My Career: Earnie Shavers

Gotta love Earnie, a real cult figure and nice bloke.

 

This is it. His stamina was most ordinary and he wasn't very durable.

 

Eerily similar to what Foreman said about Lyle.

Foreman’s opinion just gained currency for me!

 

Lyle had a tremendous right hand. He said he developed it by wrapping towels around both fists and punching the concrete walls of his jail cell. In other words using a concrete wall as his heavy bag.

 

That wouldn't develop strength, it'd break his hands.

 

Shavers is one of the most overrated punchers in history. Perhaps the most overrated.

 

He is rated about right to be honest.

He had ridiculous power, and little else.

 

Ali seem to have the opinion that Shavers had some "crack" in his punching power. But that is just from a guy with one of the all-time great chins.

 

Overrated puncher? Ali who fought some of the most brutal punchers in boxing history did not call him overrated.

 

His power was above average but it wasn't like he just touched people and they never got up. Lots of guys survived his power, not even particularly good fighters either.

 

It takes all kinds ..

 

I watched Shavers train back in the mid 70's. The sound of his punches both during sparring and as he hit the heavy bag were well beyond the average hwt. I remember as he kept hitting the bag those in the gym who were talking and training stopped what they were doing and just watched. Shavers power was unreal.

 

That's right. Ali said that as far as one punch power goes Earnie hurt as much,if not more,than George Foreman's punches did. That comment earns credence even allowing for the fact that Ali had deteriorated considerably during the three years separating the Foreman and Shavers bouts. Obviously Muhammad slipped and blocked far more of George's punches than Earnie's but we're talking ONE PUNCH power here.

 

It's not just that Shavers had great power. He certainly did. But he swung for the fences, totally committed to almost every punch... which was why he gassed out so often or was easy to counter... that is, when he didn't put the other guy to sleep.

 

It didn't take a particularly durable kind to survive a Shavers right hand.

Just ask Bernardo Mercado.