Who's the Best Heavyweight you'd pick Ezzard Charles to Beat?

Ken Norton definitely. I'll scale up from there.

 

Good list. But Ken Norton and Tim Witherspoon both had powerful jabs and excellent, clubbing overhand rights.

Their jabs were good enough to match Ali's jab and Holmes' jabs in their fights.

And Joe Louis, when he had little else, still had a strong jab against Charles and closed Ezzard's eye tight with it.

I think Ken and Tim would knock Charles back with their strong jabs and the overhand rights they threw would blast him out at some point. Joe couldn't pull the trigger on his right in that fight. Ken and Tim could, IMO.

 

I would confidently pick him to beat Jack Dempsey. Tunney did it twice and Charles was better than Tunney IMO

 

he would have been just too fast and slick for Joe

 

It's difficult to win rounds primarily landing a jab. It's supposed to be used to set up other things.

Still, Louis shut his eye with jabs.

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Norton was Joe Frazier's primary sparring partner for years. He could handle left hooks. Quarry was a good left-hooker, too. Norton bashed the hell out of him.

Norton gets a little underrated these days. In his heyday, really only Foreman dominated him. It's difficult seeing a six-foot 180-pounder beating Norton at his best.

Who knows, really.

 

I think Joe Louis pre-World War II would've stopped Charles. Joe was an excellent combination puncher then.

 

I would have to agree he was one of the greatest combination punchers of all time, but I still favor Charles. Charles was a master at making the best miss and I think this would be the same case.

 

Wilder doesn`t set a fast pace, if the fight is at the same pace as the first Wildder fight v Fury then Charles would not gas, it wws a very cagey fight aside from the knockdowns.

 

Awful! Charles was better in every department, this little fella landed far more shots than Haye did on Valuev.

 

I think he could beat Floyd Patterson and maybe Ike Ibeabuchi more often than not

He could probably go 1/3 with the likes of Jeffries and Holyfield too

 

That's a clip that shows the moments he landed.

See, I can do that with Valuev, too. And Barrett was normally closer in terms of style to Charles than Marcelo Dominguez was. Regardless, Charles would've had to change his style to land on Valuev. I'm sure Charles would do fine and it would be a distance fight. But I still see it like Loughran-Carnera. Sometimes size is just too much to overcome, no matter how skillful you are. You can't land as fluidly as you normally do, so you're reduced to pot shotting.

Valuev would've been 12 inches taller and 140 pounds heavier than Charles.

Ezzard never had a 320-pounder draped over his shoulders in clinches all night. The immovable object tends to wear you out.

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