A short exchange of thoughts with Damond brought this to my observation. Of the harder punchers, there's basically two types. Type A: The wear-you-down type Type B: The big one punch type When we compare Riddick Bowe and Lennox Lewis, we see that both are similar in size and both are known as dangerous hitters. However, there is a clear distinction that seperates them. Lewis often bombed opponents out with single or a few punches (Ruddock, Weaver, Golota, Bruno, Rahman, etc) while Bowe relied on wearing his opponent down by throwing a high volume of heavy-handed shots. Bowe's punch output was higher than Lewis'. It is interesting how this effects stylistic matchups. This content is protected For instance, both fought Evander Holyfield. Holyfield is known for his iron chin and while a single punch may stun him, he always recovered and came back impressively. When he fought Lewis, he took a big amount of concussive bombs that would've laid the average heavyweight out. His chin saved him there. However, when he fought Bowe, he had to worry about a large amount of lesser heavy punches and got worn down. Bowe knocked him down and nearly stopped him despite not punching as hard as Lewis. This is exactly why Holyfield was able to upset and throughly beat Tyson: Mike, like Lennox, relies more on one or a few huge punches than wearing the opponent down and Holyfield could absorb the odd bomb here and there, survive and comeback. This content is protected The reserve is also true. To look at another common opponent, Golota gave Bowe heaps of trouble because Bowe didn't have the one-punch power to put him away. Lewis did and had an easy night. Of course, Bowe was past his best, but i think it's fair to say he would always have been troubled by Golota. This goes for more fighters. Ali has an outstanding chin and the biggest one-punch hitters in history like Liston, Foreman and Shavers were powerless against him. However, Frazier, who doesn't hit as hard as the former three, gave Ali Hell, knocked him down and came closest to stopping him. conclusion: In general, against a fighter with an iron chin, the wear-you-down type of power is much more effective than big one punch power, and vice versa. This is also why i think Holyfield has a good chance of beating Liston. He can take whatever big shot Liston has, survive, counter and use his speed and skill to win a decision.