Punchers are made or born ?

Yes, Hearns was likely born with the potential to punch far harder than the vast majority of people, and even substantial majority of fighters, around his weight, but it took training for him to realise that potential.

I suspect to one degree or another, that all elite punchers are both "born" with that potential and "made", in the sense that the necessary happens for them to realise it.

 

Totally agree. Fast twitch/slow twitch composition etc etc. You have to have some sort of physical base to spring from. For sure everyone can improve power but many will improve it slightly and on the flipside we have a Hearns.

Then we have a Coetzee!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Power was the one thing Blackburn didn't have to teach Louis.
According to Wikipedia, he had an amateur record of 50–4, with 43 knockouts.
Boxrec lists an amateur record of 25-3 with 17 KOs.
I think fighters naturally gravitate towards the style that suits them best. Perhaps you could make a decent puncher out of anyone by increasing their bodyweight (preferably muscle mass) and prioritizing punching over defense or movement, but why try to bend a fighter into one style when they can just follow the style they prefer and suits them more naturally.

 

Jack Dempsey had the sloping shoulders and natural deltoid configuration for a born puncher as Gene Tunney so articulately wrote, but the Mauler also wrote a superb treatise on punching in Championship Fighting. Tunney himself had the squared shoulders of a natural stylist, but with a winter of lumberjacking with J.R. Booth Company in northern Ontario in 1921, he also became a competent puncher. I sometimes wonder how effective a puncher somebody like Tommy Loughran might have become with the same self administered hand conditioning.

The Philly Phantom's ability to punch with power was interestingly never questioned, but we only see him load up multiple times on Carnera with the HW Title on the line, as his brittle hands simply wouldn't allow more than that. Interestingly, Loughran did deck Jack Sharkey in their rematch to get to Primo, but unfortunately, we don't have footage of it.

Manny Steward said Hearns punched like a girl, and we do have amateur footage of Tommy for comparison with his professional conversion.

Wilfredo Benitez could definitely knock an opponent out or even unconscious (Maurice Hope, KO Magazine's Knockout of the Year] and SRL always asserted that El Radar could hit, but it wasn't typically his MO. (Oddly, he did take out Randy Shields, something SRL, Hearns and Cuevas failed to do. The WW Title bout between Tommy and Randy was decided by accidental butts. Hearns actually sustained the first butt induced cut, but Shields ultimately was forced to be halted by these frustratingly repeated clashes of heads.]

 

Born basically.

Power is a neuromuscular thing.

 

Born with the potential which will only be realized if taught proper technique

Made me laugh when asses like Tim Bradley were claiming that "stacking" magnified in Inoue's power 10X, well he wrapped them the way Fulton's team wanted & look what happened

His younger bro holds a belt in a weight class below him & has the 2nd lowest KO% of all current belt holders just behind Fulton iirc

Both bros have been trained by their dad who must have taught them the same things yet 1 turned out to be 1 of the hardest punchers in Boxing today while the other has the 2nd lowest KO % of all belt holders

 

Odd to me how two athletic brothers can have wildly different genetics like that

 

Agreed. Wrist position & strength is critical in determining what proportion of the impact is absorbed by the target & what proportion by the puncher.

I appreciate it's far from exactly the same physics involved, but at a high level, it's a similar concept to arm wrestling, and why you'll find videos on Youtube of small, skinny pro arm wrestlers, beating huge, heavily muscled non-pro arm wrestlers, i.e. the pro arm wrestlers hand & wrist strength & position relative to their opponents, means it's the big guy who is absorbing the vast majority of the forces that are being imparted.

 

Probably a bit of both but mainly the latter.

 

Totally agree. Julian Jackson being a fine example. No matter how well he trains his son/sons and passes on his training techniques and boxing/fighting techniques I bet they don’t hit their opponents in such a way that they freeze on the spot and have a look on their faces that I can’t describe and then drop to the floor like they just got shot between the eyes. I’d love to be the trainer that could pass that on.

 

Back in the 1980s I read an interview with Julian Jackson in which he talked about how he was taught how to punch by a trainer early in his boxing journey.
It is all teachable.

 

depends on the fighter. A guy like Earnie Shavers is born. A one of a kind freak of nature. Guys like Alexis Arguello and Michael Spinks had one punch knockout power to spare, but these guys were made. They had to work at it, Probably as much about technique as about power. IMHO

 

IMO Shavers is a "made" puncher. He punched with good technique, if anything, he loaded up too much sometimes, but his weight shifts, pivots, etc. were good, plus, he was brave and not afraid of getting hit hard during and after punching. He took some big punches because of his commitment to his punch. His punches started at the feet and ended at his knuckles, he was taught how to punch and he practiced what he was taught.

Shavers might have had some anatomical advantages that also helped, but if he did not have good technique and if he was afraid of getting hit and did not commit to his punch he wouldn't have been as big of a puncher as he was.

 

That's the thing that most don't understand- you don't turn all your weight on every punch. Earnie Shavers did. Julian Jackson and Alexis Arguello didn't but, when they did you knew it.