Joe Frazier as a puncher.

8

 

Stopping Quarry twice, stopping Ellis, knocking Foster the **** out, stopping Chuvalo in 4, knocking Ali down.

Not the best punching resume of all time, but a very good puncher anyway.
Up to his first fight with Ali, the only ones that went the distance with him were Scrap iron Johnson and the tough Bonavena. All others were stopped. Not bad.

 

Stopping Quarry how exactly? Stopping Chuvalo how exactly? Stopping former middleweight Ellis is impressive indeed, how were both fights stopped? Knocking glass-chinned HW Bob Foster is even more impressive.

 

Overall, I give Joe an 8, his left hook, 9.

 

By knocking them senseless. Ellis was floored twice and had nothing left. Quarry i believe was floored once but like Ellis, all steam was taken out of him. If Frazier was an average puncher, then they wouldn't have looked like they gone to war after a mere 5 rounds while they went the full 15 against each other without much trouble.

Chuvalo's jaw was swollen horrific. He was only stopped twice in his entire career, one being a huge puncher in Foreman, the other being Frazier. I think it goes without saying that this seperates Frazier fom a lot of others.



I think you miss a key point here. You should not treat each piece of evidence seperatly.

A fighter who knows down Ali once need not be a great puncher.
A fighter who knocks Foster senseless in two rounds need not be a great puncher.
A fighter wins 27 out of 32 fights within the distance need not be a great puncher (for instance, if those were 27 tomato cans and 5 contenders)


BUT

A fighter who consistently stops world class, tough contenders or champions like Quarry, Ellis, Ali, Foster, Machen and Chuvalo AND is the only one to knock down Ali when he was in his prime AND is the only one of two to stop Chuvalo AND wins 27 of 32 within the distance AND is called a puncher by most accounts of the time, then a pattern starts to occur: Frazier carries a good punch.

Now i wouldn't classify him as a strict puncher but more as a swarmer. But that doesn't mean he can't punch. I wouldn't say he has big one-punch KO power (claims that a focused Lewis would be out after a single Frazier hook are ridiculous in my opinion), but he still has excellent power.


You can go on about how Ali had been knocked down before, but the fact is that only Cooper and Frazier knocked him down when he was in his prime, despite having faced a LOT of big punchers even further past his prime (Shavers, Foreman, Liston, Norton) yet they couldn't floor him!

Similar case with the Foster and Chuvalo stoppages: Chuvalo was only stopped once again in something like 80 fights and that took another huge puncher, Foster was never knocked out so hard and fast, excepting his last fight.

 

Hard punchers don't need to land a hunder or two of clean punches to knock an opponent down, they have a lot of one-punch knockdowns and knockouts. Frazier doesn't have any, unless he has worn an opponent down with volumes of punches before. Tua, Shavers, Foreman, Liston, Louis, Dempsey and a hundred other heavyweights would have stopped Ali if they landed as many punches as Frazier did against Ali, they wouldn't need even half as many clean punches Frazier landed in that fight to achieve that. Same as they would have knocked out cold all three on the same night, Quarry, Chuvalo and Ellis, if they landed as many punches on them as did Frazier.

 

Don't twist my words: i never claimed that Frazier hit as hard as Tua, Shavers et al do.

I already said that i rank Frazier a little bit below those. Now you may and go read my post and actually reply to the points adressed and defend why Frazier is an average puncher. In case you say that Frazier needed to land hundreds of punches, Ellis, Quarry and others also did, but couldn't stop as many opponents as he did. So obviously he must be a mark higher than average.

 

How many clean punches did Foreman need to stop Chuvalo? That's hard punching, where after only several punches the so-called "best" heavyweight chin of all time barely knew where he was and what was going on anymore, forgetting about protecting himself or punching back.

 

Consider the fact that Frazier’s style was not suited to a punchers; He was a swarmer, a smouldering iron, a meat grinder - not a blaster. That was his style, but we're asking how good his 'blast' was.

Joes left hook was one of the best single punches in the history of great heavyweights. It had a whip to it, a cutting speed and it made a big crash, not the biggest, but possibly more piercing/concentrated than the revered big bangers.

On this scale, Ted Spoon would say an 8.5 would be suffice for the potency of Joe's overall ability as a puncher.

 

I think Fraziers hook is a bit overated,to me he was a volume puncher who broke you up and wore you down,,I d call him a good hitter ,not a great one,say 7.5? He had the stamina to throw his hook all night and it still had oomph on it in the last round ,but not in the very elite class,imo.

 

Not necisarily.

Power is only one of many variables determining the number and manner of a fighters knockouts. Delivery, finishing ability and style of fighter also have a bearing.

 

I said from the very begining that I was talking about punching power exclusively. The original post also mentioned hardest to feather-fisted measuring scale, not the punching skills (accuracy, timing, etc).

 

I'll give him a 8/10 for power with Tyson and Liston getting 9 and Foreman and Shavers 10.

 

How good a puncher do you consider Foreman?

By your own analysis, his main knockouts were against Norton (glass jaw), Frazier (you'd probably consider him to have a weak chin as well) and Moorer (glass jaw).

So like Frazier against Foster, his most impressive knockouts came against glass jawed fighters.
What's more, he needed to beat them down over and over with the exception of Moorer who was layed out by two punches of your favorite puncher Tua.

Stopping Chuvalo probably won't impress you either as he needed quite some punches for it.