The P4P Toughest Men to have Boxed

Golovkin and vitali

 

James Toney

Danny Williams

Mexicans

 

Manny Pacquiao.

 

Holyfield is the one who jumps out for me. He was fighting guys like Bowe who were so much bigger than he was. Hell, I think he was literally having a heart attack in one fight and fought through it as best he could. There's no quit in Holyfield.

 

lmao GGG fans are so easily triggered. As far as natural born toughness, iron chinned maniacs you can make an argument for GGG, but when push came to shove after he asked Canelo to fight Mexican Style he wanted no part of a toe to toe slugfest. I think it's hard to put any boxer today into the conversation of toughness when you compare today's fighters to greats from past generations. The grittiness required to be a top star today really pales in comparison to the toughness it took to succeed in the sport back in the 15 round era.

 

Eamonn Magee

 

Looked what he was, a cold hard man, I think he could've been better than he was with more dedication, he lacked it big at times. Again a hard hard man

 

ggg, froch? Your boxing knowledge is so poor!!! They are not even top 100! For you boxing started 10 years ago ?

 

Time to forget them old farts

 

Tough is tough..You can be tough in modern times you know, it doesn't have to be the 20's eating bark of trees walking 75 mile a day for school etc

 

This, GGG grew up in a tough environment devoid of any essential things easily available in the west. Kazakhstan today is tougher to live in than 1930’s America.

 

I agree that tough is tough, but it's relative. We can talk about who are the toughest boxers of today but it's hard for me to compare today's toughness in boxing to boxers of past generations. And I understand that can sound like I'm an old man talking about walking 75 miles to school, I get that, but lets be real boxing was much more brutal in the old days. I mean just look at fight stoppages. Today refs are quick to step in and stop a fight, but back in the 15 round era you see way less fights get stopped prematurely. Back in the day you pretty much had to beat a guy senseless to get a stoppage or a TKO, and most of the time the ref would still count to 10 even if a guy was laid out. So we just gotta keep it real, by an large, more toughness was needed back in the day to succeed in the sport. So I have a hard time acting like current boxers are more tough than boxers from the mid 20th century.

 

Honorable mention:
Randal “Tex” Cobb...

 

Totally

 

That's a fair point, Kazakhstan is a very different place to grow up than USA or the U.K. That's why I said I don't doubt GGG's "natural born toughness" or what he had to go through growing up.

But when it comes to toughness in the ring, GGG hasn't exactly shown that, at least not to the extent that he was being billed as. Many natural born tough fighters come to the USA and become complacent and lose a lot of their toughness. Like with GGG, he's shown a lot of diva tendencies in recent years. Lets put it this way, GGG was probably a lot tougher coming up the ranks out of Kazakhstan than he is now. Toughness is something that you can lose over time when things change. It's like Hagler said "It's tough to get out of bed to do roadwork at 5am when you've been sleeping in silk pajamas". Anotherwords he no longer had the same toughness, that same hunger that he had once he made all his money, once he had the luxuries that come with fighting in the USA and making a ton of money. I think we're seeing that same phenomena with GGG and plenty of fighters for that matter.