highest psi scores from HW boxers

Do you have the cite on the Ring source? Also, was anyone else measured in the same test?

 

I would not be surprised if Eddie Hall and the other strongman competitor he fought scored higher on one of those machine tests than boxers, MMA, kick boxers, etc. If those machines became popular and a sport developed where people tried to attain the highest score, the competitors would probably be big, heavy people and their punches would probably be long and looping. They would probably get high scores but their ability to hit the machine would have no relevance in competitive combat sports.
We went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch Pacquiao vs. JMM and they had a speed bag type machine that supposedly measured power. I'm sure the machines you and Janitor are talking about are more sophisticated than the one at BWW, but it's the same idea. Our fighters (130-40 pounds) were hitting it with good form and their scores were not as high as the big guys who would get a running start and hit it with a wild looping slap using the inside of their fist. If they hit something solid using that technique they would have broken their fingers, not their knuckles. Using their technique, the only way they could land a punch is if the opponent froze in place and closed his eyes.

 

Not exactly the same thing, but I remember reading in Ring or one of the other magazines back in the day that only three boxers were known to have broken the buckle on a speed bag with a single punch. (These are anecdotal/incidental, not a test set up for guys to try it … it just happened):

One of them was George Foreman.

One wsa another heavyweight, pretty sure it was Earnie Shavers but I can’t swear 100% it was him.

The third was Pipino Cuevas.

 

I think measurements like these are absurd and do not fully reflect the power and effect of a punch. Punch power is limited almost entirely by the will and then the training of the boxer, I would bet Buster Douglas following the death of his mother, the expectations of the media, and the task ahead of him, punched harder one night in Tokyo than he had his entire life up to that point.

Something he was always capable of but had never achieved. I don't think the upper-echelons of the greatest punchers of all time like Foreman can be accurately measured to their limits.

 

I largely agree.

If the same technique is used by all competitors, though, it might give you some idea of the relative force that each guy's muscles can generate. Same way that we have a rough idea that a guy with a 400 pound squat has stronger legs than a guy with a 100 pound squat, even though most real-world situations don't correspond to squatting. Or the way that a push press / jerk tells you something about an athlete's ability to generate force. I think artificial tests can still tell you something, although these tests are overblown in importance.

To give another example: the best thing about the Superstars competition stats is that they refute some of the misconceptions about 70s, 80s, and 90s heavyweights being physical super-athletes. Any one test on a single boxer might be the result of chance, but when you start collecting the stats, a pretty consistent picture emerges of the range of athleticism you're looking at. Now, how much does that mean for their in-ring performance? Probably varies a lot based on technique, experience, etc. But it's still good to know that ahead of time -- how much of the difference comes down to skill and experience rather than physical ability.

 

Rather than flooding the Sonny/Wlad thread I'm going to bump this one and continue my Marciano's punch findings here.

It just seems like I won't be pulled back into talking about Wlad or Liston anymore so, if it's Marciano I'm talking about then this thread's where I should be. Gonna grab my last post on the other and move it here.

 

By my calculations, this means Rocky could move Tony Galento 3 inches.