In many people’s eyes, Muhammad Ali is the greatest fighter to ever grace the sport of boxing.
Dubbed ‘The Greatest’, Ali hailed from Louisville, Kentucky and enjoyed a glittering career where he was the undisputed heavyweight champion during the early 1970’s.
Throughout his career, Ali faced a number of the greatest heavyweights of all time, including Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Sonny Liston and Larry Holmes. Those iconic ‘Rumble In The Jungle’ and ‘Thrilla In Manila’ events, against Foreman and Frazier respectively, are written into boxing folklore and are still talked about in the present day.
Despite facing such a vast number of hard-hitting heavyweight opponents during his career, in particular Foreman, who knocked out 68 of the 76 opponents he faced as a professional, there is one man that Ali claimed hit him even harder.
Ali revealed that it is Earnie Shavers who was the biggest puncher he ever faced.
“Yeah man, stronger than Joe Frazier and George Foreman. He hit hard!”
Ali also claims there was some regret in his decision to fight Shavers so late on in his career, claiming he somewhat overlooked the ‘Puncher of The Century’.
“I don’t know why I picked on him this late in my career. I didn’t really believe he was as good as he was.
I predicted he was going in round seven but he was good, he took all I had and he hit real hard.”
Shavers, who sadly passed away in September 2022, never won a version of the world heavyweight title, but did challenge for it twice in his career against Ali in 1977 and Larry Holmes in 1979.
