Give at least your top 5, if you like 10, greatest set of whiskers of all time. Citeria: who could stand up to the hardest & best punches...And remain upright. First amongst equals is who can maintain verticality HOWEVER it is done. Natural or built up resilience, minimizing blows defensively & rolling with punches... But also strongly consider who, if somehow we could everybody struck the same amount of times with the same force, could take the most punishment. It would be very hard to choose anyone under the modern HW limit. Because size helps absorb blows, but also they are being conditioned & tested by the hardest punchers. So weight who they fought, how often, what stage of the careers of their opponents & themselves. I think folks with A levels chins like Ali could not qualify. Even if his chin did improve to take big bombers...I am talking the most Freakish specimens here. Chuvalo is an obvious contender. Though allegedly one slip should have been ruled a knockdown, & would he have remained upright if Foreman could continie? Tua & Mercer only wavered when washed up. Thus I think they clearly edge the likes of Max Baer & Galento, both down & out from Louis. Were there any way old school guys who deserve to be on the list? If a Sullivan did, it is very hard to know. it is hard to beat Olver McCall. Or rather you could beat him All Day, but who could put him down? It seems to me a naturally low center of gravity helps. Besides obvious matters of technique, form & balance, & sheer will power. Factor in effect of body attecks too. What is your rating of the most Absurdly Ironclad bombproof men? And why?
My top 10 in no particular order: 1 James Toney 2 Jake LaMotta 3 Marvin Hagler 4 George Chuvalo 5 Kid Gavilan 6 Juan Laporte 7 Wayne McCullough 8 Julio Cesar Chavez Sr 9 Carlos Monzon 10 Rocky Marciano
In an absolute sense Floyd Patterson had a much better chin than Lamotta, Hagler or any of those. If you go by pfp they are of course much more durable, but that's not what the thread asks for. Chuvalo or Tua usually gets thrown in, and they did indeed have great whiskers, but part of why they were so hard to stop was because they quit trying and just plodded forward when hit hard. Look at Tua against Lewis for example, he takes no chances what so ever. Mccall seems extremely strong, don't know to much about him though, I know he knocked down Tyson during sparring, did the reverse ever happen? I read somewhere that he claimed to have never been knocked down even in sparring, sounds mad really
I agree 100% on Chuvalo and Tua. Ive been saying this for years. And you can throw Purrity in too. Guys who just show up to hear the final bell should be DQd from the discussion IMO. Chuvalo was so proud of his chins reputation that he would just quit trying to win after he realized he was in too deep and instead just waited for the final bell so he could brag about not being stopped or ***** about a non-existent bad decision. Tua was infuriating. Even in his prime when he was knocking guys out he would just march forward behind that shell defense and not do anything. He would get outpointed a billion to one until last couple of rounds and then hope to get lucky. Against Lewis he didnt do jack **** until the 10 second warning of the final round and then lunged at Lewis like he was trying to prove he had been trying all along. I cant stand guys like that. We know Ali had a great chin because he was in there trying to win. Had Chuvalo taken some of the chances Ali did I doubt wed even be having this discussion about him.
Thos are good points about folks who just tried to protect themselves. Since part of the question involves assessing what could be withstood with absorbing the same intensity & amount of blows in a theoretical sense, it is important. But many folks did not pay attention to what I asked, As LouisA astutely pointed out. Unless somebody here really feels any middlewight or lighter could handle shots as well, let alone better, than the best HWs... But i doubt anyone here is that naive. So please provide different answers if you did not consider the question in the clearly intended, absolute sense. Now the vast majority of great fighters have a good-great chin. But some like Marciano were never tested by a huge banger. We know someone like him & Foreman had a very good chin, but there is no evidence it is absolutely Top Shelf...Unless you isolate it to, say, comeback Foreman. I can see nobody with quite the same whiskers at The Atomic Bull. Never down in 72 Professional fights until he was 49. Combat with some big sluggers & excellent contenders, such asBruno, Holmes, Maskeav, Tucker, Ferguson, Seldon, Douglas... And prime Lewis could not dent him even in the 2 rounds he seemed to refuse to defend himself. Never heard about him dropped in sparring, valued by folks like Tyson due to his chin. Who can match him really?
Not necessarily. If Patterson faced Hagler's opponents he'd probably be knocked down a few times. In fact, in his 15th pro fight he was knocked down by a second-rate French middleweight.
Trail you are very new, welcome. but, but, but....Did you READ the original thread, OR my reminder to those who did not pay any attention to what the thread question was ABOUT? 34 fights only as a pro. OK, possibly a man proved himself against fantastic bruisers by never being knocked down. But as I keep saying, the question is about who has the best chin against ALL potential comers. At any weight. I have no idea why your man is even the best P4P, though his chin was excellent indeed... For a BANTAMWEIGHT. You cannot believe he could literally stand up to much heaver weight classes that hit much harder, let alone HWs, right? The only (highly unlikely still) way I could imagine a Bantamweight being a contender is if he was buil like a HW but like well under 5' with freakishly long arms for his body like a 6' wingspan....The target would be very small & everybody punching down... Nah, short of genetic engineering, too unlikely.