I've heard this said by Tyson (who said Cus D'Amato thought so, too) and Roach and others, why do you think it is so? Are they merely referring to physical strength? The explosivness and brute strenght of guys like Mike and Abraham?
I think anyone can do things to improve punching power to an exten, but some guys just have it from the first day they walk in the gym even if they've never thrown a punch in their life.
Im sure it was Joe Louis who claimed when he first started he couldnt punch very hard and had to train and claimed almost anyone could train to become a hard puncher
I've seen blokes come to our gym with no technique or desire to punch - learn how to use their body but when they say 'PUNCHERS are born' I think they are referring to the true ideal sense of the word. Like no one can learn to hit like Mike, it's a gift.
Jack Dempsey also Didn't believe in the "Punchers are born " he wrote about it in his book i think he believed you could attain it. Cus D amoto wrote this "There is no such thing as a Natural Puncher, there is a Natural Aplititude for punching and that is different, no one is born the best, you train and become the best"
Punchers are born then nurtured BUT anyone with good technical training can hit hard enough to keep you honest.
Lad I used to train walked into the gym for the first time as a 22 year old with no previous history of boxing training, but a keen interest - you could see that he was a strong boy though, and he definately had something about him. We set him to work with some shadowboxing and on the heavy bag - I couldn't believe what I was seeing - he was flat out the hardest puncher in the gym, and by a long way. Next session I done a pad workout with him, his power was scary... talk about punching with bad intentions. We ended up putting him in with a pretty slick, but feather fisted lad - he had a bit of trouble nailing the lad down, but once he got within range, it was a train wreck. Anyway, we ended up putting him in with our best fighter, a highly skilled amateur with over 100 wins and a fair weight advantage... anyway, same story, our best fighter was left cowering in a corner so we had to stop it. 6 months later, he had his first fight, and sparked his opponent with his first punch. Shame of it is, he's never fought since. When people tell me that punchers aren't born, I always look back to the time training this lad as he was genuinely murderous with either hand, and that was before he even started training.