This content is protected Here's a documentary made by Rich and at minute 3:56, there's a footage of him hitting the punching bag. God bless Rich.
I love his offering of zero excuses to the Quarry fight. He got me with a good shot, he's a really good fighter. No bs, no sore loser loseypants like certain guys these days.
His punches looked a lot more fluid when he was younger, and he had more spring in his step. Very lean and athletic, looked more like a basketball player. I guess later on he became obsessed with power and got very stocky and predictable with his punch delivery. He became more heavy handed and carried a lot of mass in his arms and lower body which helped with raw power, but made his stamina worse with the extra mass. What makes shavers so unique is that he could either drop you with a sudden explosive jolting shot as seen with the Holmes, Ellis, knockdowns, or he could batter you with very heavy blows that made you stumble around drunk like the Sims and Williams KOs. I don't think I've seen any other boxer in any weight class be able to do both. If he didn't have poor stamina and defense, he'd be nearly unstoppable.
According to Holmes, he fell so hard that the impact of his head hitting the ground woke him right back up. Shavers was a vicious puncher, but a sloppy finisher and didn't have the patience or skill set to finish off skilled opponents once he had them hurt. Shavers was also very, very tired and in pain from eating jabs and right hands all night so he couldn't properly pull the trigger on a survival mode Holmes who was running, covering up, and do everything to survive. According to this documentary, Holmes corner also put an ammonia capsule under his nose to jolt his senses.
Back when I lived in Liverpool in the late 90s, he was working as a doorman, at Yates Wine Bar. If your name was not on the lit there, you were not getting in.
Thanks man. There’s been a few awesome vids recently shared ( see Jack D. and Joe L. playful sparring thread) While he’s not completely committing Earnie’s hands look pretty fast on the heavy bag. Not always consistently so, but Earnie could whip out very fast, fully ladened power shots from time to time. Deliberate or not, that could really take an opponent by surprise if they thought they had Earnie’s average speed sufficiently timed and accounted for. Deliberate variation of the speed of one’s punches can be highly effective - keeps ‘em guessing. Divorcing Earnie’s power for a moment - he did land some terrifically flush shots that caught his opposition absolutely cold. The execution was such that even a good to excellent puncher, throwing/executing exactly as Earnie did could probably expect to at least ring their opponent’s bell.
Or if he had trainers who actually knew what to do with him. I read his book. All anyone ever did with him was work on his power. Why? Once you're got KO power with a single shot, work on everything else. As a comparison, Cus and Rooney never worked on Tyson's power. Why bother? He had more than enough, worry about landing it effectively.
That is the greatest recovery I have ever seen. Holmes was half dead at the end of the round. Next round, he bounces out of his corner like nothing had happened and proceeds to make Earnie pay for landing that shot. Just nuts.
