VIDEO: Who Is The Most Dangerous Boxer Of All Times?

In this article I’m referring to concussive power of the punch, which of course favours the heavyweights, and ignores middleweights like Julian Jackson who had 49 KOs in his 61 fights. In that case, from the past 100 years or so when boxing footage has been available, it would be hard to go past the young Mike Tyson. Although a small heavyweight, his explosiveness was a recipe for brain damage. When he was still in his teens he won 19 of his first 20 fights by KO, many of them in the first or second round. He then took the world title at 20 years, once again by a KO in the second round that pretty much sent the then-champ Trevor Berbick flying off his feet. (Btw, when I write KO, this could include TKO, which is a referee stopped fight and called Technical Knockout).

At the time, many fans often felt genuine fear for Tyson’s opponents, because he was really smashing them. To give you an idea, at the time of his 38th fight – the shock loss to Buster Douglas – he entered the ring with a record of 33 KOs from 37 wins (89%), of which nearly half were in the first round, and the total average was just over 2 rounds. In other words, the opponent entered the ring with close to a 90% chance of being knocked out in the first two rounds. Not a particularly entertaining prospect. For various reasons, by the end of his career he was only a shadow of his earlier self. But he still racked up 44 KOs out of his 58 fights (76%), of which 40% were over by round one.

Although relatively short, his concussive power came from his ability to generate the explosiveness via excellent technique from stocky legs that he used as pistons, coupled with extremely dynamic core rotation, and the fact that behind his fists he had some pretty solid bone structure. After Tyson it gets a bit harder to judge. Made more difficult because there has been no method used to objectively grade punch power over the years.

Sonny Liston (39 KOs from 54 fights – 72%) apparently inspired the same fear back in the 60s. However, Liston lacked Tyson’s explosiveness and technique and Ali with superior technique was able to capitalise on that. George Foreman (68 KOs from 81 fights – 83%) also had fearsome power. For a while in the early 1970s when he was young he too had that intimidating aura. But like Liston, he also lacked the additional dimensions required to deal with Ali’s ring manship and skills. But when Foreman entered the ring to face Ali, he had a formidable record similar to Tyson’s, having won 36 of 40 fights by TKO (90%), with an average also of just over 2 rounds per KO.

Marciano reportedly had heavy hands, particularly with 43 of his 49 wins coming by KO (88%). A slight issue there is that his era/record seemed to be absent the quality of opposition that Tyson, Liston and Foreman had. As it happens, one of Tyson’s earlier heroes was another small heavyweight with a fearsome reputation – Jack Dempsey. Known as the Manassa Mauler back in the 1920s, he also was reputed to be quite concussive, and had 44 KOs in his 54 wins (81%). However, this is hard to judge because arguably the heavyweight competition lacked the standard that arrived later, certainly in the 60s-90s period.

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