earnie shavers: the hardest heavyweight puncher ever?

[IamInuit]

I'd take this guy I think,

He had a 17” neck, 15” biceps, a 42 ½” inch chest and a 73” reach

He had huge shoulders and massive back muscles. He was known for his quick hands, debilitating left jab, crushing hook, powerful right cross, smashing uppercut and devastating body punches. He was equally adept at punching from long range or short punches at close range. When he had his opponent hurt he was a deadly finisher.

He was master at the art of feinting.

He was also an outstanding defensive fighter. A master at blocking an opponents leads with an open glove with the rear hand in proper position, a master glove blocker and counter puncher as well as a fighter who would duck and counter putting his whole body into his blows. He had the perfect balance, timing and leverage of a great puncher.

Mike Silver stated ;

Quite possibly the greatest fighter who ever lived, Langford mastered every punch. His short hook on the inside and his right cross and uppercut were particularly deadly. His punishing jab was also one of the best. He was a strategist who knew how to maneuver, with the ability to explode out of an offensive or defensive position. He could instantly stop when retreating, revert to the offensive, and in the blink of an eye render an opponent unconscious with trip-hammer blows thrown in four and five punch combinations. Langford's every move embodied the technique of a studied master boxer. During his prime he was rarely outfought, out-thought, or out-punched.

William Detloff wrote,

he wasn't simply an all out slugger. He was smart and crafty and knew how to out-think guys in the ring. He could fight inside or outside and was impossibly strong. He was decades ahead of his time.

Ring founder Nat Fleischer reported:

He was as quick and slippery as an eel in action, highly intelligent and made up of surprising dodges from head to heels. Sam used his bulky shoulders and clever blocking arms to avoid blows and his potent punching power stayed with him until the end of his career.

Norman Clark who saw him fight on his tour of England wrote,All in the Game 1935 said;

For working up speed he had Jimmy Walsh, the bantamweight champion of the world, with him. The pair used to box together lightly, but at a great pace, and I was surprised to find that even in this sort of work Sam was every bit as fast and clever as Walsh himself.

R. Stockton stated,

He had all the attributes of a great fighter, speed, punching power, an amazingly elusive defense, the ability to absorb punishment, and unlimited endurance.

Al Laney wrote,

This is the man competent critics said was the greatest fighter in ring history, the man the champions feared and would not fight, the man who was so good he was never given a chance to show how good he really was.

Harry Wills described in the February 1953 Boxing and Wrestling Magazine what his knockout losses to him were like. Wills said he was hit so hard each time that he doesn’t remember being knocked out!

I was knocked out three times in my career, twice by him and in my last fight by Paulino Uzcudun. I still don't know, except from hearsay, what punches he used to knock me out. The first time it happened was 1914. We were supposed to go twenty rounds, when the fourteenth began I was going easy. He was in a bad way. I backed him around the ring trying to set him up for a one punch finish. His eye was bleeding and the last thing I remember was having him against the ropes just about five feet from his corner. It must have happened right then.

Jack Dempsey just like Johnson wanted nothing to do with him and in his autobiography
he admitted it saying,

The Hell I feared no man. There was one man, he was even smaller than I, and I wouldn’t fight because I knew he would flatten me. I was afraid of him

Johnson did fight him once but he was a 20 year old and a lightweight at the time and the 28 year old Johnson outweighed him by 50 pounds and Johnson even in his win mew he was lucky that he got to the kid when he did. He would say later,

I don’t want to fight that little smoke,” said Johnson. “He’s got a chance to win against anyone in the world. I’m the first black champion and I’m going to be the last.

Jim Flynn, said of his punching power:

I fought most of the heavyweights, including [Jack] Dempsey and [Jack] Johnson, but he could strength a guy colder than any of them. When he hit me it felt like someone slugged me with a baseball bat

In the end the official record has him at over 300 fights but the real tally is most likely much more then that. He knocked out virtually every top heavyweight he faced with most of them being men who were also ducked by the likes of Johnson and Dempsey. With 140 ko's on his official record, he blasts out the records of guys like Tyson and Foreman combined or any other heavyweight duo.


A few months before his death, he said,

“Don’t nobody need to feel sorry for old Sam. I had plenty of good times. I been all over the world. I fought maybe 600 fights, and every one was a pleasure!”

Given his size in comparison to all others, in my mind he's the biggest puncher in heavyweight history.
He had to have been given the disparities. He fought for 24 years until he was pulled out of the ring when totally blind and never got a title shot other then Gans and Walcott at lower weights. By all accounts he beat Barbadoes Joe and beat Gans for his first loss in ten tears but was 2 pounds over on fight night so never got the title.