Hardest Heavyweight Puncher?

Tyson if you ask me. Going by what I have watched throughout my life watching boxing Tyson hit harder and more often than any of them, especially early in his career. Hell Ali said Lamar Clarke hit him harder than anyone he ever fought in his career. SO does that make Lamar Clarke the hardest puncher? I don't think so.

 

Foreman

 

Louis was just as powerful and quick handed as Tyson and less predictable

 

Shavers hit the hardest out of anybody than it's Foreman. Tyson is in my top 5.

 

And he was also the hardest hitting fighter ever.

 

I heard Ali said that but I think I know and Ali knows Frazier hit him harder in the 11th and 15th round of there 1st fight also Cooper had him real SHAKEY

 

Hardest punchers in the heavyweight division:

1.) George Foreman
2.) Sonny Liston
3.) Lennox Lewis
4.) Earnie Shavers (slightly overrated)
5.) David Tua
6.) Mike Tyson (overrated, still huge power)
7.) Max Baer
8.) Wladimir Klitschko (don't laugh)
9.) Rocky Marciano
10.) Joe Louis

This list is of course pretty subjective. My opinion can (and probably will) change at some point, but this is my current top ten heavyweight power list.

 

Shavers. He could bang. That right he hit Holmes with was unbelievable. I still cannot believe Holmes got up from that.

 

Shavers. I can't think of any reasonable person looking at some of his work and saying, "Eh; I've seen guys hit harder." They haven't.

 

One of my favorite Ali quotes, from Hausers book, about his various foes.

"Floyd Patterson was the best boxer, George Foreman was the hardest puncher, but the roughest and the toughest was Joe Frazier."

 

This could have been a ghostwritten account, putting words in Ali's mouth. What he said about Shavers hitting him so hard his ancestors felt in in Africa is a statement Ali made himself, on camera, readily found on-line.

 

I don't think so. The Hauser book (The Life and Times of Muhammed Ali) is a meticulously researched and verified work of biography. Hauser had unprecedented access to Ali and all the main personalities from his story. I would doubt the accuracy of what was written by Richard Durham in Ali's "autobiography" The Greatest, but I think Hauser is an excellent source, the best single volume on Ali, IMO.

What is possible is that Ali was talking 'off the cuff', not in a highly analytical manner. I think he wanted to mention all of his most historically important opponents in one soundbite (i.e, world champions)...and Earnie does not figure in this rollcall. The quote in its entirity also mentions Sonny Liston as Ali's "scariest" opponent. I am also pretty sure that he calls Foreman "the most powerful", not "the hardest puncher" in this quote. There is a difference.

As for Ali's joke about his "ancestors in Africa" feeling the punches from Shavers, he also made exactly the same joke about Henry Cooper's punch that put him on the canvas, on British TV. So we have to be careful about confusing Ali's jokes and soundbites with his considered analysis. Thats why I was interested in reading the full quote where it seemed that Ali had definitivley chosen Shavers over Foreman as the hardest puncher he faced.

 

Frank Bruno. In his fight with Lennox lewis i do not think he was anything like aggressive enough and go out there and see can this guy take a big right hand on the chops? He almost found a bingo punch in round 3 and hurt lewis. Yet when he backed lewis up in round 7 when he tried to end the fight he never seized up the big right hand and let it go onto Lewis's chin. Opportunity missed.

 

Holmes is God. Larry got up because he's the greatest HW champion of all-time.