How bad is David Haye's jaw?

I agree with this. Very few fighters can be elite, if they have a poor chin. Can Haye be another Terry Norris or the next Michael Grant? I think he has the skill, agility and speed to beat the majority of heavyweights. Ignoring his chin completely, he is good enough to beat all but two heavyweights. If he fought Valuev last week, he would have won easily.

Get by? I think that's a bit negative. He is the second or third best cruiserweight ever, in my opinion.

Chins can improve. Cotto and Benn, for instance. At 140lbs and 160lbs respectively, their chin was really poor. It never became granite for either man, but it was strong enough to last in tough fights, such as Cotto against Judah and Mosley. Benn certainly couldn't have beaten McLellan with a chin as poor as his was, at 160lbs.

Maybe Haye's can do the same? There is a definite correlation between chin and the effects of weight draining.






And Zakman is neither a troll or a bad poster. I disagree with him, but at least he stands by his opinion and backs it up well.

 

Thank you sir. And for what it's worth I largely agree with what you said. "Get by" was a poor choice of words. What I meant was that his chin generally held up at cruiser.

Where I disagree is with the idea that chins improve when fighters move up in weight. For every Cotto, you could find 20 Bob Fosters. Statistically, it is far more likely that I will be right and Haye's chin will be even worse at HW. We'll see.

 

That's true, but I don't know if Foster is a very good example. I'm thinking about fighters who were so drained, the brain didn't have the natural cushioning effect it should have, causing the boxers punch resistance suffer. Foster was a comfortable light heavyweight. After weighing 188lbs in his losing effort against Frazier, he went back down to light heavy, and weighed 1lb under the limit and only half a pound over what his previous fight at light heavy was.

I can't think of one boxer who constantly struggled to make weight, whose chin stayed the same when they moved up a division.

 

from the fights I have seen his jaw is fine he held his own in his loss both amatuer and professional but has an aggressive style and can get caught

 

Well, I was thinking of Foster more as a sort of proto-typical guy who, while great at LHW, saw his abilities to take punches desert him when he moved up. The cases are not indentical, but the principle is the same. He may not have struggled to get back down like Haye undoubtedly would - but when he did go up, his punch resistance went way down.

Haye's will too. And his chin wasn't rock solid to begin with. That does NOT bode well for his potential success at HW.