How was he able to generate so much power in such a short motion from an orthodox stance? Have only seen a few other fighters come close to simulating it but Joe was something else
IIRC, Joe in his autobiography says he couldn't straighten out his left arm -- it was always hooked or crooked -- due to either an accident in his youth or a birth 'defect.' So he went with what he had and devoted himself to the hook.
Yes not only that but his father was missing his left arm and Joe was his fathers constant companion so essentially he was his fathers left hand
From memory he was a converted southpaw. Could be wrong but I remember something like that. Probably the best left hook in history. Despite opponents knowing that that was the punch to look out for, he almost always made it count. His left jab also, it was very underrated. He actually outjabbed Ellis, who had a good jab himself.
I don't know what the secret of it was, I know it was one of the greatest left hooks ever. Question is.. With out it, does he beat Ali?
Frazier said in one of his interviews, that his arm had been hurt in a agriculture machine accident back on the farm as a kid in South Carolina. He couldn't straighten it all the way out. He said "He didn't have to c**k his arm to throw his hook, he just turned it over".
I remember reading in his autobio that he fell into a pig pen and injured it somehow and he could never fully extend it after that... But the real answer is that he believed in it. He believed in it deeply. More than Jesus and gravity combined.
Nothing worse than a pig pen. When I was little boy, I went out with my Dad to a farm in East Texas, and the farmer had a barn with a "pig pen" underneath the barn's raised slatted floor, so the excess grain and other pig food stored there, would go thru the slats down to the pigs below. So you are looking down below, and all you see is a bunch of boars & sows with long tusks, rooting around, eating anything they could find under there. That was when you realized if you fell down below, it would be "all over but crying".
He fell over and landed on a brick which permanently damaged his arm, leaving him unable to fully straighten it.
