George Chuvalo is most commonly remembered for his durable chin and rugged toughness and rightfully so. But he did manage to also win 64 of his 73 victories by either KO or TKO. Would you say his power and punching ability is sometimes overlooked ?
this is a really good point. I didn't realize his ko percentage was so high. He was probably a notch below the hardest hitting contenders e.g. Shavers) but only a notch. IMO Chuvalo lacked speed of hand and foot. If he had the handspeed of a guy like Quarry or the footwork of Ellis or ideally both, he would be a high quality fighter. He was still a good contender nonetheless and had an impressive career in his own right.
I have to agree with this. And most years Chuvalo was a very active fighter. But much of that activity, percentage wise, was against below average fighters. He was like Cleveland Williams: lots of fights, lots of kayos, but most of the knockouts came against sub-par opposition.
George Chuvalo's punching power was under rated. Experts viewed him as a human punching bag, and true he could soak up punishment without ever tasting the canvas, but he did have power to his punch. He lost o the likes of Ernie Terrell, Floyd Patterson, Oscar Bonavena, Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier and George Foreman, but he posted some good unexpected wins, a perfect example was his kayo of Jerry Quarry in 1969.
