How come a young guy like Juan diaz have no power? He had good legs grounded, pivoting, fast twitch berserker barrage punches. Tons o snap on them ,well delivered he was teeing off on fools, but some how he got the job done tbh.
I brought up Holy because on paper he should do everything better than Shavers, but he didn't hit near as hard.
He wasn't as physically big a man as Shavers or as thickset. He also didn't throw his whole body into shots like Shavers used to do. But Holyfield's power is pretty underrated. He wasn't a featherfist by any means. Badly stunned Foreman, dropped Mercer, dropped Tyson etc.
Under certain conditions sympathetic nervous system will secrete a coctail of sweet fight-or-flight juices, which in extreme situations allow for inhuman feats of survivalism, even if at the cost of damaging one's body. Hence the stories of men and women fighting on with grievous wounds, or lifting weight far exceeding their usual capabilities. In Maul, Schalk Holloway notes how stabbing wounds, even one aimed at arteries, kidneys, or lungs, in spite of being lethal in a matter of minutes, are the inferior timer as far as their hierarchy goes. Timers being three categories of actions divided based on their efficiency at forcing unnegotiable, disruptive reaction from an opponent in a certain timespan. First is Minutes, then Seconds, then Instant. It speaks volumes on the psychological and physionomical endurance of our bodies when secreted with adrenaline and similarly functionig hormones: that for the purpose of self-defense, disrupting balance through joint manipulation or takedowns, attacking eyes or sensory overload is the more effective timer than trauma to the cardiovascular system, lungs, or kidneys (the former forcing reaction in seconds, the latter in minutes.) Instant switches resulting in immediate halt of the close-combat encount are naturally things like cardiac arrest, severed spine, severe brain trauma, since no amount of hormones can make your body shrug that off. All that is great for survival, but punching, and by extension boxing, is not natural for our species. While certain aspects of stress response help fighters (as only a emotionless robot could enter the ring without any degree of fight-flight reaction), for example increased pain treshold, there are also numerous drawback to an uncontrolled, untrained reaction in the ring. Shallow and rapid breathing, muscle tensions, shaking hands, tunnel vision. All of that is a huge no-no for an athlete competing at the highest level of combat sports. It makes you stiff, jumpy, rapidly tiring, and incapable of effective analysis or adjustive thinking, as strong enough stress response significantly decreases the usage of prefrontal cortex. Acute stress response can actually lead to what you would read about soldiers experiencing shellshock: spontaneous defecetion, extreme panic, fleeing, inability to speak, losing contact with reality, though that's more of a wartime scenario. I don't think any of the dark triad personality traits, be it narcissism, Machiavellianism or psychopathy, can make you break your limits in the way extreme stress response can, and even then such response is not necessarily a good influence on punching, and unsustainable at the severity which allows for said inhuman performance in certain combat scenario. I believe they can make make your style more prone to punishing your opponnent, putting more into your punches, and aiming at merciless finishes once the other men is hurt. That's all. At the end of the day we learn power generation, hope were were born with bodies proper for power transfer, and tirelessly practice timing and distance to throw that nuclear bomb of a right hand at the perfect moment.
I was watching a documentary on the MMA/Kickboxer Mark Hunt, and he had two things going for him: A sturdy chin and great power. I do think that there is a subtype of fighters that because they have a great chin they can put everything in their shot with disregard of what is coming back to them. And that makes their punches even harder.
The big difference being strength and punch mechanics, you can be freakishly strong and not be able to crack an egg with your fists or pitch a baseball for example, or you can be 105 soaking through and punch/pitch like a monster, depending on your individual punch mechanics. It's also why you could be a monster puncher, gain a little bit of weight and physical strength and lose a ton of punch power
He would throw himself into shots to the point where he'd fall over. He also might not have had a huge upper body compared to others in his weight class but that just meant the weight was redistributed to his legs and core.
Foreman was extremely strong and sturdy, and back in his younger days he'd actually throw a ton of his weight into shots, really wind those suckers up cartoon style. When you're sturdy and thickset like that you lose less energy on impact. Fighters with thinner wrists, bendier bones etc lose more of their power, no matter how hard they throw themselves into a punch or how much artificial muscle they pack on. Wilder generates his power in a different way. Lots of speed, leverage and weight transference.
Stupid TS. Power has to be transmitted not only generated. Equal mass and speed alone doesnt mean equal power. Thats a myth.
Someone who I always thought had some hard to explain power was Sergio Martinez. He’d spend a majority of a fight spraying semi hard shots and then would just launch a huge ko punch outta nowhere. Always fun to see.
I have to agree with you. I think every top fighter possesses psychopathic/sociopathic characteristics otherwise I don't think they would have made it to the top. I'd even say it's a must have quality for a top fighter. Doesn't mean their full blown psychopath/sociopath, just enough that allows them to apply their trade in the ring at the top level
Punching power mainly comes from stiffness of the tendons. That's what they mean when they say natural born puncher because it's mainly genetic. Technique also plays a big role, so that the force is delivered efficiently from legs to the target
Martinez had pretty good speed and technique and was really efficient at turning his weight into his shots when he went for it. Also, when you're throwing a ton of pitty pat shots from all angles at your opponent you're mentally softening them up for that big KO, as they're not going to be as braced for it as they would be if you were just winging bombs from the opening bell.