who remembered getting hit by max baer who said it wasn't the larruper? (hatchetman himself said that while archie moore was the hardest puncher he ever competed against, the namesake of your user nom de guerre surpassed moore, louis, jjw and all others sheppard encountered either in competition or a boxing gym.)
:hi:hi. That was me quoting leroy caldwell a number of times. Caldwell, ken norton, muhammad ali (on camera), ron lyle (on camera), jimmy young (who was floored in both his matches with earnie, the only knockdowns of his career), and charlie polite were the six common opponents of shavers and foreman who unanimously agreed that shavers was the hardest puncher they ever faced. Shavers-young i was the only time jimmy was stopped until a cooney inflicted cut rescued gerry from a schooling. (unlike shavers and foreman, cooney never staggered jimmy.) earnie's weirdly overlooked hook is what floored young multiple times, and lyle ("he hit me, and the floor came up"), while also initially stunning norton before a right to the body decked ken the first time. The unanimous consensus of all six common opponents is simply too overwhelming to be disregarded, yet some uninformed and delusional posters disregard all this in favor of foreman, claiming to be better qualified to know this than ali, norton, caldwell, lyle, young and polite put together.
The only common opponent of shavers and liston was the never floored henry clark, who rated earnie cleanly over sonny for power after getting blasted out in round two of the ali-norton iii undercard at yankee stadium. Henry didn't have nearly the number of bouts chuvalo had, but he squared off against many more huge punchers, actually defeated some of them, even blew out jeff merritt in 47 seconds of their rematch when catching him cold, and took mercado the ten round limit in clark's career finale. But the shavers-clark ii demonstrated what a different animal earnie was with a healthy right hand.]
chuck wepner has clearly stated many times in no uncertain terms that liston definitely hit him harder than foreman (who couldn't drop chuck), and sonny's body shot knockdown of the huge wepner is a monster. They were in mid ring, chuck was not caught off balance, and liston drove forward a right hand into wepner's midsection core which bowled chuck backwards onto his rump.
Quick tillis and larry holmes are the only common opponents of both earnie shavers and mike tyson. The footage conclusively validates the assertion of both james and the assassin that the right hands earnie planted them with were far more devastating as individual punches than what mike landed on them. (tyson did lay a dazed larry out with that third knockdown after a 45 second chase, but a rusty and misfiring 38 year old larry still came within five seconds of surviving that round. The holmes of shavers ii would have been completely clear headed long before 45 seconds had expired. Peak for peak, i have zero doubt that larry would have stopped mike late, although he might have to get off the deck at some point.)
right, which means they're not looking at his record, only claiming to. Not only was he the first guy to stop young, and the only one to ever floor him, but nobody else ever put jimmy ellis down for the count (frazier couldn't do it with what joe indicated on camera to jim clash may have been the hardest shot of smoke's career). Earnie is the only one to ever knock down and knock out tiger williams. Joe bugner was stopped four times in 83 career bouts. His quickest exit was against shavers, who decked him in the first, and halted him in the second. In ron lyle's first 35 bouts, he had never been floored. Earnie introduced big ron to that experience in round two. Today, and maybe in a neutral venue then, that one would have been halted then and there, but it took place in lyle's denver. Still, only the bell saved ron from a guaranteed second round defeat, sounding just before a charging shavers had a chance to hit him again after lyle got up with great difficulty.
Okay, people might say bugner was aging and rusty after a layoff, that ellis was caught cold early and was undersized, and that young was too inexperienced. But clark went more rounds with more big punchers than chuvalo did, and would deck howard "ko" smith in his next match before finishing up by completing ten rounds with the deadly mercado. Henry was not particularly elusive a target. Yet norton and liston were the only two other guys to stop him, and both matches were televised on extant footage. It took ken nine rounds, and sonny seven rounds to stop clark on his feet. (norton closed his eyes.)
