What makes a tough fighter...?

[Russell]

Is it mindset/perception of ones own toughness (Like Chuvalo's explained)
willpower, neck muscles to stop the head/chin from turning too much in either direction, some other intangible... What?

Some people who should seemingly have no chin like Panama Al Brown are just as tough relative to their size as McCall is at heavyweight.

Thoughts?

[Ted Spoon]

When a fighter is hit the result depends on the degree of the following equation - Mentality x Foundation, but it is nearly all about mentality. When you're hit, and it hurts, and you're not unconscious, your mind will decide how you'll react.

Note - 95% of knockouts or stoppages are mental submissions.

A good come-forward fighter who puts himself in the firing line expects that he is going to get hit, so naturally he is pretty good at copping a shot.

A stand-up, fencing-like boxer may have a solid foundation, but because he is defensively minded, concerned with not getting hit, his nervous system and state of mind is more prone to getting a nasty shock if tagged good.

When you say 'tough' to Ted Spoon he thinks of one with great resistance who would keep responding when hurt, and getting back up when floored - that is the essence of 'fighting tough'.

[Lex]

If we knew the answer to that we could patent it and sell it to Everlast. :hey

There are various popular adages in boxing, one of which is that the toughest boxers come from the streets. That was true in the cases of Danny "Little Red" Lopez and Roberto Duran. But it didn't seem to be true for Mike Tyson, who caved in under pressure.

Carlos Monzon's trainer said the toughest fighters didn't come from the streets; they came from prison. Again, that's been true of some champs, while others seem to have been hindered rather than toughened by the experience.

There are just as many cases to indicate that a perfectly normal lower class or middle class background made for tough fighters.

I like to parody Teddy Atlas, who's a good guy but tends to rant almost like John Madden and Yogi Berra: "75% of boxing is 90% mental."

[The Kurgan]

Abs.

[SevenSamurai]

A tough fighter can be defined in terms of these qualities and this order of importance:


Stamina and work rate
Heart
Chin
Defensive Abilities
Offensive Abilities

[janitor]

Where did you pluck that percentage from?

I don't know where Mr Spoon plucked it from but I am certain that it is more or less the case.

[janitor]

There are many factors that go into a fighter being hard to stop and having a good chin is just 60% of the battle. There are fighters who got knocked down a dozen times and generaly got up and there are fighters who got knocked down a couple of times but never got up.

[Ted Spoon]

Where did you pluck that percentage from?

Yours truly through a comprehensive observation of fight film throughout the decades.

[Lex]

I don't wanna try to assign a credible number to KO's from which the boxer might recover vs. those that are beyond the point of recovery - as an amateur boxer I was never knocked out, but I had my cage rattled a few times.

But I can assure you, based on talking with boxers who'd been knocked out (including my brother, a slick boxer but he had a glass jaw), you can't judge by the way a fellow moves his eyes. Some KO's are neural disconnects from the neck down. The fighter is perfectly conscious and aware of what's going on, but he's temporarily paralyzed and simply cannot get up; or he may not be able to regain control quickly enough to assure the referee that it's safe to continue. I think this is what happens sometimes with boxers who argue that they were okay and the fight shouldn't have been stopped. The lights were on and the guy was at home, but he couldn't get out the door.

And then there were the kinda KO's my brother experienced - he never remembered a thing. That's how Joe Louis described his first fight with Schmeling - after a certain point he'd taken so many right hands he couldn't remember the rest of the fight. He was on autopilot until it was finally stopped.

And you can bet your ass that if Qawi could have gotten up in the rematch against Holyfield, he would have. Dwight was a tough, proud SOB. But he got clocked by a classic short right hand that he never saw coming. His eyes were open, he even seemed to be grinning (a typical Qawi reaction to hard punches), and he was struggling to get up. But he was long gone.

Nowadays I'm beginning to wonder whether there are more referees who don't want a fight to go on than fighters who want to quit. Some refs seem to jump the gun too often. We need tougher referees, more Arthur Mercantes and Carlos Padillas, Zach Claytons, guys who knew how to let guys fight while protecting them from serious injury. I'm sick of these "third men in the ring" who make themselves the stars.