Who had the better chin Rocky Marciano or Tom Sharkey?

Yeah.. That must mean that Sullivan must have a harder punch then granted :think
Same with Johnson, Although, I think he had a great right hand.

 

But Chuvalo just plants himself and has a high guard to cover his chin. He takes mostly temple shots, and does so extremely well. But he also hardly takes chances. He doesn't move forward aggressively and never risks getting his chin clocked when he doesn't see it... or does he move forward aggressively so that the shots he does take hurt even more.

This is why guys like Chuvalo and Tua perhaps have overrated chins.

Guys like Tyson and Marciano have pretty top-notch chins. Not saying they're better, but this context should be fairly considered.

Nobody says Rocky was never hurt. Just that he was rarely hurt. And on film it's true, at least never seriously hurt.

 

:yikes

 

I seem to be in the minority with viewing chins in this kind of a context. This is why I think a guy like Tyson has a massively underrated chin. But plenty will tell you he got KOed 5 times.

 

I have to say Marciano by virtue of the fact that he was never stopped, and I can't say for sure what it would take to do it.

 

1. Fitz--I guess that Patterson has a tremendous chin because one can argue that Liston hit harder than anyone Marciano, Louis, Dempsey, or Jeffries faced. But so what? Patterson didn't come anywhere close to showing he could take Liston's punch. And Larry Holmes obviously would have no chance at all against Liston as he was knocked down by the comparitively light-hitting Kevin Isaac.

2. Picking and choosing fights with odd results and then extrapolating to what a great fighter would do is too much of a shot in the dark to take seriously. Louis was knocked down by Braddock. Thus he had no chance at all against the harder punching Max Baer? Foreman was knocked down by the light-punching Jimmy Young. What chance would he have against the much harder punching Joe Frazier or Gerry Cooney?

3. and fight results can just be hard to explain--how did Levi Forte (who was stopped 16 times in 50 fights) go ten rounds with Foreman. How did Burt Whitehurst last 10 rounds twice with Liston when Patterson couldn't even last one round. Who would bet on Whitehurst to beat Patterson or even last with him?

4. The bottom line here is that Sharkey was stopped twice by Gus Ruhlin, a fairly ordinary puncher off reputation and record (21 ko's in 52 fights). Fitz was a big hitter but Sharkey never proved he could take his punch.
Sharkey was knocked down as many times in one round by the 156 pound McCoy as Marciano was in his whole career. There is no way I accept that McCoy punched harder than champions who were 30, 40, or even 60 pounds heavier than he was and had great reputations as punchers.

5. There is no evidence Sharkey was "past it" when he was ko'd by Ruhlin in 1900. He was 26 years old and coming off six straight ko victories.

6. As for Jeffries, every time the Sharkey fights are brought up concerning Jeffries, you claim Jeff fought with a severe injury and could only use one arm. Now when building up Sharkey that injury is forgotten and Jeffries is back to being a fierce puncher at full strength. Was Jeffries fighting injured or not?

7. Jeffries power was in fact questioned by writers such as Jack London and Tad Dorgan in his own time. Here is Dorgan from the SF Examiner, July 1, 1910, admittedly giving the argument against Jeffries:

"Jeffries never was a boxer, never had a fight that he wasn't used up in, and as far as meeting a man like Johnson goes, he never dreamed of it.
Why, he never beat a young fellow in his life. He made his reputation off old men like Fitzsimmons, Corbett, Jackson, and the like. They were all in when he got them. Young fellows like Sharkey and Choynski, although they were half a foot shy in height and fifty pounds lighter, went the distance with him."

This might be harsh, but it is a fact that not only Sharkey, but Choynski (10 ko defeats in 89 fight) and Bob Armstrong (6 ko defeats in 36 fights) went the full distance with Jeffries.

8. I don't buy an argument that because Marciano (or any other fighter) was "stunned" (itself a subjective measurement) or even knocked down, this proves he was somehow easy to knock out. Sugar Ray Robinson was knocked down something like a dozen times, by fighters like Mitso Grispos (who?) to LaMotta, Levine, and Fullmer. He was also stunned quite a bit in the fights I have seen on film, such as against Graziano. None of these guys knocked him out. His only stoppage was from the heat against Maxim.

9. I always wondered what the point was of criticizing Marciano for only being knocked down by champions who could punch (Walcott and Moore). Would it somehow be better if he had been knocked down by fighters like Sonny Banks (Ali), Marty Marshall (Liston), Kevin Isaac (Holmes), Johnny Sudenberg (Dempsey), etc.

 

While McCoy was a small heavyweight he seems to have been a heavy puncher pound for pound.

Before he fought Jim Corbett, the consensus seems to have been that Corbett had the edge in size but McCoy had the power advantage, with skills being even give or take.

 

"While McCoy was a small heavyweight"

The 156 lbs listed in the New York Times report on the Sharkey fight makes him a middleweight, even by the standards of the time.

 

Excellent post :good
That's two objective and considered rebuttals from this source, for the Sharkey corner to comeback from , I say it doesn't happen.

ps One small quibble, Braddock landed his kd blow of Louis on Joe's upper chest.

 

Assuming that he did actualy weigh that.

He had come in at 163 before this fight.

 

McCoy came in 158lbs, [2 lbs heavier], for the Choynsky fight only 2 months later,and 157 3/4lbs 8months later for a fight, so the weight is likely to be correct, wouldn't you say?

 

Quite possibly.

You have to be concious though that fighters of this era declared their own weights and nobody questioned them unless there was a weight limit to be reached.

Some fighters just said whatever suited their agenda.

 

Or whatever suits your agenda?

 

It is nothing to do with agendas.

There is ample evidence that Bob Fitzsimmons misrepresented his weight. He was openly ridiculed for it in some sections of the press.

 

Nothing personal J ,it was a quip I could not resist, you rather set it up for me.
Fitzsimmons scaled 156, and one half pounds ,the day he knocked out James Corbett, he was weighed on a steel yard that morning in front of many witnesses.
Pollack is not infallible, neither is he allways agenda free, imo.