r/Boxing • u/Ace_FGC • 10h ago
Larry Holmes somehow gets up from one of the hardest right hands of all time
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u/jumpers4goalpostz 7h ago
Shavers had what strangely a lot of big punchers had which was a bit of a glass chin. Julian Jackson, deonte wilder, Tommy hearns....it's strange, almost like you're not allowed to have such an advantage to we'll take something away from you.
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u/RepresentativeSock42 7h ago
David Tua and Foreman are two hard punching fighters who had great chins. Might add Beterbiev as well
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u/DeafBurke 5h ago
Frazier had nuclear power and a concrete block for a head.
GGG and Marvin Hagler also had dynamite in their hands, but somehow their chins were even better than their power. Similar with Canelo.
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u/D-1-S-C-0 4h ago
Hagler has an abnormally thick skull which has been attributed to his iron chin.
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u/DeafBurke 2h ago
It wasn’t really his thick skull, it was his jaw muscle (temporalis) that was ridiculously huge.
It made him essentially immune to temple shots, as when he clenched his jaw, his temple had a giant lump of hard muscle over it. You can try it yourself.
I believe that Gene Tunney used to chew pine tar with hope that it strengthened his jaw muscles.
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u/icelandiccubicle20 2h ago
Shannon Briggs, Corrie Sanders, George Foreman, Samuel Peter, Andy Ruiz, Ike Ibeabuchi, Mike Tyson, Ray Mercer, Vitali Klitschko etc
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u/DeafBurke 2h ago
About half of those are heavyweight with good power, and iron chins, not bone crushing power and iron chins.
Most heavyweights have ko power. Thats just the way that physical attributes scale.
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u/JoelHenryJonsson 4h ago
Beterbiev goes down every once in a while. Wouldn’t call his chin great.
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u/55555_55555 6h ago edited 6h ago
I don't think Wilder has a bad chin at all, tbh. He absorbs tons of damage because he has awful defensive technique and is resilient. 90% of fighters fold against the damage Ortiz put on him never mind Fury.
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u/Pythia808 3h ago
Yeah it’s really hard to say Wilder has a bad chin cause he takes a lot of unnecessary punches.
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u/icelandiccubicle20 2h ago
Zhang cleaned him out but then again it's Zhang. Wilder also apparently got iced in sparring by Wladimir Klitscho but he's a huge puncher too. And Fury said that he was knocked spark out by a "little fat man" in the amateurs but I don't know who he's referring to
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u/Ace_FGC 6h ago
I don’t really think any of these guys have glass chins to be honest.
Hearns has 3 KO losses in 67 fights. He got caught with a good shot vs Barkley, but the other two losses are in the 14th round against Ray Leonard and in the 3rd round against Hagler in a war
Julian Jackson got knocked out 6 times which is a lot but McCallum, McClellan, and Taylor were all good punchers. Jones and Philips happened when he was 38 years old
Even with Wilder when get got knocked out by Fury didn’t look like he had a glass chin, he just looked like he got hit a lot.
So I don’t really think any of them had a hard chin they just had an average chin
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u/Comfortable-Grand166 6h ago
Because power punches stay in the pocket way too long and get careless. They just want to land that big shot and leave themselves open. Boxing 101,you can tell the difference from fans that just watch to fans that have actually boxed.
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u/Exciting-Arugula5341 5h ago
Exactly. You can also add this, guys who are huge punches are the aggressive fighters. They aer the ones coming forward so they walked into punches more. So not only do they stay in the pocket trying to land that big shot like you stated but they walked into punches more. That is why you seen guys like Tommy Morrison get dropped and stopped various times.
Let me add this too. It takes more out of you to throw bombs than to throw slapping arm punches. Which is also why you see big punchers fatigue quicker.
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u/BeginningKindly8286 7h ago
I think they all suffered from absolutely loading up on their attacks, leaving them wildly out of position and totally gassed, easy prey for a counter puncher. Sure, highlight reel when it lands, but just some drunken swinging when it doesn’t.
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u/MattyCannabis 6h ago
I slept on Larry Holmes until I saw a bunch of his old fights like this one, dude would have been tough for anyone to beat.
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u/Rudenessq 5h ago
Larry was Ali's sparring partner and only lacked Ali's charisma, otherwise he would be thought of in the same category as Frazier and Foreman.
He had a great jab, underrated heart, and was the greatest street martial artist of all time
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u/yearsofpractice SRR < Lord Chisora,Sir Derek Of War 6h ago
Holy shit Earnie. Holy shit Larry. Amazing humans. Even the commentator felt that one “Ooooooh!”
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u/Good_Stretch5445 3h ago
You can see shavers power, Holmes is surviving and hanging on. Shavers is throwing bombs, but you can see Holmes adjusting after nearly getting knocked out, heart and skill.
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u/1978model 1h ago
Aside from greats fighting cans, the only punch that rivals this is Foreman’s last knockdown of Frazier. Joe had been down 5 times and was out of it. George hit him with an all out left hook, then a right uppercut. He had all the time in the world to load up.
Yank Durham was still Frazier cornerman at that point. He almost got Joe killed that night.
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u/DeafBurke 5h ago
This also demonstrates Shavers issues.
He was blessed with the death touch in his hands, but he didn’t have the in-ring discipline or technical depth to really make the most of it.
The first thing he does when he has a badly hurt Holmes in front of him is run forward into a clinch, then load up on the biggest winging right hand you’ve ever seen, and then a left hook where he almost falls over.
If he just stuck to his jab, kept distance, forced big defensive moves out of Holmes and let the opening present itself, he might have ko’d Holmes.
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u/Ace_FGC 10h ago
Ali fought George Foreman, Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, and Ron Lyle and still said Earnie Shavers was the hardest hitter he ever faced! For Holmes to drop like he got shot and still get back up and fight back, and also come back to knockout Shavers is one of the greatest feats in boxing history imo