Earnie Shavers, Gone at 78, Was The Bambino of Boxing’s Biggest Boppers

Published

3 years ago

September 2, 2022

Earnie Shavers, Gone at 78, Was The Bambino of Boxing’s Biggest Boppers

The technology of sports today, most of them anyway, has become so advanced that what once was the stuff of legend – tales of incredible individual feats that tended to grow taller with the passage of time – now seem like mathematical equations more appropriate for a NASA space launch. Take baseball, for example. The exact distance of every home run hit now in the big leagues almost instantly can be determined by a computer, which also supplies such minutiae as the ball’s exit velocity and the launch angle of the batter’s swing.

All of which means that no matter how many home runs New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge crushes this season, or how precisely calculated the distances of some of his longer blasts are, he can never fire a modern fan’s imagination to the extent that a pre-computerized Babe Ruth did. One of the most oft-recited examples of Ruthian prowess is the ball he hit for his 714^th and final homer, and third of the day, when the 40-year-old Babe, then playing for the Boston Braves, completely cleared the 86-foot stands of Pittsburgh’s spacious Forbes Field. The ball landed on the roof of a rowhouse across the street, some eyewitnesses swearing that it even flew over the roof by 50 feet. The generally accepted distance for Ruth’s career parting shot is an epic 600 feet, which fans are free to believe or not.

Boxing’s analytics have not yet caught up to baseball’s, although CompuBox’s punch-counting statistics at least give the sweet science a veneer of what might yet be. Don’t dismiss the possibility that someday in the not-too-distant future computer chips will be embedded in fighter’s gloves that will provide detailed information as to how many pounds per square inch were delivered by a knockout blow. When and if that day comes, much of the wonderment attached to fans’ fascination with power punchers will be reduced to cold, hard and mostly dissatisfying statistics.

It would be overstating matters to describe heavyweight slugger Earnie Shavers, who passed away Thursday, the day after his 78^th birthday, as “The Bambino” of boxing. Unlike Ruth, still arguably the greatest baseball player of all time and whose 714^th home-run ball is still a cherished memento in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., Shavers is not an inductee into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and likely never will be. He has certain losses to at least partially offset his raft of awe-inspiring knockout victories, and historians can argue, correctly, that “The Acorn” – the nickname conferred upon him by Muhammad Ali – had stamina issues that limited his maximum effectiveness to five or six rounds, as well as a relative inability to shake off the kind of big punches that he so routinely delivered.

The power quotient of the 6’1”, 210-pound Shavers, however, has continued to be discussed in the manner of those who somehow have been at ground zero during a tornado or a tsunami. Even those who survived the potential natural disaster of having shared the ring with him speak of the experience with hushed reverence.

“Man, I been in there with the best,” said James “Quick” Tillis, who scored a 10-round unanimous decision over Shavers on June 10, 1982. “I fought a bald-headed guy named Earnie Shavers, who was the baddest dude in the world. He hit so hard, he could turn goat milk into gasoline.”

And this, from Randall “Tex” Cobb, who stopped Shavers in eight rounds on Aug. 2, 1980: “Nobody hits like Shavers. If anybody hit harder than Shavers, I’d shoot him.”

Also this, from Ron Lyle, after he scored a six-round TKO over Shavers on Sept. 13, 1975: “Hey, man, that’s the hardest I’ve ever been hit in my life. George Foreman could punch, but none of them could like hit Earnie Shavers did. When he hit you, the lights went out. I can laugh about it now, but at the time it wasn’t funny.”

A 35-year-old Ali was pushed to the limit in defending his WBA, WBC and The Ring heavyweight titles on a 15-round unanimous decision on Sept. 29, 1977, after which he remarked that “Earnie hit me so hard, it shook my kinfolk in Africa.” He further noted that Shavers was “stronger than Joe Frazier and George Foreman. I don’t know why I picked on him so late in my career.”

The Ali bout was the first of Shavers’ two bids for his sport’s grandest prize, but it wasn’t his most notable career near-achievement. That would be his rematch with WBC champion Larry Holmes on Sept. 28, 1979, at Las Vegas’ Caesars Palace. They previously had fought on March 25, 1978, with Holmes, who had yet to win the title, winning a 12-round unanimous decision.

