Hot take, Frank Bruno had a great chin

Well Cummings essentially had him completely gone too but some dodgy officiating kept him in the match long enough for Jumbo to blow it.

I wouldn't say his chin is poor either but it wasn't great... Hard to think of other world champions who had similar durability/survival issues... His chin dertainly wasn't on par with his positive attributes, like that ram rod jab or his huge punching power.

 

The human body is a complex thing, and doesn’t lend itself to a linear 1-10 scale for durability.

With Bruno, if you caught him hard enough in the right place, you wouldn’t just stun him. His central nervous system was liable to shut down, making him a sitting duck. As he slowed down and fatigued, the chances of this happening increased.

However, he was a huge muscular guy, particularly in his later career. He had massive neck muscles that served as a shock absorber; his head wouldn’t snap back much from even clean punches in comparison to many fighters.

Hence you get a guy with multiple stoppage losses, few legitimate knockdowns in comparison, and several fights where he took plenty of meaty blows both in victory and defeat.

He didn’t have a “great” chin, but it wasn’t glass either. He generally took punches well, except when he didn’t - which makes a lot more sense when his career is viewed as a whole.

You come across many fighters who are the opposite. Tyson Fury springs to mind; relatively easy to drop if caught clean, even by much lighter hitters than those who stopped Bruno. But ultimately virtually impossible to stop in his career to date.

 

No.

After he lost to Lennox Lewis in a fight in which he fought well, but was hurt and stopped rather suddenly, Mickey Duff lamented "if he only had a chin."

When caught by Bonecrusher, Witherspoon and Lewis, he was stopped quickly each time.

It wasn't just exaustion

 

Because there's also recovery ability in addition to ability to take a punch. Fury is middle of the road when it comes to ability take a punch without getting hurt, but he's top tier at recovering from being hurt. I can't think of a HW who was better at recovery other than I guess Evander Holyfield,

You can drop Fury, but he's going to get up, within 10 seconds he's going to be recovered enough to start getting back into the fight, and within 30 seconds, he's going to look like nothing happened to him. One of his best traits.

 

Jumbo's weight training from his prison days enabled him to develop muscular trapezius muscles and neck, which enabled him to absorb punches well. He proved tp be a pretty tough and durable dude. He was the first guy to fight Witherspoon after Tim challenged Holmes, and made Spoon go the distance. He also went ten with Larry Frazier. Jeff Sims needed eight rounds to finally land him, while Bruno took seven rounds to stop and retire him.

What he did to Bruno was extremely unusual, in that his weight training does not seem to have impaired his punching power or stamina. He went ten rounds with the hard fighting and always hustling Joe Frazier at a pretty good clip. Large muscles tend to gobble up oxygen and induce gassing, but Mike Weaver certainly overcame that despite his genetically inherited musculature. (Shavers was sharply criticized by both Jerry Quarry and Ken Norton for lifting weights, and in retirement Earnie himself disowned weight training for boxing, advising to stick to wood chopping. Joe Frazier was also a critic of weight training, and he indeed was plenty strong against anybody not named Foreman. In the Superstars competition, he slowly military pressed 170 pounds with the absolute worst form I've ever seen. But he was very thickly built with a low center of gravity.)

 

So he's just Edwin Rosario but bigger,good power but crappy recovery.

 

Nobody has a great chin, unless they have been up against multiple world class opponents, and survived them.

 

I totally agree.
At the end of their fights, Tyson and Lewis hit him with some monstruous uppercuts and hooks and he managed to stay upright.
Pretty impressive.

 

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Not trying to be a pr*k but it was 160lbs and in a whacky push press… it wasn’t a “slow military press” that’d mean locked legs and pure shoulder/arm power, that would be impressive 170lbs in a slow strict press what Frazier did was not impressive at all but it is also irrelevant to his boxing ability, boxing isn’t a strength sport.

 

It certainly wasn't the glass type that many claim..

 

Bruno went down against Bonecrusher.

 

I think his nerves did him in under fire, his chin was fine IMO he was just all tension, stiff, not very confident in himself.