what were the best shots Oliver McCall took that earned him his reputation as greatest chin in boxin

I think McCall is the best candidate for...The Best Chin Ever.
Follow my logic & affirm it or contest it if you can.

First off, we are talking about in absolute terms, not relative to weight class. They gotta be facing guys who hit the hardest.
So it has to be a HW, not from an early era where they averaged the in ring weight of today's LHWs...Or possibly a rehydrated modern CW.
Then you want a guy who is tested over many fights, round & years.
McCall had 74 fights, 436 rounds-& over 300 against Tyson.
He started at 20. Fought regularly until 49, with breaks for personal & drug problems. Then fought at 53 & 54.

Then you need to have absorbed much punishment.
Nobody who is extremely elusive &/or a defensive master &/or ties people up all the time can likely be, or be proven to be, near the most iron-sided guy around. Never can a massive spoiler like Marion Wilson be considered numero uno, yet he was never off his feet.
We are not counting just staying aloft; you have to be able to tolerate/eat/absorb hellacious head & body blows.
it is all about how much force or potential damage one can ship & stay upright & unhurt.

Now that we set the table for what is the most obvious virtue-rarely being KOed or knocked down.
It is very unusual for anyone with a long full career never to taste canvas. As a HW? Even more so.
Also if you are most always knocking guys out & winning most every round, you are not showcasing how good your chin is.
Vitali was an excellent beard, but being huge, awkward & hard to tag well enhances the impression of how good his whiskers are.

Chuvalo is a great candidate for best beard ever.
Even more fights than McCall, never officially knocked down as an amateur, pro or in sparring.
However, what was rule a slip against Patterson likely should have been a kd-though he was unhurt.
And the biggest hitters he faced, Foreman, then likely Frazier-it was stopped before he could be tested as fully as possible, although he was nowhere near going down.

Considering their whole careers-& MMA occasionally-even Grade A mandibles like those of Mercer, Tua, & Cobb could occasionally be dented.

Yet it was a freak injury against Frazier, meaning he was physically hurt.
His last fight was when he turned 41, so he did not fight on when as elderly as McCall.
And while he ha some big names on his resume, the average man he fought was smaller than McCall's sometimes SHW competition.
He also said he would be basically a vegetable if he absorbed as many unprotected blows as people thought he did.

McCall's nickname was "The Atomic Bull".
While he could be either very aggressive or passive, he was no Defensive Master. He took tons of full on power shots.

He never was floored.
There is nobody in Human History who has, or could be, never even rocked given the punishment he took.
But he was rarely fazed, only occasionally what you might call rocked.

Against Lewis, there is zero indication that he was hurt.
He was having a mental breakdown before & during absorbing much punishment.
This had nothing to do with his beard. He was a drug addict with a long history of mental illness & some bizarre behavior.
If he left the ring once when merely sparring with Tyson due to a body blow, that is a very small demerit that does not well illustrate how much he might have been hurt...Since he was a head case with erratic behavior.
Tyson was infamous for chewing up endless sparring partners, he did not pull punches & it was very hard even at an excellent wage to keep them stocked up/coming back.

He fought big & massive punchers & great boxers like Bruno, Lewis, Ferguson, Holmes, Douglas, Tucker (when 44 & 1...)

Lastly you need not be the most massive guy around, but a being a good size & with a low center of gravity tends to help.
McCall was 6' 2" & fought in the 230's most of his career.
Someone like Bruno had even more muscle at 6' 3" & around a chiseled 247...But having built great muscle mass beyond good natural size does not provide further insulation against being toppled.

Look at his opposition & decide for yourself. He had one fight just before turning 40...Then 23 since.
The cumulative record of those he fought since 40 is pretty good.
[url]https://boxrec.com/en/proboxer/451[/url]

Also having the self-handicap of mental illness & substance abuse makes his accomplishments more impressive.

It is gonna be hard to find someone whose chin was as great as McCall's.
Methinks it would take an Atomic Bomb to drop the Atomic Bull.

