I grew up in Paterson NJ home to Lou Duva. His family lived in a "suburb" :D of Paterson called Totowa. He belonged to the same social club as did my parents.

During one of the gatherings there I was chatting up this crazy cute girl when he walked over and asked me to leave. I recognized him immediately and complied with his "request" with a very crisp "yes sir!".

For those of you old enough do you remember boxer Ernie Shavers ? That dude had a heck of a punch .

I'll say! Here he is, vs. Ali, 1977. 6 minutes of hilites. Another one a buddy & I watched on closed circuit. There are some who say Earnie got robbed...

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Heard a couple pro boxers say Shavers was the hardest puncher ever

Ali lit him up good in that tape but yeah, he was tuff stuff :)

I've been to two of Floyd Mayweather fights....mostly because he is from my area.
Undefeated in his entire career. I think I saw (on tv) most of his fights. He rarely took a solid punch.

Floyd Mayweather dances around like a Kansas City…you know.

^^^ That's his secret to being undefeated in his career. Glancing blows don't do the job...he won most of his fights on points. I never saw him get hit with a good square punch.

As to his mouth....wasn't Ali the same?

I've been a boxing fan most of my life thanks to my father watching boxing every week when I was young and "asking" me to join him. And was fortunate to grow up in what I consider to be the Golden Age of the sport. There were so many good fighters in all weight classes during this period and lots of TV coverage of all but the PPV /Closed Circuit stuff, usually championship events. Saw a lot of Saturday afternoon ABC Wide World fights.

Got to see Hearns in Detroit while stuck there on a long term project. Knocked out Rojas in 69 seconds. I was impressed. Also saw Smokin' Joe's last fight at the Amphitheater here in Chicago, a "draw" against Floyd"Jumbo" Cummings.

Now and then, I'll pull something up on the web and watch it. It is hard to find boxing aired now and a lot of what I do find, is marginal, with heavyweights that look like Butterbean and fade fast or just poor skills.

I do watch some MMA and enjoy it but still prefer the sweet science.

(Also watch some old school wrestling occasionally - Crusher, Bockwinkel, and the old AWA guys. Nothing like Mean Gene Okerlund interviewing Crusher and Bruiser about the next bums they are going to vanquish after training by running the shores of Lake Michigan with a keg on their shoulders:)

I met Joe Frazier getting take-out Chinese food on the Sunset strip maybe 30 years ago. He was dripping in diamonds and gold jewelry and the lady handing over the food asked him, "aren't you afraid of wearing that much jewelry out in public?"

He snapped back, "afraid of WHO?!" :mad:

Good times. :D

Very possibly. They conspired to ensure it would end early, by standing toe-to-toe and hitting each other in the face for three rounds, almost.