How Hard did Max Bear Punch?

Yep.
The worse thing is Max Baer and his son were/are near-enough Hollywood aristocracy themselves !
Max Jr. became a pretty big Hollywood producer.
Max Sr. died in Hollywood.

 

He had a LETHAL right hand. When Baer KOed someone they went down in a crumpled heap. The only other guy that did that was Marciano. When they KOed someone it was usually savage and brutal. Baer also is in elite company as being a Heavyweight Champion with 50 career KO's. Only a handful of fighters have done this. :good

 

I watched Cinderella Man just last week and it was a complete character assassination of Baer. :-( It got me to read up more on the actual man though, what a character!


I read that as he was having his heart attack he rang the hotel foyer for a doctor and they said 'A house Doctor will be right up'. His reply was 'No, dummy, I need a people doctor!'

 

I thought that was completely uncalled for. Really didnt add to the Movie at all. It made for a WWF thing almost. The liberties that are taken by Directors and Writers are at times ludicrous. Max was anything but a Villian by his nature. Outside of this, I liked Cinderella Man.

 

:good

 

Well, nobody forced Maxie at gunpoint to conveniently contribute to Opie's eventual image of him in "Cinderella Man," by having his character Buddy Brannen take credit for a fictitious death in "The Harder they Fall," based upon his alleged softening up of Schaaf for Carnera. (And he might have been far more reluctant to depict his character as claiming so if he thought it was true. The real reason Ernie was killed was due to influenza induced brain swelling. He'd been hospitalized for the flu, and foolishly got out of his sick bed to take on Primo, insisting that, "A contract is a contract!" The autopsy confirmed the flu was the culprit, and the film narration of the tragedy made note of the fact he was sick, nothing about Max having anything to do with it.) I believe Baer would have understood and resigned himself to how he was depicted in "Cinderella Man." He knew how Hollywood worked, and again, actually contributed to that himself in, "The Harder They Fall." He was no stranger to the concept of "artistic license."

There seems to be no dispute that Max hit much harder than Louis. What I'm curious about is how Joe himself compared the power of Marciano to Baer, as the Bomber was their only common opponent, and one who took on near peak versions of both at that. (I know Louis frequently discussed his boxing experiences, but I don't recall reading or viewing anything where he compared the power of Max with Rocky.) Like Hatchetman, Braddock rated Baer as a harder puncher than Joe, and they was on the receiving end of one of the two hardest right hands Louis ever delivered.

One noteworthy dissenter to the wide spread opinion that Max was a harder puncher though is with respect to what Joe said was the hardest single punch he ever threw. Arthur Donovan was the third man for some of the best wins of both he and Max, and officiated when they squared off with each other. Donovan said the right uppercut Louis decked Uzcudun with was the hardest punch he ever saw, over the right hand Max scored his first knockdown of Carnera with that Tunney rated (in another match refereed by Donovan). It does need to be acknowledged that as close to the action as Donovan was for these events, he wasn't the one actually getting hit. It seems crazy that his starching of Comiskey was his final career win. In the first ten years and 72 fights of Comiskey's career, nobody else stopped him, and this would only happen one other time before Pat went out a winner against Kahut in 1951, after 87 career bouts.

Critics of Baer who ignorantly stereotype him as only carrying lethal power in his right should look closely at the devastating conclusion of the Levinski exhibition.

 

Gee, if the choice was between getting accurately portrayed posthumously in "Cinderella Man" or getting depicted as a villain after death in exchange for being able to bang Mae West while alive, I wonder how many posters would accept a falsely villainous depiction? It's a miracle she didn't give him a heart attack. (Then again, who knows? Maybe she was with him in that hotel room to induce that massive fatal coronary. She could suck the peel off a banana.)

 

Ironically, the antidote to that embarrassing hit piece is a book written by Jeremy Schaap which goes by the same name..."Cinderella Man"...it's superb..one of the best boxing books I've ever read with an ACCURATE portrayal of Max Baer...that does him justice.

 

ASIDE : Max Baer starred in a movie called "The Prizefighter and The Lady",co-starring Myrna Loy..What a personality Max Baer had. He sang, danced and was better looking than
most Hollywood leading men of that time. The movie had other ex boxers in it as Dempsey,Jeffries, Carnera, Mexican Joe Rivers, and was sheer joy for a boxing fan to see.
Hollywood should release it once again...But Madcap Max was quite a guy,and a helluva puncher when he was serious...

 

This is why I don't understand why people call him super slow or whatever. He looks faster than Foreman by a good bit in that.

 

That's one of the reasons I like him in a fantasy match with George. Fleischer had Carnera pegged as clearly faster than Max in the run up to their title showdown, and he tended to swing for the rafters. However, he could punch short when he wanted to, showed a heavy jab in exchanges with Schmeling, punch evasion in the Levinski exhibition, a rapid reverse gear he used frequently with Carnera, and he was retreating into a corner when he suddenly ducked and unloaded the bomb which dropped Comiskey. He nearly decked Galento with a nifty duck and counter right over the top out of a neutral corner. Of course wide, looping wind-up roundhouse rights over the top take more time to get there, but I also think he was faster than Foreman, and might be more comparable to Liston in hand speed. Had the long collarbone (broad shoulders) allowing him to generate tremendous torque in his shots. (At featherweight, Danny Lopez also had this.)

 

Good point about his portrayal of "Buddy Brannan". :good

I didn't actually find the portrayal of Baer in "Cinderella Man" was as bad as I had expected.
A bit too one-dimensional, and they shouldn't have made out that Baer had disrespected Braddock's wife if he hadn't .... those little things are unneccessary and cheap. But it was just a formulaic Hollywood movie.

I do however think Max Baer Jr. should have been consulted, and a more accurate portrayal of Baer should have sufficed. I mean, he was one scary dude for Braddock however you portray it.

 

Baer killed 2 guys..Frankie Campbell...and Ernie Schaaf.....in Campbell's case..his brain had been snapped off from his spinal cord...basically his brain was floating freely in his skull from the effects of Baer's right hand...his hit like a SOB...

 

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This post just about says it all,imo.:good