Why Deontay Wilder’s the biggest puncher in boxing history: Top ten heavyweight hitters

Midway through the most famous fight in ring history, the most feared puncher of heavyweight boxing’s golden age landed the mightiest of all the blows thrown that steamy night in Zaire.

At which point The Greatest whispered in his ear: ‘That all you got, George?’

This was the moment when a grizzly bear of a man who had been variously described by his victims as hitting like a sledgehammer, a runaway truck, a steam-hammer and a lightning bolt, knew the game was up.

Minutes later, Muhammad Ali knocked out George Foreman to become the heavyweight champion of the world for the second of three times.

Against all odds, contrary to all predictions, in defiance of all logic, Big Bad George had been Rumbled in the Jungle.

That knot of Ali’s genius not only reeled in the WBC and WBA titles, but also dragged Foreman down the rankings of the heaviest hitters of all time.

Maybe he was still a bigger puncher than the smaller Rocky Marciano but any argument that he might be more thunderous than the immortal Joe Louis or the decapitating Jack Dempsey had dissipated and the question arose as to whether Sonny Liston, despite his two defeats by Ali, also wielded more concussive power.

Ten fights in a mere three years later, Ali stirred the pot once more by proclaiming the unsung Earnie Shavers as the hardest puncher he ever faced — and that included Foreman, Joe Frazier and Ken Norton, who broke his jaw.

Of the second-round punch which rendered him woozy for the rest of his 15-round victory over Shavers, Ali said: ‘My ancestors in Africa felt the shock.’

Then along came Mike Tyson and the age-old bar-room debate began again. Iron Mike mowed down all before him to become the youngest ever world heavyweight champion.

All the huge punchers add the power of intimidation to the weight of their blows but none struck such dark, deep fear into the hearts of their opponents as Tyson. It raised hairs on the back of our necks merely to be in the arena as he came out to fight clad in just his black boots and shorts with white towelling over his shoulders, exuding menace.

Our much-loved Frank Bruno packed a wallop of his own but when it came to confronting Tyson a second time, he knew what to expect. On his lonely walk to the ring in Las Vegas, he crossed himself more than 20 times.

The Almighty and the referee took mercy on him within three rounds.

Another valiant Brit, Julius Francis, was flattened five times in less than four minutes. Of the final punch, this 17-and-a-half stones of fighting manhood recalled: ‘Mike actually lifted me off my feet with that uppercut.’

Even when in decline after three years in prison and two defeats by Evander Holyfield, Tyson retained devastating one-punch power.

In the fight after he made a real meal of Holyfield’s ear, he was in trouble again, losing the first four rounds against one-time world champion Francois Botha. A single, perfect right hook in the fifth dropped the bull-like South African flat on his face for several minutes.

As Tyson says of himself: ‘Everyone has a plan until I hit ’em in the mouth.’

Not until after he took a savage beating from Lennox Lewis, who has a claim of his own to a place among the top 10 heavy-hitters, did the force finally leave him. Though not with it the many who still revere Iron Mike as the biggest puncher of all.

Now that notion is under modern challenge. Deontay Wilder has emerged from sleepy Tuscaloosa in deep Alabama to challenge all the old pre-conceptions with the highest KO ratio yet — 95 per cent from 41 brutal stoppages in 43 unbeaten fights. Many have come in the first round, many by one-punch devastation.

That knockout record would be even higher had Tyson Fury not risen from the canvas as miraculously as Lazarus from his death-bed after being dropped unconscious in the last round of their first collision.

It is a cautionary thought for the Gypsy King as he heads from that draw to a second helping that the only other heavyweight to take Wilder the distance, Bermaine Stiverne, was crunched in the first round of their second fight.

Not only that but in another rematch, Wilder has most recently dispatched the dangerous Luis Ortiz for the second time with one explosion of dynamite.

So now, as he and Fury prepare for Saturday night’s rematch in Las Vegas, discussion rages through the blood fraternity as to whether Iron Mike and the Bronze Bomber have overtaken the legends of yore in the punching stakes and, if so, which of them is the slugger supreme.

This is a complex conundrum. If knockout statistics were all that counted, then Anthony Joshua with a 87 per cent ratio would rank above Dempsey and Tyson among others. Not quite yet, AJ, after just 23 fights including that shock loss, albeit redeemed since, to Andy Ruiz Jnr.

Nor do the win-loss-draw records alone validate mega-hitting power. If they did, Marciano with his unblemished 49 victories, including the stoppage of Joe ‘the Brown Bomber’ Louis in his last fight, would bestride this pantheon. If only Shavers had used his powers to flatten the 11 men who beat him.

There are also such issues as the quality of opponents, the strength of each era and career longevity. As well as the ever-increasing size of heavyweights and the ongoing improvements in training, diet and sports science which are producing bigger, stronger, faster behemoths. Nor can this assessment take into account the pound-for-pound power of such fabled punchers down the divisions as Thomas Hearns, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Prince Naseem Hamed, Gennady Golovkin, Canelo Alvarez or Japanese phenomenon Naoya Inoue who is swatting flyweights for fun.

Manifestly, Tyson or Wilder would obliterate each and every one of them in a heartbeat. Which brings us to the crux of this weighty matter. David Haye, an 81 per cent knockout artist himself who stands alongside Holyfield as one of only two cruiserweight champions to win a world heavyweight title, is in no doubt who is now the mightiest of them all.

‘I’ve sparred with Wilder,’ he says. ‘I’ve felt it. I know. His power is phenomenal. Even in 20-ounce gloves in the gym, he stuns everyone he spars with. He stunned me often. My haymaker is a hell of a right hand and I think I buzzed him once or twice.

‘But nothing like he buzzed me. It’s scary what he can do to opponents in fights wearing 10-ounce gloves. For sure, he is the biggest puncher ever.’

Ben Davison, Fury’s trainer for the first Wilder fight but replaced since, agrees. He said: ‘I had my close-up view from the corner as Deontay knocked down Tyson. I’ve never seen such power. It’s unique. Like everyone else, I still have no idea how Tyson got up.’

There is a marked difference in style between my top two contenders. Iron Mike at his 5ft 10½in best went in low for the kill on high-speed feet with lightning hands, throwing left and right hooks to head and body with snarling, brain-scrambling ferocity. The Bronze Bomber stands a surprisingly slender 6ft 7in, but that rangy frame generates devastating power through elongated arms, those whiplash levers detonating instant concussion.

So who’s it to be? Tyson the elemental, primitive force. Or Wilder, this extraordinary freak of nature who defies convention.

As a Tyson man for years, the time has come for me to bow to Wilder when he says: ‘I think I deserve to be recognised now as the biggest puncher ever.’

Yes, Deontay.

Mirror, mirror on the wall,

You are the scariest of them all.