Who Hit Harder Lennox Lewis or Sonny Liston

Liston stopping Patterson ,at least in your world,may not be particularly impressive.How about a
past-prime Liston giving Chuck Wepner 72 stitches,a broken nose and a broken cheekbone ?
Just thought I'd mention it.

 

Chuvalo? You mean Wepner?

 

Al Ettore had nuclear weapons in his gloves.

 

Correct. That's why one can be a terrifying puncher at light weight and not as terrifying at welterweight or middleweight because they are punching on bigger men. And an average heavyweight puncher would look like a monster if he was landing on middleweight fighters

 

Oh heck ! Absolutely Swag , it should be Wepner !! ( I'm getting old.... )

 

This isn’t a golden rule Fury doesn't take a better punch than Usyk and the bigger fighters get the less weight factors for durability. Why does the neurological aspect of KOs get ignored when we've seen several cases of bigger guys getting hurt and even knocked down by guys 20,30,40, even 50 pounds lighter

 

On average

 

My thoughts on this.

The real unicorns in terms of power, are often not very big heavyweights.

For example Shavers, and more recently Wilder, were not particularly big heavyweights.

This doesn't mean that size is irrelevant, but it probably means that a man the size of Liston or bigger, is big enough to be up there.

While power and durability are loosely related to power, they are not direct functions of them.

Most of us would probably agree that Paulino Uzcdun, and perhaps even Mickey Walker, had better chins than Primo Carnera.

Bob Satterfield probably hit harder than darn near anyone at the time.

James Toney had a better chin than Wladamir Klitschko, and David Haye likely hit harder than Tyson Fury.

 

Who knows. I’m glad I don’t have the first hand experience to say which.

 

Lennox did.

 

Liston with the left hand. Lewis with the right is how I see it.

 

Proper leverage, timing and technique can compensate for a weight advantage...
Especially with fighters over two hundred pounds.
While I agree Lewis probably hit harder with his right hand in comparison to.any one Liston punch, but Liston power was more consistent because technically he was better
Same with Joe Louis in comparison to Lewis..

 

People have a very hard time accepting that some old school heavyweights don't match up to larger heavyweights from later eras. There's never been a time where force production starts to diminish at 200lbs. At the highest level this doesn't happen in powerlifting, weightlifting, strongman, wrestling etc. The super heavyweights always produce more force than every other weight class. At the highest level there are almost zero (if not actually zero) instances of someone literally producing above their weight, because there is an outlier just as powerful as them that weighs more than them.

Only boxing fans will pontificate about diminishing returns and if the hardest hitting 180lbs-200lbs man hits harder than the hardest hitting 240lbs-270lbs man. They don't. The rebuttal to think is usually "If weight made you punch harder, then Fury would punch harder than Foreman!" Which is so dumb and deliberately obtuse it doesn't need to be debunked.

If Lennox Lewis hit Floyd Patterson with the punches Liston did he straight up could have killed him. He wouldn't have gotten up off the cansas.

Also I find it very odd how reliant people are on testimony. Eyewitness testimony is almost useless after 24 hours. But the punched-in-the-face testimony of punch drunk riddled fighters that happens months or years after events is reliable?

Furthermore, what's interesting is that we know historically that fighters have absolutely no idea when they get KTFO cold. They just wake up and have to ask their team what happened. Does no one else find it odd that the slow but heavy handed power punchers like Foreman, Marciano, Liston, GGG, Beterbiev etc are massively over represented in testimony compared to the Julian Jackson's, Naoya Inoue's, Mike Tyson's, etc. It's reasonable it's because the latter sparks them out so hard they don't even remember it. Donaire said he didn't even know he was punched by Inoue, and this is after he'd been knocked down, gotten back up and was on his feet. This dude went from boxing, to being knocked down, to getting back up and he didn't even know he was punched in-between. He literally couldn't say how hard Inoue hit. Just an example of how not useful testimony is.

Earnie Shavers is another example. The popular pick for the most powerful one hit. puncher in boxing history period, yet he couldn't even knock out Larry Holmes with a perfect punch. Yet I'm not supposed to believe my eyes that show that's clearly not true, but believe in old testimony?

 

Casuals seem to have a weird concept of power, as though fighter A throws a punch with a 82 power rating and Fighter B with a 92 rating and that's the difference in the opponent falling. The knocking out of an opponent involves so much more. There is no simple power advantage where Lewis hits a guy correctly that Liston also hits correctly and that dude doesn't go down from both. We all saw Tua and Mavrovic and Billups eat Lewis' punches all night long. To my memory, the guys that got sparked are the ones who were truly outmatched or had no choice but to trade with Lewis on his terms. If you chose to fight Liston on his terms, I don't care who you are, you would also be stung and most likely be seeing the black lights.

This is all a long way around of saying there was not a significant difference at being on the ends of eithers' punches. There were a dozen other factors at play on getting to the terms they chose their opponent to fight, and which led to the KO. The key was finding a way not to be where there punches were intended to land.

 

Can’t imagine there is much of a difference. I don’t feel confident enough to vote on either man. Believe Holy thought Foreman hit harder and he had def lost power by then. Some say Liston hit harder than George. I have my doubts about that but it’s possible.