Better resume: Peter Maher vs Earnie Shavers

I was going to put in my post that no doubt someone would now tell me they all weighed more than stated weights.

 

Couldn't agree more!

Boxers from the early part of the gloved era were pioneers of the sport, as we know it today. They paved the way for coming generations - and those who rose to the very top were obviously special fighters, and should be remembered/honoured as such.

So why isn't that enough? I mean, you can't really do more than be the best of your own time. There were great fighters in the 1890, but why can't we admire them as they were - whithout trying to make them into something they were not? Why is it necessary for some to pretend, that LHs from 120 years ago could hold their own with HWs from Shavers' time - or that Maher was a bigger puncher than Shavers? I don't get it!

 

Lets look at Shavers as critically as we are at Maher. He was stopped by Stander when both were green, then beat up on a load of nobodies to clinch a shot with Ellis. The best opponent he faced was a faded Rondon who took him the distance and a green Young that he ko'd in 3, a great result in hindsight. Only Cooney would stop Jimmy in the rest of his career and that when he was faded. Earnie stunned the world by catching Jimmy as Ellis went for the kill when Earnie looked in trouble. I was around at the time and loved Shavers for his all out attack. It looked like the Ellis win was a fluke when Quarry dis the same to Shavers and when a losing record fighterBob Stallings beat him, we all thought he was short of real top class.
A draw with Young-still not a topliner-and a ko loss to Lyle seemed to confirm this. He struggled to a win over Henry Clark but then took him out and followed with a war with Roy Williams and a blow out of the touted KO Smith. Then came the gallant losing attempt against Ali who had only two defeats at the time and it was probably closer than the cards suggested. However, in his next fight a coming Larry Holmes shut him out. Then we had Shavers sensational ko of Norton and the knockdown of Holmes in a fight than Shavers was otherwise dominated. That was really his last hurrah as Cobb, Mercado and Santemore bested him. All in all a decent career with great win over Norton and excellent win over Ellis and the early Young win. After that it falls away a fair bit with the few unexpected defeats. Either way, not a guy to get hit by.

 

I don't call Ali's opponents anything! But many of his opponents were obviously inside today's CW limit. Cooper, Patterson, Mildenberger and others were natural CWs by today's standards - even though the division didn't exist back in the 60s.

Just like Maher would be a LH today. The fact that there was no LH division at the time, does not make him a full-fledged HW, when comparing him to later eras.

 

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck, it's a duck!

 

No, Maher didn't "mostly" fight over 180 lbs! Of the 26 weights that can be found for him on BoxRec, 3 were over 180 lbs (181, 182, 185) and 2 were under 170 (155 and 165 from his early days, which of course are irrelevant to this discussion). The remaining 21 weights are typically a few lbs over or under 175. In 13 of them he weighed under 175!

If he routinely weighed in under 175 without having to make weight, he would be a very small LH today (unless, of course, you will claim that BoxRec got it all wrong, and he actually weighed 15-20 lbs more than listed).

And yes, he was a bit smaller (lighter) than prime versions of Patterson and Marciano. Both weighed, on average, just over 186 for their title fights. Patterson was as light as 182 for the first Ingo fight - and I don't see that Flord having too much trouble coming in at 175 the day before.

Marciano was 184½ for both the Walcott fights - but they say, he was already then trained to come in as light as possible. So losing an extra 10 lbs might have been hard for him. As you are probably aware, there was recently a heated discussion about whether or not Rocky would fight at LH today. Some even suggested, that he could go as low as 168 with day before weigh-in... which sounds a bit crazy to me!

 

We don't have accurate weight figures for fighters of the period.

There were no formal weigh ins, so a fighter was whatever they said they were.

Often there are a number of contradictory figures in the press.

 

I do like this type of testimony. It certainly provides a context for the claims made for Maher's power.

That said, these witnesses weren't to know that competitors like Joe Louis, Rocky Marciano, Sonny Liston, George Foreman and, of course, a chap called Earnie Shavers would some day, in the future, emerge within the sport of boxing.

I've no problem accepting Maher was, pound-for-pound, a big puncher of the times, but I do wonder about the still relatively formative stages of the sport back then and whether this circumstance could have somehow served to accentuate the feats of the standouts of those days. Thus, a legitimate question would be, isn't it just as likely that genuine, world class competitors of the times were a relative scarcity and boxers like Maher were heralded on the situational basis that few had "ever seen" anything better?




**Observes the large quantities of dried brush, now being carefully piled around a stake in the ground.

 

One of the few things that all eras have in common, is guys who can hit like a truck.

 

When did Marciano make 175 four times in a row as a grown man?

 

Boxing wasn't quite as primitive as back then as some people think. Amature competitions existed, army, navy etc had boxing. athletics clubs existed where boxing flourished, bare knuclke fights were dying out for years, pubs/bars ran tournies nightly/weekly in the big cities, benifit nights were regular events, when Sullivan, Maher/Ed Smith/Jack Burke etc went on barn storming tours they found ready opponents most places, some obviously brutal but some quite experienced. In the UK the sporting papers carried loads of advertisments for boxing tourneys, running to several pages. Australia was the same, Ireland to a lesser extent. So the top 10/15 were the cream and compared favourably with what followed in 1900-1915.