I have to favour Holyfield. Just a superb all-round skillset and engine. Johnson was good for his context and times but I don't think he meets the eyetest like Holyfield does. All that lungey-parry type stuff doesn't impress me.
By "functional strength," do you mean a boxer's understanding of how to leverage and use his strength to his advantage in the ring, or do you have something else in mind? I wouldn't be surprised if Johnson had greater functional strength than young Holyfield in this usage of the word, since he would have had greater incentives and opportunities to develop it. Also, I'd be pretty shocked if the claim (whoever claimed it) that Holyfield was in the gym repping out full sets with 365 on the bench were true. And fwiw, Ali probably could have shoved Frazier around quite a bit too, if he had put his mind to it and been less preoccupied with trying to box him within the rules of the sport (unlike Foreman).
Strength working functionally in the boxing ring. Fighters meeting and competing in matters that will be settled by their application and who wins those competitions. Those Hoyfield numbers come from the boy that strength and conditioned him for heavyweight, his name was Hallmark like the cards.
https://vault.si.com/vault/1989/07/...o-mike-tyson-with-his-ko-of-adilson-rodrigues A year ago, when Holyfield began his run for Tyson's title, he could bench-press 190 pounds. "Today he's 33 percent stronger than he was last year," says Tim Hallmark, Holyfield's physical-fitness guru. "He does 10 repetitions with 360 pounds after his pulse rate has risen to 180 or 190 beats per minute. A football player can do 360 pounds, but that is with his normal heart rate. If you get his heart rate up to 180 or 190 and tell him to do 360, he'll look at you like you're crazy. There is a tremendous strength decrease [as the heart rate increases]. He won't be able to do it."
The Cruiserweight version of Evander Holyfield has a good chance of beating ANY man weighing 190 lbs or less. And Johnson was only slightly bigger than that. It would be a fight I would love to see.
Reads like Hallmark embellishing a bit in order to self-promote, but who knows? Going from only being able to bench 190 to doing sets of 360x10 (with an extremely high heart-rate) is a pretty extraordinary transformation for one year's worth of work though. Also not sure how that equates to being "33 percent stronger"...maybe the SI writer misquoted something?
Has any other fighter used this high heart rate weightlifting technique? Strikes me as a pretty ridiculous gimmick
Tend to agree. It's a good source, but as a trainer, he also has an incentive to hype his guy. And his own training methods. Nor would Holyfield be likely to contradict him, even assuming he would otherwise bother, since Holy's not going to call out a guy giving him good press as lying. If Holyfield's opponents go into a fight believing their opponent is some super trained monster, that is a plus for Holyfield.
Ah, well it's all in the detail. He says that he goes from doing 190 (through choice? 1 rep max? sets of ten? normal heart rate?) to 360 with this high heart rate thing. 33% might relate to his one-rep max, or be a verbal tick, like dudes say, "do you have five minutes" when they mean anything from 10 seconds to 3 hours. It's a mess, but i tend to blame the journalist, who clearly doesn't properly understand what is being said, rather than the trainer.
Holyfield is a great fighter, but, he'll get tired wasting punches thrown as Johnson will tie him up and counter with laser (sharp shooter) shots.