clark, with his wins over merritt, tiger williams, machen, mac foster, a 14-1 jody ballard (right before shavers i), and the career making upset of a 5-1 manuel ramos in 1964 does, i think, represent him as an example of a solid chinned veteran of quality that earnie took out. [and on pages 52 and 53 of "going the distance," norton lauded henry, stating, "he was a beautiful boxer with a great chin, and also a classy gentleman."] maxie, i think a distinction needs to specified here between boxing abilities and finishing skills. Earnie wasn't a very good finisher, didn't have the killer "instinct" of a duran, and top shelf "swing for the fences" hay-maker punchers like cuevas, max baer and shavers can't put combinations together well like the much faster and shorter punching louis, dempsey and tyson (originally). Shavers entered clark i in paris with a bruised right hand, and bewildered a stunned silent 45 year old rookie color analyst larry merchant by turning cutie with his long left jab and quality lateral movement [probably drawn on from his youthful gridiron experiences.]anybody who doesn't think earnie could stick while on the run, only had a right hand, and was deficient in boxing skill against world class competition, needs to see the rarely viewed shavers-clark i.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rabsgzdljbk
correct, and he could be effectively tied up when trying to follow up on a stunned opponent, as he repeatedly was after dropping mercado. Some writers in the late 1970s and early 1980s criticized him for not optimizing his reach better to make more use of his jab, but earnie's heavy club like arms and 6'0" height along with other factors simply didn't supply him with the physical template and muscular endurance necessary. He came into paris knowing he'd have to win over the distance, and allowed for both his remaining abilities and limitations with his right hand dis-empowered. I think he looks far better sticking and moving than max baer (who didn't jab when retreating from carnera), and more fluid and graceful with his lateral movement than many other one punch artists, but his gridiron background as a lineman entailed momentary bursts of quick lateral movement, not sustained action. Even in situations where he expected to have to win on the cards going in, he understood that he was a front runner who would need to build up an early insurmountable lead before hanging in there to reach the finish. The sticking and moving did fatigue him in paris, but also produced an unprecedented swelling and cutting of clark's eye which preempted henry's rally. And he entered the late rounds against tiger williams after having swept to an insurmountable early lead on aggression with right handed body shots with roy practicing his brand of his employer's rope-a-dope tactics.tillis, ali and lyle all offered great one-liners about earnie's power.
Shavers was a very smart slugger, who again had experienced his abilities and limitations going into his title shots. He punched himself out against lyle on the ropes because he fully understood that his only chance of winning at altitude in denver was by knockout. Realizing that he was a front runner with a bruised right hand in paris, he jabbed and moved to the early lead against clark, while very deliberately keeping things in center ring. Unlike foreman in kinshasa, he made sure to score with heavy rights to the body on a reclining tiger williams, so he'd at least bank those early rounds on the cards in their ten rounder, in case trying to kill roy's body didn't make his head die, and earnie was right to push himself like that.
For his challenge of ali, he'd already experienced more than once what foreman had never discovered before kinshasa. He had punched himself out in denver, pulled a tenth round knockout from his gut after punching himself out against tiger williams, and knew he could not knock everybody out, that there were immovable objects, not irresistible forces. No, he didn't go after ali when staggering muhammad as many believe he should have, but ali was a master of clinching tactics and survival. Earnie was in trouble at the final bell, but he did go five rounds longer than he ever had before, and even swept rounds 13 and 14. Many believe shavers did do enough to earn that decision (some have him winning as many as ten rounds, although earnie himself has said he agrees with the official scoring, and he certainly did far better than lyle and foreman had with the goat. Nobody came close to staggering ali so many times with individual punches. Far from being yet another gassed stoppage victim, i believe that it was actually shavers more than any other boxer who brought an end to the goat's claim as the best hw in the world. (i don't overlook what inoki did to his legs in tokyo prior to norton iii either.) leon spinks does not come close to dethroning ali if earnie doesn't challenge muhammad first. (and i do think ali's rubber match win over norton ends more clearly in ali's favor without the inoki debacle.) if shavers had gone after ali when muhammad was hurt early, he would probably have been stymied into exhaustion by the middle rounds. The one experience he did not have at that time was going longer than ten rounds, and tentativeness over having never experienced the championship rounds also cost the well conditioned patterson dearly against ellis.
atsch
