Shaver's Punching Power Is Completely Overrated.

[D-MiZe]

During the early 1980s, when Sylvester Stallone was training to play Rocky Balboa in Rocky III, the actor gave careful consideration to using a real heavyweight boxer to play the part of James ' Clubber ' Lang. Stallone invited the hard-punching Earnie Shavers, who lost a world heavyweight title fight to Muhammad Ali in 1977, to spar with him. During their first sparring encounter Shavers was reluctant to hit Stallone with anything other than a jab, but after Stallone said to Shavers, ' C'mon Earnie, show me something real, ' Shavers hit him with a punch so hard that Stallone had to leave the ring to be sick in the toilet.


It's not that relevant, but I was reading something I had gotten for Christmas and remembered that paragraph.

[White_Knight]

It has probably been mentioned, but Shavers made a guy retire by breaking a vertebrae in his neck.

Just thought it should be mentioned.

[nomadman]

Ok, let's forget everything so far and start again. Good posts Btw, in general anyway (), but this is just what I sent an entire goddamned essay on. We have every single one of these guys fights on video, so we have seen all of their fights, from their debuts to their last pro fight. Shavers doesn't have even half his fights available on film, so we haven't seen the majority of his knock outs.

We've seen the majority of his biggest fights though. Aside from the Young bout and a few others, all we're missing is a string of garbage collectors that he beat up on during the early part of his career. Who the hell cares about those? I couldn't give a crap about Tua's or Tyson's early bouts, except for curiosity's sake; I haven't once quoted any of those minor bouts in support of my argument because it would be meaningless to do so.

What we have on Shavers is far from complete, but it's more than enough to form a good opinion on his power, and I've already outlined my opinion in quite precise detail elsewhere in this thread.

Do you see what I'm trying to say? People keep on comparing to current guys and saying, "He only knocked out Ellis with one punch while Lewis knocked out three guys, and Wlad is amazing and pretty, while Tyson has lots too". We have all of their best KOs on film ready to be seen because people have made highlights of their best KOs throughout an entire career.

All of those KOs I mentioned were against champions, top contenders, mandatories and the like, so it's perfectly fair to judge them against the Ellis KO. I didn't just pick and choose obscure fights against random bums from early in their careers. I could have done. Ever seen Tua vs Russell Chasteen? Awesome one punch KO, really chilling. But it came against a nobody, and is therefore irrelevant.

Shavers no doubt has a few of those KOs lurking somewhere in those 40 odd unseen fights of his, and they'd all be just as relevant. As it stands, his only one punch knockout of note which we have came against Ellis, so that's all we can judge him on in this category.

If you get me every single Shavers film, and his only one punch KO is Ellis, then I'll concede that there are quite a few bigger punchers at HW.

I don't have to. I'm not claiming Shavers is one of the biggest punchers in history. We can only go by what we have, and what we have is Ellis. Anything else is speculation.

As it stands now, he's up among the very best for me, because of what I have seen he was able to consistently hurt or drop the very best fighters in the world, often more so than anyone else, all the while piling up early KOs, not TKOs, on all the trash he fought. The vid of Tua shows all the trash he fought. We have none of those fights for Shavers.

I can respect an argument that takes an informed analysis of a fighter's footage and draws their conclusions from that. If you think Shavers was one of the very best punchers in history for the reasons you gave then I'm cool with that; I disagree of course, but at least the argument can be fought on the plain of logic and reason, without resorting to the endless "he said/ she said" rhetoric and tedious hyperbole that seems to be the norm on anything regarding Shavers's power.

As for Tua, of course most highlights are going to include some of his lesser fights if the editor thinks they'll look cool. But you could take all the chaff out from those vids and you'd still be left Ruiz and Moorer, two of the most chilling demolitions in the sport's history since Eddie Machen fought Ingo Johanson.

[nomadman]

If Lewis was from 40 years ago and not as good as he was, we'd have very, very few of his fights. We'd only have his biggest, toughest fights and he didn't score very many one punch KO's in those. So we could not say at all whether Lewis was any good. In fact, from his record we'd say that he wasn't a great KO artist. Just good. Majority came via TKO, not KO.

I suspect we'd still have his bouts against Rahman and Tyson. But then again if we wasn't as good as he was then maybe he wouldn't have got any top knockouts at all. Kinda silly to chop and change things like that.

