Guys who were unflappable

There’s a certain level of focus that every fighter must have to succeed, but some take it to the next level. They’d keep punching and trying to win if an earthquake happened in the arena.

Figured it might make a good topic to examine who held the quality of unnatural focus and inability to get off their game by any surrounding occurrence.

The most obvious example to me is Evander Holyfield:

A few people say he beat Riddick Bowe because of Fan Man, but the distraction of some dude flying in and crashing outside the ring (and getting beaten to a pulp, lol) was equal for both guys. One handled it; the other, while Bowe didn’t seem upset or rattled, didn’t keep that laser focus.

To me, it’s a lazy excuse because it still comes down to what each is made of, which is singularly focused to win the fight. Evander kept to his knitting and won the fight. If Bowe let it affect him, that’s a chink in his armor.

And then we get to Tyson II: Holyfield gets his ear bitten — not once (with a chunk taken out) but twice. Yes, he reacted, but when the action resumed he got straight back to fighting … in fact, it’s Mike who completely lost his cool. He could have gotten away with one bite and maybe even had a mental edge had he gone straight back to fighting, with Evander wondering when the next bite might occur, but he completely lost it and went for more.

But you don’t see Holyfield screaming for a DQ, betting the referee for help (like Tyson kept doing) … he just kept fighting.

Who else wasn’t prone to distraction no matter the circumstance? And let’s stick with extraordinary circumstances, not just getting back up from a knockdown or fighting through a cut or whatever.

 

I agree he had a stoic persona, like Salvador Sanchez or Alexis Arguello, where you’d never know from his expression if he was up 10 rounds or down 10 rounds … but what type of distractions/situations did he overcome?

 

This is more along the lines of a guy weathering a storm, but watch the body bombing Thomas Hearns put on him and you’ll see a guy who never loses his focus even though he had to be really hurting from those shots … hell, they hurt me just to watch.

 

Good call on Marciano, persevering with his nose split in half vs. Ezzard, but not sure I get the others.

Hagler in particular vs. Leonard wasn’t a guy who was unwavering in his focus to win … he came out in the wrong stance because he wanted to show everybody he could outbox Ray. Good plan, didn’t work.

 

Brian Mitchell defending his 130-pound crown on the road all over the world because the WBA banned title fights in his native South Africa says loads — especially considering he was always risking being at the mercy of judges and refs in someone else’s home territory and he wasn’t a big puncher.

 

Dwight Muhammad Qawi in his ‘Best I Faced’ said Matthew Saad Muhammad was the biggest puncher.

In fact, he related that in their first fight MSM hit him so hard that he was literally seeing upside down for part of a round — as in something in the nerve endings or brain receptor got rattled so much that it appears to Qawi as if Matthew was head-down, feet-up.

This is with a hard-punching champion facing him, no way of knowing if that phenomenon would right itself and his vision would correct.

He managed to keep going until MSM flipped right side-up, so to speak.

I’d have freaked the **** out and quit, myself. But Qawi kept his cool and stayed in it. Even if that was just a brief period of a round, it had to be scary as all get-out.

 

Holy tried to chop down that tree and found out it was a petrified redwood that wasn’t going anywhere, haha.

Not to mention George fighting on vs. Alex Stewart. He got his sinus busted open or something and his face swelled up like a melon … and George just kept working that jab and won the fight.