Is David Tua overrated ?

He doesn't look 'extremely powerful'. He looks wild and reasonably heavy handed for the time, but nothing that should make anyone jump out of their skin unless they're predisposed to doing so at the start.

Someone like Rocky or even Satterfield look far more powerful in a P4P sense.

Mike Perez put a guy into a coma, someone who likely would have died back in the 30s. Shavers never put anyone into a coma that I know of. When you bring up how many men Baer allegedly killed as an argument in favour of his punching power you're opening yourself up to all sorts of nonsense like the above.

 

Which big durable man stopped in spectacular fashion?

The closest I've seen to a Ruiz/Moorer type KO from the pre-70s HW era was Machen vs Johansson.

This content is protected

There might be others, but not from Baer.

 

He's very heavy handed though. His knockouts are terrifying. Most of the time he didn't even land cleanly on his opponent and he still got KOs. Sure, he's wild as hell and he's very sloppy. This proves how powerful he was, because he didn't have refined technique or ability to set up the punch.

Rocky maybe, but he was smaller. Satterfield was more explosive and faster, but he wasn't as powerful. Many fighters look more explosive than Foreman, but very few had his power. Baer was similar in that aspect - he could knock you out with any punch, even without proper leverage.

I just mentioned that, it's not my entire argument. Baer's power is visible by anyone who has eyes.

 

Pat Comiskey.

So only taking a beating of hopeless guy on the ropes matter? Baer's destruction of Comiskey is not impressive because Pat lasted a minute longer than Ruiz?

 

Tyson
Tua
Morrison
Bruno
Rahman
Ruddock
Mercer
Lennox
Foreman
Briggs
Butler

That's from the 90s alone.

I think Rocky was P4P an extremely heavy handed fighter. Dempsey was destructive for his weight as well. In general though, and in an objective sense, I think the vast majority of the heaviest hitters in the division began to spring up from the 70s onward into the present.

 

I'd take Baer over most on your 1990s list in terms of sheer power.

 

He ticks the box for being durable. Does he tick the box for being spectacularly KOed?

I don't grudge him for taking a minute longer to KO his man, but I will dock him points for the number of clean punches he needed to stop him. And where was Comiskey's body lying laid out on the canvas unresponsive for a full minute? Tua did that to Ruiz landing less than five clean punches, ten punches in total. That's spectacular.

 

Of course you would. It's why I didn't put too much thought into devising the list or explaining my choices.

I've been over this ground many times before.

 

His knockouts remind me of something from Marco Huck. If you consider him a terrifying puncher then I'd have to agree with you on Baer.

Yeah, hence why I said P4P. Rocky wouldn't be a huge HW puncher today because he wouldn't fight at HW. He probably wouldn't even fight at CW unless he didn't mind being undersized on a regular basis. For a guy who could have conceivably cut to LHW though he can more than hold his own.

Baer wasn't much like Foreman, though I see this comparison a lot. Baer needed to swing up to get power into his shots, Foreman could rock and KO fighters with relatively little wind up, and in general had a much more thudding impact with his punches. I don't see a huge similarity TBH.

Any fighter's power is visible to gauge accurately if you have eyes. So few choose to take the blinkers off though.

 

That's why I also showed Levinsky fight.

I think this debate is pointless at this point.

 

I'll go by my card, thanks.

 

That’s a broadly applicable caveat. Any 200lb-plus guy, who has trained to throw his fists at you, is a danger.

Anyone can make a pick with a caveat in place for the other guy. But, in a two-horse race, that’s not really making a pick, is it?

You’ve just put forward an implicit ‘absolute’, which actually contradicts itself.

If someone has the “quality not to get overwhelmed” then they are of a level, are they not?

Your use of “stylistic attributes” to assess Tua’s chances in a matchup is interesting, in as much that it also assumes the hypothetical opponent is pigeon-holed with one particular style - which either takes away from or plays to Tua’s strengths. This is extremely simplistic.

I think assessing styles, based on what is known at the time, is useful to a point, but it is also the most basic means by which to assess a boxer and a match-up - perhaps, the starting point. Although, I can see why it might appeal, when assessing a fairly one-dimensional competitor, like Tua.

How does this method of assessment work for the caliber of fighter, who can box in various styles, as part of a broader strategy and set of tactics? Or, for those boxers, who can adapt to what their opponents are doing, in situ, during a fight? How do you factor this in?

Wouldn’t it be fair to say that not all boxers are chained to a single style of fighting (or only have one punch in their armory)? This is why I’d suggest “stylistic attributes” are too general and should ideally not be used alone, as a substitute for understanding the breadth and depth of a Boxer’s capabilities.

A good example, where Tua is concerned, is where we have often seen him compared with Mike Tyson. However, Tyson had attributes and a level of execution so superior to Tua’s, as proven in his fight performances, that the comparison has since been widely regarded as fanciful, at best.

Which opponents did Tua “flatten”, who were rated in the Ring’s Top-10, at the time he fought them?

I could just as easily assert that the “common denominator” here is that Tua always had a puncher’s chance , despite him being one dimensional; unable to adjust to his opponents’ style.

I also think you’re confusing someone, who makes a selection on what they think would be the most likely outcome (having assessed known form and various other factors), with a person who “fails to understand” that anything is possible - which is essentially what you have described above.

There are no guarantees in any outcome in boxing and certainly not from fantasy match-ups (for obvious reasons). We deal in speculative likelihoods within virtual realities, in such debates involving an ATG of the past, matched against a more modern name - and so, we use the information that is available to us, in order to assess the same. In most cases, it’s really just an exercise in applying common sense to the data.

Anything is possible, but what, on the balance of information available to us, is most likely?

 

When did you last watch the fight? He was doing fine for the first third of it. The rounds were close, but Tua was executing a gameplan well and doing some work.

 

Flattens Marciano and Carnera.

 

Tua never actually lost to a nobody, especially not anywhere near his prime. Wooden is the only one who I remember coming close before Tua was past it.