Holmes had plunged to the canvas in the seventh round as if poleaxed by the kind of percussive shot that almost without fail resulted into Shavers winning right then and there. But this was the “Easton Assassin,” whose recuperative powers on this night would prove a match for the challenger’s vaunted firepower.

“If I had one fight, one moment, I could do over, it’d be in the second fight with Larry Holmes,” a reflective Shavers recalled years later. “The punch I had been trying to land all night finally found its mark. An overhand right caught Holmes flush on the button, and down as if he had been deboned. As I headed to the neutral corner, Holmes didn’t stir. I was the heavyweight champion of the world. All my troubles were finally over. It was the greatest feeling I’d ever had. And it lasted for five whole seconds.”

Holmes, who surprised maybe even himself by pulling himself back onto his feet before the count reached 10, somehow made it to the bell ending the round and thereafter seized control again en route to winning by 11^th-round TKO. But he never forgot what it was like to be drilled like he’d never been nailed before or later. He would later say that Shavers had hit him harder than Mike Tyson did.

“Man, I still got knots in my head where he hit me,” the “Easton Assassin” recalled. “Earnie could punch very hard, incredibly hard. I hear people say, `Aw, man, he couldn’t possibly have hit as hard as everyone says.’ They think the stories about Earnie’s power are exaggerated. It’s no exaggeration. That power was real.”

Perhaps, had he not risen to prominence in the midst of one of the most gilded golden ages of heavyweight boxing in the 1970s and into the early ’80s, Shavers might have claimed an alphabet title during a less talent-rich era. But being very good, and exceptionally on those occasions when he got there first with a massive shot, wasn’t good enough considering that Shavers’ contemporaries included Ali, Holmes, Foreman, Frazier, Lyle, Gerry Cooney, Ken Norton, Michael Spinks, Jerry Quarry, Jimmy Ellis, George Chuvalo, Jimmy Ellis and Oscar Bonavena. And while Shavers registered quick knockouts of Norton, Ellis and Young, he also lost inside the distance in matchups with Lyle, Cobb, Quarry and Bernardo Mercado. Including two ill-advised comebacks in 1987 and ’95, he finished 74-14-1, with 68 KOs.

I interviewed Shavers for a fight card on Sept. 26, 2013, at the Sands Bethlehem Events Center in Bethlehem, Pa. He was there along with fellow golden oldies Holmes, Cooney and Thomas Hearns for a meet-and-greet with fans that had paid an additional fee to get autographs and to pose for pictures.

Asked whom he considered to be the hardest-hitting heavyweight, Shavers, then 68, not surprisingly, described himself as “Number One. No one can outpunch me, except God.”

Any list, be it pound-for-pound, hardest puncher, best boxer or whatever, is subjective. Opinions will always vary. In 2003, Shavers was listed as the 10^th-greatest puncher of all time, regardless of weight class, by The Ring, following heavyweights Joe Louis (1), Jack Dempsey (7) and Foreman (9), but ahead of Rocky Marciano (14), Sonny Liston (15) and Tyson (16). Another list of the “Hardest hitters in heavyweight history,” was posted by ESPN.com’s Graham Houston on Dec. 27, 2007, and it had Tyson at No. 1, Louis third, Foreman fourth, Marciano fifth and Shavers sixth.

A more recent such list, The Ring’s 100 greatest punchers of the last 100 years, appeared in a special June 2022 collector’s special. Louis again got the top spot, with Dempsey (4), Foreman (5) and Shavers (6) also in the top 10. The second 10 included heavyweights Marciano (11), Liston (12), Tyson (13), Deontay Wilder (16) and Max Baer (20).

Lists spark debates, and arguing the merits of fighters from different eras has always been a component of what makes boxing enthralling. Was Shavers the biggest hitter ever? Maybe, or maybe not. But he deserves to be in any such discussion, and that should be good enough. God forbid that the barroom arguments that have always sufficed until now move into the realm of digital printouts.

Somewhere, the late, great Babe Ruth probably is glad that he played his game the way it was then.

Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the Class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Round 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, is currently out. The anthology can be ordered through Amazon.com and other book-selling websites and outlets.

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

2 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

3 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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Jaron ‘Boots’ Ennis Wins Welterweight Showdown in Atlantic City

Published

5 days ago

April 12, 2025

David A. Avila

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In the showdown between undefeated welterweight champions Jaron “Boots Ennis walked away with the victory by technical knockout over Eamantis Stanionis and the WBA and IBF titles on Saturday.

