Top 5 favorite PUNCHERS of all time

Since this is a thread strictly about favorites, I always liked Antwun Echols.

Guy had a dodgy chin, no defense, and zero ring IQ..... but he could punch like a motherfucker.

 

Pipino Cuevas. Especially in his left hook. Unfortunately for him he never landed a flush one on Hearns.

 

I can't believe I forgot Hamed. I was a huge fan of Hamed.

Also, David Tua. I was a fan of his for a long time, used to get shit for it on maxboxing back in the day

 

Tua had that rarity in punchers, late rounds power. Not even Tyson had that.

 

Ahh that's right, I knew Makambi lost one fight on these shores but couldn't remember who beat him. Same with Affif Djelti, he kicked ass whenever he came to Britain, but Colin Dunne managed to get past him.

Since we're on the topic of domestic bangers, I've gotta put Wayne Alexander on here. That guy could SERIOUSLY crack, if not much else, and he came to fight every time.

 

Yeah he was a killer with that hook ... 4 plus years of bone-crunching destruction as champ, then Hearns and then ordinary again ... But when he was champ he was a scary dude

 

I remember him...and I was going to mention him as one of these road-warriors that came to the UK and kept winning....but I think Dunne MIGHT have fought and beaten Djelti before he did his thing with Charles Shepherd and that little taxi-driver guy from Liverpool....cannot remember his name, but he lost a title fight to the awesome JonJo Irwin.

Peter Judson, JonJo Irwin, Charles Shepherd, The Mighty Quinn, Ian Napa, Nono Junior, Damaen Kelly, {who threw 1000 punches in some domestic bust up} ....these guys were surely the Greatest Bums of Are Times....typical Sky Sports 1 undercard padding on a Saturday night in the late 1990's and early 2000's...live from the High Wycombe Centre For Disabled Kids, of course. :: Every now and then some one guy like Shea Neary or the like would threaten to make a breakthrough.

Wayne Alexander, a true puncher of that era.

 

For every great puncher, there is an even greater puncher who lacks the talent to land his bombs. Cuevas probably hit harder than Barkey in a pfp sense, but Barkley could LAND DEM BOMZ! Thats why Marciano is a favourite of mine, despite the fact that there were a great many men who hit harder....he'd happily crouch out of harms way and hit you in the duodenum and the elbow until something cracked or fell off. Harder hitters have spent longer swiping air. Hurt what you can hit, and then hit until it hurts.

 

Another thing about Punchers, Tua is a good example, don't appear to have trained their power very well. Part of power has to be landing the fucking shots. Guys like Tua should have been training footspeed and head-movement and stamina....instead, when it came down to it, he just plodded in and ran out of time. Lewis was one thing, but for him to be landing as little as he did on Chris Byrd was madness.

Who was the better puncher........Tua or Ibeabuchi....Ibeabuchi....cos he could land.

My favourite puncher is the guy who fucking trains like he knows he is a puncher....with all the limitations usually involved with being a puncher.

 

Shit, I forgot about Tua too. I guess it's easy to forget, given how disappointing he turned out to be.

But damn, what a left hook, prime Tua had an ATG heavyweight left hook, and he was just a tubby little guy ::

 

Yeah but who had a better hook, Ibebauchi or Tua...:dunno:

Of the two, Ibeabuchi is my favourite puncher....he didn't just walk around disconsolately throwing his left hook once every 6 minutes.

 

I can't lie, I always had a soft spot for Tua.

I was a huge fan before he became a fat ass.

Limited as all Hell, but his left hook was indeed murderous.

 

Haha yeah the domestic/European scene back then was really fun to watch. The light middles especially, it's just a shame they didn't all fight each other. Alexander, Williams, Takaloo, Farnell, Roberts , Khaliq...a few did fight but there could have been some excellent scraps.

Did you ever post on the BritishBoxing.net forum? It didn't have many posters, but Farnell and Alexander would both post on there. Farnell tried to come across as this level headed intellectual, writing long three paragraph posts about his plans and ambitions for his career, how he wouldn't fight Alexander due to his disrespect etc and Wayne would always respond with these immature, one sentence posts like "shut up fartnell u bum", "why u running fartnell? ill batter u" ::. I think the forum actually ended up closing due to Alexander's constant trolling ::

 

:like:

Echols-Brewer is one of the best brawls ever.

 

I knew about the spats but I never knew about the one between Farnell and Alexander, but there was one called "Spencer" or "Sinclair" and they were at each other and then one day Alexander told him that him and his girlfriend were going off to buy furniture and this guy told Alexander to come up to the Strand and he would sort him out etc etc.

::

I never posted on that forum, know that I think of it.

I remember Boxing Monthly saying it would be a really really really bad idea if Khaliq was allowed to fight Vernon Forrest. Khaliq wasn't that bad and besides they had no qualms about Howie Clarke fighting Vargas in NYC on the Lewis vs Holy undercard.

Clarke is dying of frontal lobe dementia in a Midlands Hospice right now.

Farnell was sort of exposed in the end by Takaloo and he looks a bit spacey these days.

To be honest, a lot of shitty yet big-name fighters have come out of Manchester recently. Farnell and Moore are just two of them.

 

These guys were all big bangers but they were classic B-level bangers.

Khaliq couldn't get Willy Wise out of it. Alexander was KO'd by Harry Simon. Takaloo was beaten by Daniel Santos.etc etc.

 

Remember this? ::

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Yeah real sad about Clarke, did he even win a fight after Vargas beat him? All ambition just seemed to go out the window and he got beaten up all the time.

 

To be fair, Alexander was a world class puncher IMO, he just didn't have much else besides heart. He had a shaky chin too (which was part of the appeal, remember the war in the Abrahams rematch? I watched that live in Crystal Palace on the Simon-Lueshing undercard). Also, Harry Simon was a badass who never reached his potential. Would have loved to have seen him and Vargas square off.

 

3 time champ Randall Bailey

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okfGnACPaEg

 

:bears:

Nice post Gattster, a great scrap and one of my favourite KO's of all time. Wayne was a baaaaad man!

 

Takaloo also had a pretty great KO win over some Irish guy with bleached hair, I remember seeing that on youtube. Overhand right, right on the button.

Randall Bailey. :bears:

 

His fight with Paul Samuels was also a barnstormer:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GBWFzTx8oq8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Jim Rock, who used to live just up the road from me when I was in Ireland.

The truth about Rock is that he was a 168lb pound fighter........he tried to melt down to 154 and compete and it backfired.

 

Yeah. Good fights back then.