'You cant train a puncher' - unless your Archie Moore

Good trainers make fighters better. Steward turned Tommy Hearns into a puncher, made Lennox Lewis into to a very sound technician by shortening his punches and best of all turned Dennis Andries from a ruffian who could barely stay on his feet after he threw a right into the best Light heavyweight in the world.

Not all trainers have this ability.

 

I take a middle ground, here- punching power is an attribute which is especially dependant on natural born ability, but it can be greatly enhanced through training and technique if one knows how.

 

How do explain Foreman having no punching technique what so ever but still having freakish power?

 

Good post sir. Figured I'd read through the thread before just making a big, capitalized, bolded post with the words "TOMMY HEARNS" to disprove the theory that punches are born.

 

It's a complicated system. Some are born, but the theory that "big punchers are born, not made" is false, as proven by a guy like Tommy Hearns.

 

He obviously had a good technique for producing power.

Wild haymakers ARE powerful punches.
They are technically wrong for other reasons - eg. "easy to avoid", slow in reaching the target, likely to leave the deliverer open and off-balance, waste of energy etc. etc.

 

Certainly not every fighter can punch like Mike Tyson or George Foreman. But "punchers are born, not made" seems too fatalistic to me. You can improve with good training on what you have. Jack Dempsey`s "Champion Fighting" offers very good information. It is a classic. But the small book "The Theory and Practice of Knockout Punching" by the martial artist Leo Fong shows rather good hints for training, too.