Max Baer in top 20 most powerful HWs ever?

I sure wouldn't argue. Some will argue much MUCH lower.

 

You're right, and that was the one aspect of an otherwise very good movie I really didn't like.

As for Baer's power, it was devastating. 2 men died after fighting him, and each time, he lost something as a fighter. Combine that with a fun loving attitude and lack of desire to stay on top, and you get someone who was always dangerous, but never able to truly fulfill his own potential.

 

Baer didn't have a top five ATG heavyweight chin. Top 15, maybe.

 

After the beatings he gave to Ernie Schaaf and Frankie Campbell,,,yeah,....I love the right hand that floors Schmeling in the 10th round of their 1933 fight...Maxie could hit like hell..
With 24 hours of sports coverage in this day and age..and with his power and personality
...he'd fit right in today....the media would love him!!! One of the hardest hitters ever!!

 

I have read the autopsy report on Ernie Schaaf printed in the New York Times. The autopsy found no evidence of a prior brain injury in Schaaf. He had fought three times since the loss to Baer and was coming off an impressive KO of Stanley Poreda, a top-rated contender who had beaten Schaaf a couple of months before he fought Baer.

The real cause of death for Schaaf was a severe case of influenza, a far more virulent disease back then, from which he had not sufficiently recovered:

"Chief medical examiner Charles A Norris declared that it would be "grossly unfair" to say that Schaaf died as a result of Carnera's blow because there was no fracture of the skull, no evidence of any outside hemorrhage and because the 'compression seems to have been caused from within the brain.' It seemed to him that Schaaf, who recently recovered from influenza, was not in perfect condition, having a "superfluity of subcutaneous fat."

I don't know what Norris is talking about, this medical report is from 75 years ago, but the physician did clearly see the influenza as the critical factor.

I think, off this autopsy, that it is out of line to blame Baer for Schaaf's death.

 

Good to see some balance and semblance of reality.

 

Schaaf did indeed have a bad case of influenza ,bad enough to put him in bed ,and no doubt he was not fit to fight Carnera ,but he DID suffer an intercranial hemorraghe,during the fight with Carnera,and he DID have a blood clot on his brain , which paralysed his left side ,and which surgeons operated on to remove.Since no one seriously beleives that Carnera's inoccuous left jab was the cause of the clot,is it not highly probable ,that the thunderous right hand that Baer landed in the closing moments of their fight,a right hand that flattened Schaaf ,and had him unconscious for more than 3 minutes ,may have been responsible for his tragic demise?

 

ill tell you one thing he must have it hell of a hard

 

There was a hemorrhage.

But I personally will still accept the opinion of the physician who actually examined the body.

Just as a layman, I might ask if Schaaf already had a blood clot on the brain, how did he survive three fights before he got to Carnera only to die from an "innocuous" Carnera jab--which does not appear so innocuous to me on the film. Schaaf also apparently looked very good against Poreda. And why did the physician not notice the evidence of this preexisting blood clot and mention it?

Again as a layman, I would also point out that people have brain hemorrhages all the time with paralysis without being hit by any punches at all, innocuous or otherwise. It is called a stroke.

 

BIG DEE HERE= Baer didn`t have anything to do with Schaff`s death and had no blood clot on the brain. He walked into the fight with Carnera suffering from Viral Meningitis
and the strain plus the punches did him in. Carnera or Baer had little to do with his
demise. Baer deserves top 5 in power and chin as the only man to not only KO but knock him off of his feet in Baer`s career was Joe Louis. Louis was the only man to to do this
in 84 pro bouts the only fight which he was taken off his feet is very impressive
considering who did it and the men that Baer fought.

 

In my opinion he was the hardest hitting of all the lineal heavyweight champions.

Possibly the hardest hitter ever period.

 

For pure, raw power he could very well be number one. His technique was horrible, though. Take his power and give him the punching efficiency of someone like Louis or Dempsey and he would have been unstoppable.

 

Lost his killer instinct later on because of killing 2 people in the ring. Never the same after that. So they say.

 

Fitzsimmons, Baer, Foreman, Marciano, Louis, he's up there.