{"id":228657,"date":"2025-10-27T18:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/228657\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T18:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T18:48:07","slug":"muhammad-ali-and-larry-holmes-agreed-on-who-was-the-hardest-punching-heavyweight-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/228657\/","title":{"rendered":"Muhammad Ali And Larry Holmes Agreed On Who Was The Hardest Punching Heavyweight Ever"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former rivals <a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondsout.com\/topic\/muhammad-ali\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Muhammad Ali<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondsout.com\/topic\/larry-holmes\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Larry Holmes<\/a> both agreed on who they believed was the hardest hitting heavyweight in boxing history.<\/p>\n<p>After sharing the ring on a number of occasions as sparring partners, Ali and Holmes would eventually lock horns in October of 1980 for the world heavyweight championship.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/on-this-day-larry-holmes-thrashes-the-remnants-of-muhammad-ali\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">Holmes got the better of his countryman on the night<\/a>, stopping him in the 10th round of their clash at Caesars Palace in what was the eighth defence of his heavyweight title.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/shorts\/X7fagIUxf6E\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In a short video shared by Fighting Highlights,<\/a> Holmes made no mistake in revealing two-time heavyweight title challenger Earnie Shavers as the hardest hitting opponent that he ever shared the ring with.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI got hit by Earnie Shavers, the hardest puncher to ever, I thought, hit anybody. I still got the knock right here, 40 years later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=E8gy5L6Ujuw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Speaking in a separate interview<\/a>, Ali was asked to reveal the biggest puncher that he ever crossed paths with, naming none other than Shavers who he faced back in 1977.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cEarnie Shavers. Yeah, man. Stronger than George Foreman and Joe Frazier. He hit hard. I don\u2019t know why I picked on him that late in my career. I didn\u2019t really believe he was as good as he was. I predicted I\u2019d beat him in round seven, but he was really good. He took all I had and he hit hard.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Known for his thunderous punching power, Shavers racked up an impressive 70 stoppages from his 76 victories, ending with a knockout ratio of 92.11%.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.secondsout.com\/news\/shavers-on-one-better-fighter-than-ali\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">\u2018The Black Destroyer\u2019 challenged unsuccessfully for the world heavyweight championship twice during his tenure<\/a>, falling short to Ali in 1977 followed by Holmes in 1979, but famously had both men in serious trouble in each bout, rocking Ali and dropping Holmes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former rivals Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes both agreed on who they believed was the hardest hitting heavyweight&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-228657","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=228657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}