Which fighters with high KO rate you don't consider as punchers

Vitali and Nikolai Valuev

 

But those aren't their KO rates. Those percentages are how many of their wins are by KO. Not total fights, which they used to do.

For example, Bert Cooper had 64 pro fights but only scored 31 KOs.

In more than half his fights, he didn't score a KO.

Nowhere near 81 percent.

Joe McAuliffe had 21 fights and 11 KOs. That's not 91 percent. It's barely 50.

You know what I mean?

 

Joe Frazier. 84% KO ratio but he wasn't necessarily a huge puncher. Other than the left hook he was more of an accumulation puncher who mostly wore down his opponents to stop them.

Marvin Hagler also has a 78% KO ratio but he isn't known for his power.

 

Right. Beat me to it.

 

Vitali Klitschko was definitely not a puncher, yet his KO rate was high.

 

In my opinion, a high KO rate doesn’t necessarily indicate punching power. You can win a 4 round fight by decision or achieve a knockout in the 5th round of a 12 round fight.

 

I immediately thought of Larry Holmes with a 64% KO rate.

 

A guy who isn't considered a big puncher by fans (because he took it easy on so many overmatched opponents in the second half of his career), but has the KO wins on paper, is Ali.

Ali stopped George Foreman, Joe Frazier, Sonny Liston twice, Jerry Quarry twice, Floyd Patterson twice, Jimmy Ellis, Ron Lyle, Oscar Bonavena, Cleveland Williams, Archie Moore, Zora Folley, Karl Mildenberger, Henry Cooper twice, Chuck Wepner ... had Buster Mathis out on his feet but carried him to the end, had Shavers out of it in the final round when the bell rang.

In your mind, it would take a KO machine to stop all those names. A monster puncher. Foreman. Frazier. Liston. Lyle. Bonavena. Big Cat Williams. Who could mow down all those guys, unless he was a ferocious banger?

He probably has the greatest list of stoppage wins (by names only) in heavyweight history.

But, we all know, many of those have an asterisk beside them - wins on cuts, guys being injured, bad backs, bad shoulders, recovering from gunshot wounds, early stoppages, and on and on.

Still, I actually think Ali hit harder than most give him credit for. I think that's why, when he was clearly not as good in the 70s, fighters who were at their best still couldn't dominate him. Even guys who were considered powerful for the day, couldn't manhandle him.

 

Ike Quartey. 86% KO ratio. I don't think anyone considers him a devastating puncher.

 

Exactly, Joe Frazier was never the type of boxer to put you down with a single punch in the first round. He wore his opponents down with constant pressure until they lost the will to fight, and then they’d get hit by his perfect left hook usually after at least 10 rounds of torment

 

I get the confusion but boxing rec is correct KO rate means out of wins.

Otherwise you'd need to go undefeated with all stoppages to score 100%.Then its a quality thing not a power metric. For example a middling fighter with amazing power who wins half his fights all by KO will have a 50%. While a brilliant point fighter might have a higher rate. Isn't that misleading? We're measuring power not whose the best fighter. The way they do it is a better way to do it IMO.

 

Ali could definitely hit harder than he’s usually given credit for.

 

Yes. His stoppage record is the 3rd highest in HW history among champions and likely the 2nd again if Wilder keeps going. But a closer inspection reveals that he didn't have too much power, at least for his size:

- Turned pro at 25 after compiling a big amateur record (less of a pre-prime justification for not getting KO's)

- Didn't drop or stop Hoffmann, Byrd, Lewis, Kevin, Briggs or Chisora over 63 rounds despite landing dozens of punches against all of them, often many dozens

- Invariably failed to stop Williams and Sosnowksi level fighters inside 7 rounds

Quite a few of Vitali's opponents would have probably gone the distance without mercy stoppages. Briggs for instance could have just as easily been stopped after 8 or 10 with a different referee.

 

Kudos to you for simply writing those lists!

 

It's not misleading at all. If you have "amazing" power, you don't lose half your fights. The fights you lost happened. There can be reasons why you didn't score a ko in those losses. You're old. You're injured. You're outmatched. Or you don't hit as hard as you think you do.

It's misleading to say someone, like Bert Cooper, with 64 fights, who only scored 31 kos, has an 81 percent KO percentage.

He scored a ko in fewer than half his fights. It's below 50 percent.

It's as misleading as saying Lennox Lewis, for example, who had 44 pro fights and only 2 losses, both by knockout, has a bad chin because 100 percent of his losses were by knockout.

Clearly he didn't have a bad chin. The other fights happened. He didn't get knocked out (or even officially go down) in the 42 others.

Same with KOs. If you didn't score a knockout in 100 percent of the fights you fought, then you don't have a 100 percent KO percentage.

You can still be a very hard hitter and not have a 100 percent KO percentage. But it's misleading to list guys who lost half their fights ... and pretend they didn't try to knock out all those other guys too, and fail.