George Chuvalo's power

Dropped and stopped Doug Jones in a major 1964 upset, his first stoppage defeat sustained in 31 outings. Only an upcoming Frazier later on, then Kirkman in his career rematch finale would ever do that to Doug. George was ahead on two of the three cards when it was stopped. For me, Doug Jones is his career best performance. (He was being dominated by Jerry Quarry, but certainly deserves props for putting JQ on the deck. Still, dropping and stopping Jerry was hardly unprecedented. What Chuvalo did to Doug Jones had never been done before.)

He can be seen dropping and retiring Mike DeJohn in front of a rather alarmed young Cassius Clay in Louisville (who prudently didn't want to deal with Chuvalo before winning the title), and Bonavena smartly used movement rather than exchange power directly (as did Frazier and Foreman).

The movement used by Ringo, Smoke and Big George is ring language which shows they preferred respecting his power by exploiting his lack of foot speed, rather than exchanging with him in direct slugfests. Power wise, JQ, Patterson and maybe Machen and Folley (who both carried decent power when healthy) might be roughly comparable. I'd need to think more about comparisons though. (Ringo's power might also be similar.)

Chuvalo was not somebody to stand still in front of and trade shots with. Marciano (who trained Chuvalo at one point) and Cobb would have been fun to watch with George in a telephone booth. (I think Shavers would have applied movement and deployed his jab with Chuvalo, but Earnie could do that when the situation called for it.)

 

That goes to show how seriously we should take those stories. Ali attended a dinner with president Marcos, but Joe was a no show.

 

I think Bonavens hit much harder than Chuvalo.

 

Much harder? It is a bull****

 

Ringo's use of angles was certainly much better, I do think he decked Chuvalo at least once, and I'm open to the case being made that Oscar may have been a harder puncher straight up, but again, I'm receptive to contrary opinions on this.

 

Chuvalo while undoubtedly one of the toughest to lace them up, seems to be one of those fighters on here who's getting better the further away he gets from his career.
He got beat virtually every time he faced a top fighter and despite the myths that have grown up he won at most 3 or 4 rounds total in 2 fights against Ali.

 

Your comment could not be more irrelevant,this thread is about his hitting power

 

I apologise I digressed.
His power obviously wasn't top drawer, the only top level fighter he stopped was Quarry which was very controversial.

 

I don't think that stopping more ranked fighters is a proof about if anyone could hit hard or not,it just shows his quality overall as fighter,earnie shavers actually did stop ****py oposition and i don't think that anyone would say that he could not hit very hard.the same with lyle

 

That's fair comment I agree. Shavers for all his reputation, didn't leave a trail of devastation among the top guys he fought.
The thing is though in his fights against those guys including the ones he lost, you knew it could happen at any time the expectation was there, you didn't have that with Chuvalo although you knew he could bang.

 

Ringo did hit harder than George.

 

Lyle said Oscar hit harder than Quarry (and Quarry could hit harder than Chuvalo) so you do the math and tell me what you come up with.

 

Hi Red! The Jacksonville Cobra, not to be confused with Ezz.
I agree, the Quarry fight was an anomaly; he had George's face a mess! But, as much as I love Jerry, remember Dumphy saying: "Where did Chuvalo get that jab!" You get Jerry into a boxing match and he's "UD loser toast" IMO. Chuvalo was tough granted but, as a previous poster said, many of his KO's were against non-top-tier opponents. Outside of Quarry, what would everyone say was his best win? Little Doug Jones? Didn't he step on Doug's foot before he tagged him? Name one folks. Even fellow Canadian Clareoux (sp.) beat him two out of three. No quality wins. I like George but he was simply a 'gatekeeper' for up and comers looking for a 'quality' win to put them into high contender status.

 

64 knockouts. He was beating Frazier till he got cut.

 

In his book it said he liked to lift weights - maybe the reason for the clubbing power vs real snap. Good contender though, he fought the best around, real tough and could take a heck of a shot. I think he is still in good health at 78.