some of the Cerdan fight. He was not knocked down, and I have no knowledge of him being seriously hurt, but who actually has gone through all of his fights, either on film on reading the ringside reports, to be so certain he was never even "hurt" or stunned by a punch. He certainly at times looks somewhat hurt or stunned on several of the films I have seen and is in fact stopped on two of them.

That said, you have a good point that Maxim was down and certainly hurt now and then, but against bigger men and harder punchers on the average.

2. "brutally stopped . . . which made both into very defensive fighters"

Maxim was always a slick boxer, I believe, as an amateur champion who broke into the rankings within a year of turning pro. Is there any film of him prior to the Sheppard fight to judge how his style became more conservative? I agree that his style was definitely hit and not get hit. I don't know if it was more "cautious" than Walcott's, or Harold Johnson's, to take two examples, and both were stopped several times.

 

Old Fogey, valid points you make, BUT,of course Lamotta, wouldn't have stuck his chin out,against the likes of Curtis Shepherd, Archie Moore, Ezzard Charles....For a good reason, these 3 fighters were all light heavyweights, so it is all academic...Who do you think Lamotta was, Harry Greb? Seriously, I look at it this way...I would venture to say that Jake Lamotta, absorbed unfortunately, many, many more hard blows, because of Jakes style, than the taller more better defensive whiz that Maxim was,,,Pound for pound of course....Both great beards, they had....