Who are the 4 "presidents" of HW chins of all time? Thanks to @Showstopper97 for giving me the idea to combine his theme with mine: https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/mount-rushmore-of-hw-punchers.709690/ Now there shouldn't be any complaints (but it can ) that I didn't choose this or that heavyweight; I put to vote the 10 that were mentioned the most by forum members. P.S. I'm amazed that Larry Holmes won't be in the selection, even though @Shay Sonya, @Dynamicpuncher and I ranked him in the Top 10 HW chins.
McCall Chuvalo Mercer The shots Mercer took from Lewis, an all time monster puncher were bananas ... I never really eve saw McCall stunned .... Foreman teed off on Chuvalo hitting him flush with half a dozen shots in the infamous third round .. forget about George absorbing it, I'm shocked he lived ...
I went with the top four: Muhammad Ali, Oliver McCall, George Chuvalo, and George Foreman. The others are Heavyweight chins, too, along with James J. Jeffries, Paulino Uzcudun, and Larry Holmes, (and probably John L. Sullivan), who are not listed.
Bringing up Ali and Holmes makes me think again of how I look at chin ratings. I see it as three separate categories. Single punch resistance, accumulated damage resistance, and recovery ability. Neither Ali nor Holmes were at the very top for single punch resistance (although I do think Ali rated higher than Holmes), as they were both dropped by single punches before. But both had top tier accumulated damage resistance and recovery ability. On the other hand, you have a guy like Mike Tyson, who had top tier single punch resistance, but mediocre accumulated damage resistance and mediocre recovery ability. The very top guys on your list, like McCall, Chuvalo, and old Foreman had it all. McCall seemed basically inhuman. Did he ever look visibly hurt or rocked? Even once? Dude could just walk through anything like it didn't matter. Ray Mercer was the same until he got old.
I would say McCall, then Chuvalo, then Tua, then Cobb are top 4 in HW history. I give them 10/10 chins. They can literally stand there round after round getting nailed by bombs without flinching and rarely ever look bothered. Next I'd say Vitali and Valuev have 9.5. They're obviously very durable but have very thin resumes and didn't get their chins tested that often by elite opponents but I give them the benefit of the doubt since they rarely got hurt and were never KOd. Foreman, Ali, Mercer, about 9/10. Mercer's chin got pretty bad with age, probably took too many shots. In his prime he was as solid as bedrock eating bombs from Cooper, Morrison, Lewis, etc. Ali and Foreman have nearly every other HW beat in terms of both quality and quantity when it came to facing a wide variety of big hitters, but they were both hurt and dropped more times than the 10/10 chinned boxers (you could make a case for 90's Foreman being 10/10, but I don't think his chin literally got "better", I think he just improved his defense and paced himself better). Holyfield is probably 8.5-9/10. What impressed me more about Holyfield wasn't so much his chin, but his amazing heart (recovery, and endurance to keep fighting). His body language after being dropped by Bowe in their first fight was like "**** that, you're NOT knocking me out" and he willed himself to remain conscious.
James J Jeffries has a case to be included in this list. Broken Nose, both eyes cut, absolutely battered, but he keeps going until his opponent is out. He was a Tank.
Prime Holyfield had a frightening righteous indignation to not only recover from eating huge shots but to fire back and immediately put his opponents back in trouble. Championship heart.
Of those listed: Mccall: Iron for his entire career Mercer: Iron until he got old/even then still kinda iron Vitali: Iron for his entire career Cobb: Iron throughout his career
How do people see McCall, Cobb and the like taking exactly what Chuvalo did against Foreman? Not a rhetorical question - just curious. After staggering Chuvalo with a powerful left hook that was right on the chin, Foreman was landing some serious, consecutive bombs in there. It wasn’t out of the question that Foreman might’ve shot his wad trying to put Chuvalo down before being able to execute an actual KD. The initial hook caught Chuvalo by surprise but thereafter, he appeared to better brace and steel himself for the onslaught that followed. Did Oliver or Tex ever cop a compression sequence of such power shots themselves during their careers? Of the three, with no disrespect to Chuvalo, I would say that Chuvalo arguably had the worst defence but I can see an argument for Cobb perhaps being on par in that regard. Even when Ollie broke down during the Lewis fight, dropping his hands, he was still mindful to keep circling, keeping a good distance and also turn his head with any punches landed. Lewis, bemused and duly wary, was not offloading for all he was worthy anyway. Interesting, at least in my eyes, that McCall appeared to show off more boxing skill when sparring Tyson than he did in his actual fights. Taking the dampening effects of the mentality of a sparring partner into an actual fight can be a real thing.
I'm not going to go as far as saying Cobb belongs on the Mountain but I would at least nominate him based off this fight alone. This content is protected
