Earnie Shavers

Earnie Shavers
Shavers in an interview in August 2005
Data
Birth Name	Earnie Dee Shaver
Weight class	Heavyweight
nationality	US-american
birthday	August 31, 1944
place of birth	Garland , Alabama
style	Left delivery
size	1.83 m
Combat Statistics
Struggles	89
Victories	74
Knockout victories	68
Defeats	14th
draw	1

Earnie Shavers , actually Earnie Dee Shaver , (born August 31, 1944 in Garland , Alabama ) is a former American heavyweight boxer . He was titled with several "battle names", including The Acorn, The Black Destroyer or KO-King .

career

He had a brief but successful amateur career, culminating in winning the 1969 U.S. Championship. In 1968 he was considered one of the promising candidates to represent the USA at the Olympic Games in Mexico. However, after he had suffered a knockout defeat against the German heavyweight Horst Koschemann in the run-up , the future Olympic champion George Foreman was preferred to him.

After winning the amateur championship, Earnie Shavers began a professional career as a heavyweight boxer in November 1969, initially under manager Don King .

From the start, Shavers was a great hit in his right hand. On the other hand, he had neither adequate ability to take nor the conditional requirements that would have enabled him to have a longer career with winning the heavyweight title.

He went KO for the first time in 1970 against the then undefeated Ron Stander. Stander was later named after his title fight against Joe Frazier , by " Ring Magazine " as the worst challenger in heavyweight history. His most significant win against a well-known boxer with good taker skills was Shavers in 1973 against Jimmy Young . The still inexperienced Young had only completed ten professional fights at the time, whereas Shavers had already fought 44 fights.

Shavers achieved his breakthrough in the recognition of boxing experts in the same year with an impressive knockout victory against former world champion Jimmy Ellis . Shavers himself was badly hit at the beginning of the fight, the ex-world champion, known not to be particularly powerful, spent himself completely trying to force the knockout, could be caught by the counter-attacking Shavers and was knocked out very difficult. In the next fight against Jerry Quarry , a very powerful boxer with a known good chin, Shavers was knocked out after an open exchange in the first round. In November 1974, Shavers had a match history of 4 losses and 1 draw in 46 fights. He lost on points to the unknown Ron Stallings, but again had to go down. In 1975 he then lost to the hard- hitting Ron Lyle , a similar boxer type, by technical knockout in the sixth round. Shavers felt a bit shaken after the fight because he had hit Lyle badly at the beginning of the fight. This was saved with the help of the referee by an illegal "long count" over time, as a concession to the audience in Lyle's hometown, where the fight took place.

The years 1976 to 1979 can be seen as the high point of Shaver's professional boxing career, here he was able to fight twice for the world title. When he knocked out three highly rated opponents ( Clark , Williams , Smith ) in succession in 1976/77 , he had qualified for higher tasks. The fight against Roy "Tiger" Williams, a former sparring partner of Muhammad Ali , who was supervised by boxing legend Joe Louis and was held in Las Vegas on December 11, 1976 , was described by Shavers as the toughest fight of his career. He won after a hard exchange of blows, in which both opponents exhausted themselves to the performance limit and balanced on the edge of the knockout, by a final knockout in the tenth round.

On September 29, 1977 Shavers was able to fight Muhammad Ali for the first time for the heavyweight title. To everyone's surprise, he was able to keep up in boxing, was able to hit Ali several times at the beginning of the fight, but finally lost with six to nine rounds on points. The final fifteenth round of the fight, in which Shavers was able to keep up even more amazingly, was nominated as one of the best rounds of the year. Ali commented on Shaver's clout after the fight: "Earnie hit me so hard, he shook my kinfolk back in Africa!" (Earnie hit me so hard that it shook my ancestors in Africa). Teddy Brenner, the match agent at Madison Square Garden , said afterwards that if Ali had such big problems with a shaver, he should stop, he was no longer welcome in the Garden.

But on September 28, 1979 in his next fight against the young Larry Holmes , Shaver's boxing limitations showed again. In a twelve-round he lost every round. In an elimination match to challenge the now titleholder Holmes, Shavers boxed against Ken Norton in 1979 and knocked him hard in the first round. So it came to the rematch against Holmes, this time it was about the world title (WBC). Holmes once again had no problems with Shavers until he took a direct hit in the seventh round and went heavily to the ground. But with great willpower he got up and later won by knockout. More than any other precipitation, this founded the Shavers myth.

Two further knockout defeats in 1980 against Bernardo Mercado , a tall racket, and against the beefy "concrete skull" Randall "Tex" Cobb irreparably damaged Shaver's aura as a world-class boxer. In particular, the defeat against the boxer-poorly limited Cobb was resented by the trade press, even presented as "unforgivable". The most prestigious journal "Ring-Magazine" wrote: " His knockout loss at the hands of Tex Cobb cannot be forgiven. Shavers totally exhausted himself teeing off on Cobb's cement head. By the eight round he could no longer lift his arms, and Cobb, hitting him at will, didn't even have the firepower to knock him down. "(His knock-out defeat at the hands of Tex Cobb cannot be forgiven. Shavers exhausted himself completely by pounding himself on Cobb's cement skull. By the eighth round he could no longer raise his arms and Cobb pounded him at will and didn't even have the firepower to knock him down.) In 1982 he competed against Joe Bugner . He knocked Bugner to the ground in the first round and won the fight by technical knockout in the second round.

Shavers myth

Having achieved almost all of his victories through short knockouts, Shavers is now portrayed by many boxing experts and journalists as the hardest hitting heavyweight boxer of all time. Even more serious are the statements of his legendary opponents Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes, who each stated after the end of their careers that Shavers was the toughest "puncher" they had ever faced in the ring. In view of the opposition of these two legendary boxers, which included punches like Sonny Liston , Jerry Quarry , Joe Frazier or George Foreman as well as Gerry Cooney and Mike Tyson , a remarkable statement that naturally cannot be measured objectively. Mike Tyson fans argue, for example, that their idol, unlike Shavers, was finally able to knock out Larry Holmes (who, however, had aged). Holmes himself emphasized several times that Shavers had hit much harder than Tyson. He compared: “Being hit by Mike Tyson was like getting hit by a speeding Ferrari, being hit by Earnie Shavers was like being hit by a Mac Truck!” ( Being hit by Tyson is like being hit by a racing Ferrari - being hit by Shavers is like being rammed by a heavy truck).

Others

Shavers retired in 1995 after completing a few minor fights sporadically in the 1980s and 1990s. Shavers then worked for several years as a church chaplain in Phoenix , Arizona . He was also a gardener for Don King at times . In 2000 he moved to England , where he now works as a receptionist in a luxury restaurant in Liverpool .

Web links

• Earnie Shavers in the BoxRec database