I think it's just a case of people losing sight (or being ignorant of) the dramatic change in size and athletic ability that has gone on in the last 40-50 years. Earnie deserved his reputation as one of the game's biggest bombers because he has the backing of his peers, and his insane KO ratio speaks for itself. The guy was a huge bomber.

If you talk to anyone here, I think we all understand that a bomber at 147 (Thurman, Maidana, Pac, ect) does not hit as hard as a bomber at 160 (GGG, Lemieux, ect). GGG and Lemieux, who are brutal punchers at 160, pale in comparison to the power of a guy like Kovalev, who is a brutal puncher at 175. We see this all the time: a guy is a huge puncher at his original weight, he moves up and suddenly he's a decent puncher. He moves up again, and suddenly he only gets a knockout every couple of years. Look at Duran: hands of stone, destroying guys at 135, 63-1, 52 KO's. He goes up to WW, he doesn't have nearly the power. He goes up to MW, he doesn't stop anyone outside of a few inexperienced bums who had no business being in there with him. I'm not breaking any new ground, we can all agree and understand that LW power doesn't = WW power and so on.

So if we all know this, why do people still think that a 185lb guy like Dempsey or Marciano, or a 205-210lb guy like Shavers hits harder than a 250lb bomber like Samuel Peter?

And before people bring it up, I know that weight isn't everything and there's a lot more that goes into a punch than size. We've seen guys over 300lbs who weren't very big punchers. We've seen guys around the 210lb range in recent years (David Haye, Herbie Hide come to mind) who hit very hard. They were both very explosive athletes. George Foreman and Shavers were not explosive athletes, they were pure power guys with very flawed technique. And when you're comparing pure power guys at 205-215 and pure power guys at 245-255, there's going to be a big difference.