Who Punched Harder: Deontay Wilder or Rocky Marciano?

Yes, but.

1) Wilder throws the kitchen sink into his hardest punches. His form is awful and he's just begging to be countered when he throws caution to the winds.
2) Wilder may be relatively light for a HW but he's SHREDDED and his proportions are all gangly. If he carried as much pudge as the other guys he'd also be 230lb +. The leverage he gets from his unusually long limbs and frame is another reason why he hits so hard. I really can't think of an equivalent heavyweight.

 

What is the argument for bigger heavyweights, as you understand it?

 

It hangs on a number of factors, including reach, strength, and ability to tire your opponent out.

Obviously these would still stand if the power argument went out of the window.

However if it turns out the that the 214lb guys, can hit as hard as the 240lb guys, then they have a critical equalizer.

Now they can hit back as hard as they can hit, and they are still faster, and busier, and able to crowd their bigger opponents.

 

But what reason is there to believe that any other specific sub-215lb fighters (ignoring for a moment the obviously relevant detail that Wilder normally fights at 225-230) hit as hard as Wilder?

 

There is no reason to think it, but it obviously could not be argued to be impossible.

Then you have just moved the goal posts.

 

I don't mean to be difficult but I'm having a hard time following, and I don't know what goalposts you're referring to.

All Wilder's punching power establishes is that it is not impossible for a man who can weigh as little as 212lbs to punch harder than much bigger top fighters, hardest shot for hardest shot. I'm really not sure what that gets us though.

 

It get's us a couple of places.

Firstly if this is true of Wilder, then it might theoretically be true of other men of the same weight, or even slightly smaller men.

The firepower suddenly equalizes, but this is not the most important point.

Those who argue the case for the modern superheavyweight, essentially treat power and durability, as being direct functions of body weight.

If an old timer has a good chin, they ask "how big were the men hitting him?"

If an old timer has a big punch, they ask "how big were the men he was stopping?"

Wilder being the hardest puncher of all time, would drive a horse and coaches through that logic!

 

It's not so much a question of if added bodyweight increases power. I'd imagine the difference in power between a 215 pound heavyweight and a 235 pound heavyweight is negligible, assuming all else is equal.
Yes of course, the wider this gap becomes then we can talk about tangible differences in punching power.
The average 220 pounder is certainly going to hit harder than the average 180 pounder for instance.
That should be obvious.
Wilder as said above is something of a freak.
But add 30 pounds on him and he hits no harder. It's about the specific mechanics rather than the weight.

 

This is put really well (finally), janitor, and thank you

Makes me think of Bowe vs say...Marciano. Bowe was really good at crowding and just generally great at infighting...plus bullying people around. Rocky is a super fighter, top 10 ATG unquestioned. But at his weight and size...could he deal with such a bigger man, especially someone with the style of Bowe?

Not that Bowe was a greater ATG...far from it.

 

People often presume that today's heavyweights hit much harder than smaller fighters in the past because of their weight advantage. You know this.

So I guess Janitor's point is that we have a modern day example that hinders that notion.

 

And on average, they probably do.

But for the record, the "how hard does fighter X hit" discussions are usually kind of silly, because people really only seem to be thinking about the fighter's single hardest highlight punches, and not the hundreds of other punches that fighters throw each night. The jabs, the blocked or partially deflected power punches, etc. Fighters may or may not land their Sunday punches more than a few times a fight, but they're going to feel dozens of these types of punches over the course of a fight. And there tend to be huge size-related differences in punching power here, no matter how hard a little guy can punch when he winds up and throws something with full leverage. I think I've said this before but I didn't fully appreciate this until I saw (and heard) some big heavy heavyweights calmly working the heavybag in one of the gyms where I used to work out, and it really became clear to me when I saw (and heard) big guys like Luis Ortiz and Adam Kownacki fight live.

And in any event, Wilder's prodigious punching power tells us next to nothing about how hard much smaller men (with completely different punching mechanics) like Marciano, Dempsey, Langford, etc. may have punched.

 

Agreed

Sure, there's nuance here. Such is the nature of boxing.

It tells us that you can be outweighed by 10-20-40-50- 100 lb, and be the harder puncher.
It tells us that the weight of the fighters you mentioned doesn't automatically disqualify them from potentially being some of the hardest punchers in the division's history. We have a modern, fresh data point in Deontay Wilder.