[The_Demon]

Personally i think punching power is overrated in general,and often correlates with weaknesses in other areas-it certainly did with Shavers

[TheGreatA]

As for Tua, of course most highlights are going to include some of his lesser fights if the editor thinks they'll look cool. But you could take all the chaff out from those vids and you'd still be left Ruiz and Moorer, two of the most chilling demolitions in the sport's history since Eddie Machen fought Ingo Johanson.

For Shavers there will also be his KO's over Ellis and Norton.

I think Shavers's reputation would be greatly enhanced with the present fans if we had footage on the majority of his knockouts over the lesser opponents that he faced. Some of those KO's were described as rather brutal and to a fan the appearance of the KO is sometimes more important than the quality of the opponent faced.

Without film of anything but his most important fights, his highlight reels just do not compare to David Tua's or Mike Tyson's. Without film on the majority of Tua's KO's, we would have to rely on footage of his fights against the likes of Lennox Lewis, Chris Byrd, Hasim Rahman, but there would not be much to show. Atleast Shavers could claim to having knocked down/hurt the likes of Larry Holmes, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Young and Ron Lyle among others.

[nomadman]

For Shavers there will also be his KO's over Ellis and Norton.

I picked those two fights because of the quality of the knockouts, not because they're necessarily great names, though Ruiz and Moorer are nothing to sniff at. Simply put, no one in the heavyweight division has ever demolished someone like that, and Tua did it twice. From a resume standpoint Ellis and Norton can't be faulted, but as knockouts in themselves they don't stand out like those two do. And those weren't Tua's only big KOs as I'm sure you know.

I think Shavers's reputation would be greatly enhanced with the present fans if we had footage on the majority of his knockouts over the lesser opponents that he faced. Some of those KO's were described as rather brutal and to a fan the appearance of the KO is sometimes more important than the quality of the opponent faced.

It depends on what sort of fan you're talking about. Shannon Briggs has a load of brutal KOs over nobodies which I don't think were filmed either, or which footage is difficult to get hold of. In fact I think he holds the record for the highest number of 1st round KOs in history. Certainly if you got all his KOs and showed them back to back to an average fight fan, say on an MMA forum, they'd think he was the biggest beast to ever lace them up. More discerning fans, however, would look at the quality of oppostion and draw their conclusions accordingly.

Without film of anything but his most important fights, his highlight reels just do not compare to David Tua's or Mike Tyson's. Without film on the majority of Tua's KO's, we would have to rely on footage of his fights against the likes of Lennox Lewis, Chris Byrd, Hasim Rahman, but there would not be much to show. Atleast Shavers could claim to having knocked down/hurt the likes of Larry Holmes, Muhammad Ali, Jimmy Young and Ron Lyle among others.

I'm not concerned with how cool each respective fighters' highlight reel is. We have all, or nearly all, of Shavers's fights against middle to upper level opponents already, and these are the sorts of fights around which an argument should be based, not the bum beatings.

But this is all kinda beside the point. People have been drawing their conclusions on Shavers for the last thirty years based, I would assume, on the footage that is available to all the rest of us. If they have a secret stash of never-before-seen early fights which they share only amongst fellow members of the Shavers GOAT Puncher Cult, then they're not doing their argument any favours by keeping it in the dark.

[BennyST]

As for Shannon saying that Vitali hit harder than Foreman.. Foreman was 49 when he fought him, I would think much of his power dissipated, no?

A lot more than just his power dissipated imo. The only thing he kept, or gained in, was his ability to think under pressure and relax in the ring, no ****. In fact, it was really his ability to finally know to relax that made him a top fighter even at that age and allowed him to finally win his title back.

[JeanPaulValley]

Not really.

Ali,Norton all give an edge to Shavers over Foreman.

In a recent youtube interview post Vitali fight,Briggs says Foreman indeed hit harder than Lennox and Vitali. He said Vitali was his best opponents overall but Foreman (age 48) hit harder and "hurt you with every shot."

Holyfield also said punch for punch "George hit me harder than any fighter."
This includes Tyson,Lewis,Bowe,Mercer

So Shavers hit harder than Foreman according to Ali,Norton etc
I'd say Shavers hits way harder than arm puncher Vitali.

[Fury4daWIN]

Does anyone know if any 'new' footage of Shavers's fights has come to light, or are we still limited to the fifteen or so fights available on the net?

At the moment it's a pretty crappy body of data to base any argument on. Hence all the second hand evidence.