If a fighter has a weak chin is this a curse they have to live with forever, or is it possible to overcome with training? I kinda feel sorry for some fighters who have obvious boxing talent with huge potential, but get dropped easily every time they get tagged. For instance guys like Lundy and Sillakh easily have the skill set to compete at the highest level, but now that their weak chin's have been exposed, they will probably never crack it at the top level. On the other hand though if you look at someone like Wlad, he seems to have somehow overcome his glass jaw problems that plagued him earlier in his career. After he was floored by Brewster and Sanders, his career looked almost dead and buried. He's now gone 15 odd fights since he was last KO'd. Makes me wonder if that's a result of facing opponents with less punching power, improving his defence or if he does some kind of exercise in his training camp which makes him less prone to being knocked out?
You can train your neck muscles but that's about it. In Wlad's case he changed his style completely from seek and destroy to very defensive, wich worked out pretty well for him. There are many good fighters with bad chins, but they can't all get away with defensive styles. - Tommy Hearns - Floyd Patterson - Lennox Lewis (not very bad though)
Jmm, an atg with a week chin, but a huge heart. Got back up 3 times in his first fight with Pac during round 1 and came back to school him.
marquez goes down fairly easily, but seems to shake off the cobwebs very quickly. so im not sure if he can be classed as having a weak chin, in the conventional sense:huh
Wlads is disgracefull yet he's an ATG. Khans is disgracefull yet he is covering it up well these days. Cotto's is very bad Roy Jones hid his for years.
People may say hearns or lewis, But I disagree with them, lewis took some huge shots and continued - at heavyweight you can KO most with a near perfect punch. Hearns I don't think he had a good chin, but it was average and he went in with ATG, and he lacked stamina compared to others - he was a great boxer but he loved to fight which with his chin wasn't the best Idea
Excellent post. To say that Lennox had a bad chin or even a glass jaw is really stupid. [ame]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIRShCBKwng[/ame]
I don't think there has ever been another fighter who's dodgy chin has done more to hurt their legacy then Wlad. It's highly unlikely that Brewster, Sanders or Puritty would ever have been able to outpoint him. Take away those losses and suddenly he's 60-0 with 50 KO's and could make a plausable case for being one of the ATG heavyweights. Not suggesting that the guys who floored him didn't deserve to win, but I think most people would agree he was a better all round boxer than any of them, they were just able to exploit his weakness.
I just re-watched Lewis/Klitschko and Lewis was taking hard flush shots from Vitali in there, so I see his chin as bloody underrated by some.