How do you guys measure power when comparing different fighters?

Precisely what i am saying is that the words are words and i need a lot more than it to buy the idea of shavers being the undisputed king of the hitting power, at the end of the day he stopped pure garbage

 

The eye test and quality of opposition, nothing else matters.

-If they have several kos in the first 4 rounds, obvious indicator of power.

-a handful of late round stoppages means they have late round power (obviously), and also indicates good stamina, pacing, sticking to a game plan, etc.

-speaking of which, timing and technique, the visible, effects of the punches, training videos (mitts, heavybag), etc are all good ways to pass the "eye test".

-stopping multiple men ranked in the top 20 and top 10, self explanatory.

-stopping a guy whose never been (or rarely) stopped. Common opponents if comparing two different fighters.

-also obvious, the ko loses some meaning if the opponent is coming off a losing streak, especially if theyve been brutally stopped more than 5-6x already (even if theyre elite and ranked high, the ko would just mean u can do what nearly everyone else can do).

Common sense really.

Now if were comparing two specific guys with each other, its far easier to natrow things down if theyre in the same era. But if theyve fought more than 40+ years apart, its gets a bit trickier and you mostly have to rely on how good each of their opponents were (to each other), and the eye test.

For example, Max Baer obviously hit harder than Chris Byrd even though Byrd has a better resume and fought/beat far more elite, skilled opponents. In that case, the eye test would trump resume due to common sense, KO%, effects of punches, etc.

 

who the hell told you that?

 

Baer beat comisky, schmeling, galento, and carnera. Lost to louis, nova (twice), tommy farr, loughran, and braddock.

Byrd beat bert cooper, oquendo, tua, holyfield, and vitali. Lost to ike and wladmir.

Seems obvious who had the better career. The guys who beat byrd would likely beat baer too, but out of all the guys who beat baer, i only see joe louis giving byrd problems.

 

I explain it here. https://i.imgur.com/tEwCGqX.mp4 I call it Marciano's law of probabilities.

 

Excellent answer, that man. Choynski, for example, would be a good example of deceptive KO percentage. His KO ratio is probably under fifty percent. It's not just level of opposition, though. We read that some fights in those days were not allowed to go to KO. It wasn't legal in certain bouts, or they fell foul to interventions. Bigger size disparities, too. KO percentage can be misleading.

 

You see a punch land on a good/durable opponent and note the effect. It's that simple.

The alternative is to take the punch yourself, but not advised.

Of course, most top fighters are classed "punchers" or "non-punchers" due largely to their style of boxing, rather than clear-cut differences in ability to generate power.

 

Level of competition has to be one of the main indicators for me as well. If not Lamar Clark would be a legendary puncher.

http://boxrec.com/en/boxer/9367

 

I saw the link and Marciano was a unique fighter in that he could beat fighters that were technically superior to him. On paper, Archie Moore should've had no problems with a guy like Marciano. But a lot can be said for a guy who can take lots of punishment, keep coming forward, has KO power in both hands, can keep throwing punch after punch and almost limitless stamina. Did you know that Marciano lost his first amateur fight because he got tired?

 

There are guys with pin-point power, acurate and powerful like Jersey Joe Walcott & Floyd Mayweather,SRR, SRL, Ezzard Charles, even guys like Calzage (when his hands were good)could land & hurt you when he sat down on a punch) acuracy is key with these guys. Joe Louis was the best at power punch acuracy IMO....Ali could shock you with an acurate punch and hurt you although not known as a puncher, he could be sneaky and acurate. Wlad had incredable one punch power when he focused Chambers (left hook) and Brock (right hand)

then there are raw punchers like Shavers, Foreman, Marciano, Dempsey,Lewis,Baer,Liston....Foreman was more of a clubbing puncher but powerful...Vitali hit hard but a clubber

then there are guys who can take you out with one punch but wear you down like Frazier,Povetkin, (Marciano could do this also) I like Errol Spence Jr for his old school body work & wear you down style

These days I am impressed with quite a few guys...Joshua has power in both hands, he was a bit heavy for me in his last fight but overall the most complete....Wilder had hit like a mule kicks but not sure how he would fare with power coming at him (Joshua or Povetkin) pressure)

 

This pretty much covers all the bases, I think.

 

Yeah. Thing is, power can be generated in different ways. It's not just reliant on one attribute. And raw power is not necessarily the be all and end all of debates like this.

I suspect that if every puncher in history was lined up and allowed to take their hardest swing at a punchbag and the effects measured we'd come up with some really funky results. They did that in K-1 once between Hoost, CroCop, Musashi, Abidi and someone else, maybe Filho. Of all those guys CroCop was generally considered the hardest of the lot, with Filho a close second. The winner turned out to be Musashi, a guy not known for his KO power, and who rarely scored any sort of fight ending damage with his kicks.

 

It definitely factors into the equation. But if you put too much precedence on quality wins you start to slip into the murky territory of effectiveness vs straight power. Lots of fighters are effective without necessarily being monstrous punchers, and lots of very hard punchers lack what it takes to land their shots on better opponents. Fighters don't magically get tougher chinned the higher up the rankings you go, so it doesn't always follow that better stoppage wins equals greater power.

For my money a brutal KO win over a respected iron chinned opponent of lesser calibre is worth more in determining power than a similarly brutal KO over an average chinned but higher ranked fighter. Any KO win over Marion Wilson for instance would have instantly catapulted my opinion of the puncher that achieved it through the roof, even though Wilson was beaten a ton of times. Similarly, anyone who could have hurt even a past prime Oliver McCall would have received major props from me.