Zhang’s poor conditioning makes him seem like a lighter puncher than he really is, funny enough. Truly scary if he had the conditioning to commit to his punches round after round
Quite possibly; the only heavyweights I can recall being heavier, eg Miller and Valuev, are uncoordinated oafs, who don't have an ounce of Zhang's poise and punch placement.
If a man is beating Ring ranked opponents, based on not much more than power and a bit of delivery? Not even particularly putting punches together, or capitalizing on their opponent tiring late to do it? Then he has power, if not necessarily much else.
And it's not like he really fully loads up, say like Wilder does. Zhang's punches can be quite short and even look like arm punches at times. If he catches you fairly clean you're seeing that canvas.
One of the situations where if HW boxing had a 265 lbs weight limit like in the UFC, it might be a benefit to guys like Zhang, Fury and Ruiz who come in with needless extra pounds of fat just because they can. Someone like Ruiz is a slob but Zhang should have been more strict for himself to have not come in almost 300 lbs against Parker, where he was struggling to breath by the 3rd round.
I think he has very clearly demonstrated that he has the heaviest punch in boxing, now or at any time in the past. George had a similar heavy thudding punch, but Zhang is a lot bigger and I think he edges George in the heavy punch category.
I saw it a bit differently. To me, stamina looked very much to be the issue. In rounds 9 through 12 his output completely dropped. Going off memory here, but Parker didn't really change away from the same defensive movements he was using for most of the fight, but whereas in the earlier rounds Zhang would catch him in the same defensive positions where he was stood right in front of him but using upper body movement, in the later rounds he had his hand cocked and didn't throw. It's not like he had to head hunt, Parkers flank was open many times to Zhang. He just looked like he was trying to conserve what little energy he had to see out the fight to a decision. Big mistake as Parker swept the last 4 But yeah, the look on Parker's face off the KDs tells me he knew Zhang's power was different
Wilder has never knocked out a elite heavyweight, he had 17 rounds against two top heavyweights recently and never even rattled them.. its alot easier koing tomato cans over elite guys, its why almost all good boxers build up fights they win by early KO even the ones that aren't renowned to have power.
I’d definitely put Zhang in the top 10 ATG HW punchers. Not just because of the impact he hits with but how sneaky he is with setting them up combined with the fact he’s a southpaw. DANGEROUS puncher. Kind of reminds me of Corrie Sanders in that sense. Sanders had faster hands but Zhang’s are a tad bit heavier.
if he had atg power he'd have made easy work of mediocre Parker. Instead he lost to the guy who is nothing special.