So Fitzsimmons gets destroyed 2x by Jeffries yet he has a shot vs Louis and Marciano?

I have found that ankle size and scrotal displacement are the two greatest indicators of punching power.

 

I have always thought Scrotal displacement was always equal to hand size. How does Rocky measure up to Fitz in this capacity?

 

f=ma the acceleration is clearly generated by the legs but the Mass clearly comes from the upperbody.

the skinny legs cant move the body as well and there is more time to build force like a truck that lets off the breaks while doing a burn out or like a flick compared to just sticking your finger out, the initial speed once your legs actually start to move your body is going to be faster then if there was no resistance at all makign the ultimate velocity of the punch faster when it impacts.

though really its more of a matter of perfect balance betwen the strength of your legs and the mass of you back taht your body forms to, from punching over and over and ove and over again.

like a weak person cant thow a base ball farther and faster because theres is more reesistance for him, just as a body builder cant throw a baseball father and faster because he can accelerate it quickly....its more of an inbetween that comes from throwing a baseball over and over and over again.

and its even better when you have a massive reach because then you have even more room to up the velocity of your punch.

 

Really? I have found that first hand testimony from fighters who were their contemporaries, and fought them,and eye witness accounts from boxing writers, who saw them fight in the flesh to be the most reliable yardstick.

 

To quote 'Irish James', "Balls"!

 

Very small measurements across the board for Rocky.

 

Yes, that's probably what Jeffries was suggesting.
It's not unlikely that Jeffries was making alibis in advance for struggling with a man 40 pounds lighter than himself though.

Yet .....

Exactly.

Presumably his middlweight fighting weights are the most reliable of the lot.
He was about 154, and whatever he was a few years later - people are doubting that he was as "light" as 167 or 170 ?

 

........ except for those guys Fitz was hitting ! No one told them.


You're right though. Fitz must have been one of those skinny leg 'powder puff' punchers like Tommy Hearns.

 

This can be misleading though, as he also had enormous tensile strength and muscular endurance, accumulated through early dedicated strength development. (As for Fitz, he was a blacksmith.)

Franco Columbo was possibly the shortest champion bodybuilder in the world during his era, but he was also the physically strongest, holding all the power lifting records for the bodybuilding genre during his heyday. When he and the huge Lou Ferrigno competed together in the "World's Strongest Man" competition, they were co leaders after one installment, and it looked like Franco was going to come out ahead of Lou when he took himself out of the running with an injury foolishly incurred when he attempted running with a refrigerator on his back. (Nobody else attempted to run, and Columbo is bow legged, sharply aggravating his risk. Incidentally, his boxing background makes him one of the most dangerous bodybuilders ever.)

In junior high school, I was a small skinny kid, but nobody could overpower me. My "secret?" A pair of hand grips I exercised with incessantly. I looked like nothing. Then, when bigger kids locked up with me in hand wrestling or sumo type roughhousing, they discovered the reality of my grip strength vastly exceeded my physical appearance. So I don't put too much credence in certain measurements.

 

Care to extrapolate on this observation?

By the way, since when does the circumference of a limb tell you it's strength? Isn't this just adolescent size queen man lust? Of the many gym observations I have made over the years, the truest is it ain't the most yoked guy who is strongest... and certainly not the strongest over a duration of 45 minutes of activity. I'm kind of embarrassed for all who have followed this line of argumentation as being anything remotely substantial.

 

When I was a kid, my mother was watching a 1949 musical, "The Barkley's of Broadway" on the tube, and Fred Astaire was wearing a kilt, exposing perhaps the skinniest pair of legs I have ever seen on a male in any footage. However, I don't think any sane individual would doubt the strength and conditioning he possessed in those wheels.

 

really i dont think any one thinks he wasnt strong but more so that hes 20 lbs heavier then fitz with such comparable measurements.

 

Sure. Marciano was a shade under 5'11", and had a reach of only 67" to 68" depending on the source. Combined, those are very small measurements for a heavyweight in any era. One simply can not chance their skeletal structure. Other areas such as thigh, bicep, and fist are on the smallish side in comparison to other champions. I hope that explains it.

Having said that, I do think Marciano had good raw strength, and obviously his conditioning, will to win, and intangibles were superior.

 

I agree wholeheartedly, that you cannot infer either strength or punching power from a persons build, and shouldn't try to.

 

Look at Ray Robinson and Thomas Hearns ..look at Max Baer .. look at Jack Dempsey .. all tooth pick legs ... no rational from Marciano fanatics ..