Ali's power?

Duuuuuuude. I'm not even going to fully take this on, but it's pretty funny you wouldn't put money on peak Tyson vs Shavers, Norton and Cooney of all people. Tomato can matchups for Tyson at his best. Shavers and Cooney would be too slow to hit him with breeze let alone leather and neither had much of a chin. Holmes could have stopped the best of Cooney in a couple of rounds but chose the perfectly safe route. We all know what happens to Norton when he faces huge hitting aggressive fighters, Tyson might even beat the Foreman and Shavers KO times. 99% of the time you are totally brilliant, and then some at times, but when it comes to Leonard and Tyson......

 

To be honest, Mitch Green had a very good chin although I'll admit I've seen only this one fight of his. See his boxrec record (few discrepancies had good excuses to them). This guy took a bare fisted right hand from Mike Tyson that CRATERED his face and yet he was still standing! Now that's one helluva chin.

As for Mike Tyson, I think Shavers hits clearly harder but some (including me) may underrate Tyson's power. He was NOT a clubber or a one punch guy in his prime like Shavers was. Tyson actually had skills. He had speed. He preferered to catch his opponents with 2 or 3 fast / snappy punches rather than one single bomb. This way, he didn't use ALL the power he was capable of generating IMO. When he abandoned that approach after post prison, he paid for it with Holy but you also got to see what his full power could do against Botha. One right hand. This is how I see Tyson's power - it isn't entirely simple (not rocket science either) but no offense to writers here (some are great) - boxing writers are not scholarly scientists - they just write about a sport to make a living. I always find the term "boxing analyst / expert" somewhat of an oxymoron. I'll tell you why. Bert Sugar, based on one single fight, picked Buster Douglas over Evander Holyfield. atsch:

Sorry I got off topic, never mind.

 

You're absolutely right. The true expert analysts are those who have the best track record at actually predicting outcomes most accurately. I have no ability in that area myself, and won't claim such expertise unless I somehow evolve a sense of objectivity someday, when I finally grow up.

 

That's actually kind of scary JT, since I rely on you to be my harshest critic when ChrisPontius isn't attacking one of my posts. (If he ever starts calling me brilliant, I'm checking into the local sanitarium.) 99% percent of the time, JT? C'mon!:nono (By the way, which Leonard are you referring to, Benny or Ray?)

 

I agree, although i will make 2 comments:

1. Even if Tyson had great speed, combinations etc, that doesn't disqualify him from being a one-punch knockout guy. In fact he has more one-punch knockouts than Shavers despite being a far superior combination puncher, that should tell you something

2. I don't think more of Bert Sugar as a historian than the average poster on here, but picking Douglas over Holyfield, i can't blame him that much.

You have to bear in mind:

-Holyfield was not seen as a "legit" heavyweight yet. Going into the Thomas fight, Thomas was said to have the better jab, the true heavyweight etc. After it, it was clear he was washed up and all that. In hindsight we know that Holyfield was a great heavyweight as well, back then not many people expected him to be. He was not seen as a threat at all to Tyson (he was going to fight him after Douglas).

-Douglas looked absolutely great. Who would've thought he lost his motivation THAT quickly? He may well have been like Mike Weaver in the sense that he bottled some fights early but learnt from it and became a better fighter despite a spotty record.

 

99% wouldn't be far from it mate hahaha. We'll call it 90 then.

Benny or Ray, who's Benny Leonard?

 

Althought he certainly was'nt a power puncher, I think Ali was underareted as a puncher. One fight that illustrates this I feel is the Lyle fight. Ali did nothing but let Lyle pound on him for something like 10 rounds while occcasionally countering. The next round Ali cracked Lyle with a fast right hand that sent him staggering back into the ropes. From there Ali finished him with a combination. One right hand effectively ended that fight. A powderpuff puncher could'nt do that against Lyle so I think that shows that Ali could punch with some authority at times but usually he was content to outbox his opponent. The fact that he had bad hands later in his comeback years probably led to his holding back and not putting his all into his punches. At any rate I would say that Ali was an underated puncher. Someone with his size and speed has to be able to put some pop on his punches sometimes.

 

Yes, that is, as they say, the heart of the matter. I really can't believe that people continue with the myth that Ali was a light puncher. The power of a punch is determined by two things: the speed of the punch and the weight behind it. Nothing else.

With that in mind, a 215 pound fighter with Ali's handspeed have to hit hard when he puts his body behind the punch. That's just no way around that.

One of the main differences between Ali and famous punchers like Foreman and Tyson is that they always put everything they had in every punch, and that's always a gamble. If you keep missing you gonna tire quickly, which is what Foreman did against Ali.

Ali only put full power in his punches when he saw a clear opening. When this happened the result was often devastating, as Williams, Foley, Bonavena, Foreman and Lyle can testify. The last two of these fighters had never been stopped, not even knocked down, before they met Ali. And Bonavena also had an iron chin, but was felled by one of the best left hooks I ever saw.

 

Ali had IMO good power. A 70% KO ratio in your prime is nothing to sneeze about.

 

Are percentages all that matter? I think not.