No doubt. Ennis was the superior fighter.

“He’s a great fighter. He’s a good guy,” said Ennis.

Philadelphia’s Ennis (34-0, 30 KOs) faced Lithuania’s Stanionis (15-1, 10 KOs) at demonstrated an overpowering southpaw and orthodox attack in front of a sold-out crowd at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

It might have been confusing but whether he was in a southpaw stance or not Ennis busted the body with power shots and jabbed away in a withering pace in the first two rounds.

Stanionis looked surprised when his counter shots seemed impotent.

In the third round the Lithuanian fighter who trains at the Wild Card Gym in Hollywood, began using a rocket jab to gain some semblance of control. Then he launched lead rights to the jaw of Ennis. Though Stanionis connected solidly, the Philly fighter was still standing and seemingly unfazed by the blows.

That was a bad sign for Stanionis.

Ennis returned to his lightning jabs and blows to the body and Stanionis continued his marauding style like a Sherman Tank looking to eventually run over his foe. He just couldn’t muster enough firepower.

In the fifth round Stanionis opened up with a powerful body attack and seemed to have Ennis in retreat. But the Philadelphia fighter opened up with a speedy combination that ended with blood dripping from the nose of Stanionis.

It was not looking optimistic for the Lithuanian fighter who had never lost.

Stanionis opened up the sixth round with a three-punch combination and Ennis met him with a combination of his own. Stanionis was suddenly in retreat and Ennis chased him like a leopard pouncing on prey. A lightning five-punch combination that included four consecutive uppercuts delivered Stanionis to the floor for the count. He got up and survived the rest of the round.

After returning shakily to his corner, the trainer whispered to him and then told the referee that they had surrendered.

Ennis jumped in happiness and now holds the WBA and IBF welterweight titles.

“I felt like I was getting in my groove. I had a dream I got a stoppage just like this,” said Ennis.

Stanionis looked like he could continue, but perhaps it was a wise move by his trainer. The Lithuanian fighter’s wife is expecting their first child at any moment.

Meanwhile, Ennis finally proved the expectations of greatness by experts. It was a thorough display of superiority over a very good champion.

“The biggest part was being myself and having a live body in front of me,” said Ennis. “I’m just getting started.”

Matchroom Boxing promoter Eddie Hearn was jubilant over the performance of the Philadelphia fighter.

“What a wonderful humble man. This is one of the finest fighters today. By far the best fighter in the division,” said Hearn. “You are witnessing true greatness.”

Other Bouts

Former featherweight world champion Raymond Ford (17-1-1, 8 KOs) showed that moving up in weight would not be a problem even against the rugged and taller Thomas Mattice (22-5-1, 17 KOs) in winning by a convincing unanimous decision.

The quicksilver southpaw Ford ravaged Mattice in the first round then basically cruised the remaining nine rounds like a jackhammer set on automatic. Four-punch combinations pummeled Mattice but never put him down.

“He was a smart veteran. He could take a hit,” said Ford.

Still, there was no doubt on who won the super featherweight contest. After 10 rounds all three judges gave Ford every round and scored it 100-90 for the New Jersey fighter who formerly held the WBA featherweight title which was wrested from him by Nick Ball.

Shakhram Giyasov (17-0, 10 KOs) made good on a promise to his departed daughter by knocking out Argentina’s Franco Ocampo (17-3, 8 KOs) in their welterweight battle.

Giyasov floored Ocampo in the first round with an overhand right but the Argentine fighter was able to recover and fight on for several more rounds.

In the fourth frame, Giyasov launched a lead right to the liver and collapsed Ocampo with the body shot for the count of 10 at 1:57 of the fourth round.

“I had a very hard camp because I lost my daughter,” Giyasov explained. “I promised I would be world champion.”

In his second pro fight Omari Jones (2-0) needed only seconds to disable William Jackson (13-6-2) with a counter right to the body for a knockout win. The former Olympic medalist was looking for rounds but reacted to his opponent’s actions.

“He was a veteran he came out strong,” said Jones who won a bronze medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics. “But I just stayed tight and I looked for the shot and I landed it.”

After a feint, Jackson attacked and was countered by a right to the rib cage and down he went for the count at 1:40 of the first round in the welterweight contest.

Photo credit: Matchroom

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