Marciano Harder Hitter than Lennox Lewis

The point is its not like for like, overall Lennoxs look better, but I wont speculate

 

Yes but your not conductiong a fair test because its not comparing like with like

Ofcourse its a question of placing the punch - you asked the question of raw power. Marciano was hardly Mr Precision.

 

Yes but Lennox is more explosive than Marciano when he throws powerpunches.

And remember Super-HEavy weight lifters lift far more than 130lb weight lifters.

You can actually turn on slow twitch to be semi-fast twitch with training. And you can enlarge fast twitch fibre too.

 

I prefer the simpler sports definition of "power" as muscle force * muscle speed of contraction, though obviously the weight of the body and "leverage" (technique, more or less) has something to do with it also.

 

I agree, but at the same time super heavy weightlifters lift progressively less weight relative to their body mass as they increase in size. At some point, there is a cutoff in efficiency. (For what it's worth, I consider Lewis a substantially harder puncher than Marciano, ).

 

But look at his 1 punch KO's over Walcott, Layne, and Vingo. They are great. Marciano almost always knocked his oppenent out cold, Vingo went into a coma, all from 1 punch.

 

Very interesting comparison. At least this does indicate that Marciano was more likely to produce a knockout against a man of the same size and ability than Lewis was. Who hit harder outright is a bit more complicated, since it can be pointed out that Lewis' style was not as much oriented towards producing knockouts as Marciano's was. However, this does indicate that Marciano was at least in the same league as Lewis in terms of pure, straight-out power, and was, as you say, miles ahead of him in terms of pound-for-pound power.

 

No offense, but this is my area of expertise. A few corrections:

1. Superheavy lifters do lift more than small lifters, obviously. However, they do NOT lift PROPORTIONALLY more. In fact, the strongest pound-for-pound lifter WAS a bulgarian called "The Pocket Hercules".

2. Whether Lennox is more explosive than Marciano is unknown and highly debatable.

3. You absolutely cannot, under any circumstance, turn a slow-twitch fiber into a fast-twitch fiber. The mitochondria of the fiber types is different, and it can no more be done than you training your iris to be green and not brown. You can elevate in a minimal way the PERCENTAGE of fast-twich fibers to a very, very minimal extent through training. A person with a naturally low percentage of fast fibers will always have a naturally low percentage of fibers, regardless of training. Fast twich fibers are NOT thick-bundle fibers (to use a lay term). One other interesting factor that plays a part is reconditioning of the Golgi reflex, which can inhibit or excite greater groups of muscle recruitment, which allows slower fibers to ACT like fast fibers due to higher collective recruitment under stress.

I hope that clears it up a bit.

 

I have read that they hypothesize it's possible, through training, to make slow twitch fibers can be trained to behave rather similarly to FT. This may have been just speculation, though...or I may be entirely mistaken. In any event, I strongly encourage you to share your wisdom in the Training forum, for which you seem quite qualified.

 

Which of these two fighters hits harder is kind of a stupid argument unless you define it.

If you put them both in front of an objective testing dummy and let them throw their best punch, the heavier Louis would likely win.
However, that doesn't mean that he hits as hard on average in a combat situation. This is where contrasting skill sets make a big difference. Marciano was better at throwing and landing a variety of damaging power punches in succession and knocked more fighters out as a result.

Lennox had the ability to hit very hard with his right hand when the right opportunity arose, but he was a much more tentative fighter and did not force his opponents to endure kind of sustained pummeling that Marciano gave his opponents.

There's a lot of apples and oranges that goes on in power arguments if you take a narrow view of it.

 

I understood your argument. I'm responding more to the people who like to point live in the theoretical world.

Something similar to this came up in the Foreman v. Lewis thread. Some people wanted to point to a couple punches as evidence that Lewis hit as hard as Foreman. It wasn't a meritable argument.

 

Walcott said Marciano had harder punch than Joe Louis, but Louis threw better in combos.