 

I give Lewis credit for being prepared while deducting credit from McCall for not. But to suggest that this was a knock on Oliver’s chin is nonsense...

 

He obviously was in a bad place mentally going in and would in all likelihood have reacted differently otherwise, but from his own words it sounds like Lewis' power had something to do with it:

"The second one would have to be in the third round of the second fight with Lennox Lewis. The punch I got hit with – and I remember that punch – it was a wallop. I looked over his shoulder and saw his momma rooting for him to knock me out, and I thought of my momma not being there. When that man hit me I was going to retaliate, and I broke down. The overhand right that hit me sent me reeling into the ropes, and as I came back I could have just held him if I hadn’t broken down. I thought, “Wow.” I just shut down. I’d pick Lennox. I’m just going off what went through my mind. Bruno hit me dead in the eye, but it wasn’t as brutal as far as the shock to my body or pain as that right hand was. When Lennox hit me with that right hand in the third round, that was a crunching right hand. It makes me think I don’t know how I could take the punches that came after it with my hands down."

[url]https://www.ringtv.com/596520-best-i-faced-oliver-mccall/[/url]

 

Id like to know what are all the best shots Vitali took in his career that earned his reputation for having an unstoppable chin.

His chin status is based from a fight against Lewis in which he was staggered and holding on for dear life

 

He also said that his behavior was part of a rope-a-dope strategy, and that his crying was just him trying to work himself into an emotional state. Another day at the office.

Does that sound logical when placed side by side with the actual footage of what happened? Or does it sound like a man forced to come up with a semi plausible explanation for his outrageous behavior now that he’s back to a point of clarity? There’s a lot of money riding on this, by the way.

This is a drug addict whose life leading up to the fight was a circus sideshow of domestic violence, bizarre acts of vandalism, jail time, and rehab (before King forced him out and into the ring). His life after the fight consisted of spending 4 months in a mental health psychiatric institution and eventually further jail time.

Yes, being cracked with punches repeatedly from a 6’5, 250 lb man, in front of thousands of people, with cameras pointed at him from every direction did nothing but hurt his already fragile state of mind. That’s true. Fact is he was in no position mentally to be dealing with any of that in the first place. It turned a fragile mind into a fragmented one, causing him to go into a disassociative state. He suffered a nervous breakdown.

 

His mental breakdown had zilch to do with his chin. Fact is, he took Lewis's punches flush on the chin and didn't flinch. You're turning this into something else.

 

Wasnt the intention I simply asked a simple question on how one would view “chin strength”. Does quitting take it down a notch? Most disagree. Which is fine. Not even arguing lol

 

McCall fought the same way he always did for some rounds. He was even trying to set up that same right hand haymaker. The further it went and the less success he had the more he went AWOL.

 

He completely ducked Joe Hipp for just this reason.

 

Isnt there a journeyman fighter who's basically fought everyone at heavyweight and never been floored? Can't think of the name.

 

You must mean this guy. I mentioned this, & him in my detailed post above.
Terrible record, but a huge spoiler. Excellent chin, but if say a clinchaholic like John Ruiz was never floored, you would not nominate him for best chin either.

Ironically his final fight was against the other Unicorn-a HW who never was floored.
More fights & rounds & sparring & fought somewhat older.
Also absorbed far more punishment.
That is right, he lost a decision against...the GOAT chin...

[url]https://boxrec.com/en/proboxer/4537[/url]

 

That's the guy. Pretty remarkable, he faced a lot of bangers

 

I don’t know if this is the most recent interview with McCall but for a guy who had a lot of fights, fought big punchers, and sparred a ton, he sounds really good.

Was he ever in line for a shot at Tyson? I wonder how that would’ve played out.

*I checked and McCall hadn’t really done much to earn a shot while Tyson was champ. Pretty average record with no big wins.

 

You're right he wasn't on the radar during Tysons first reign. His first big win was a stoppage of Bruce Seldon in 1991. However, they would have fought after Tyson came back from prison but McCall was beaten by Bruno. Tyson fought Bruno instead for the WBC title.