The success of any professional boxer tends to rest on their ability to both give it and take it. This mostly pertains to punches, of course, yet the same can also be said of criticism.
One man who knows this only too well is Anthony Joshua, the former two-time world heavyweight champion from Great Britain. He has given and taken a lot in his 13-year professional career, and now, as it reaches its end, some fear he is starting to take more than he is able to give.
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In his last fight, on July 25, Joshua was knocked down by the unheralded Albanian Kristian Prenga within the first 20 seconds of Round 1. He was then dropped again shortly thereafter, by which point both the fight and Joshua’s career seemed as good as finished. He was taking too much, they said, and possibly, given the recent tragedy in his life, this was a fight he had taken on too soon.
Only Joshua’s courage and punching power in the end bailed him out and ensured he would live to fight another day. This, combined with Prenga’s inexperience at the elite level, resulted in Joshua turning the fight on its head in Round 2 and leaving Saudi Arabia with a stoppage win. All he had to do now was face the inevitable inquisition and the speculation surrounding his ability to absorb punches at the age of 36.
This ordeal began at the post-fight press conference, where amid a succession of “reporters” telling Joshua how much they loved him, as well as questions about a proposed all-British clash with Tyson Fury, one journalist summoned the courage to mention the unmentionable.
Anthony Joshua (right) was knocked down twice by Kristian Prenga in their brief fight.
(Mark Robinson via Getty Images)
“Boxing history,” he said, “will tell you that power is the last thing that goes, but the first thing to go is punch resistance — usually. We’ve seen your power is still there, but where is your punch resistance at the moment?”
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“I got back up,” said Joshua, his expression no different than when previously lavished with praise. “That happened in, what, the first 20 seconds of Round 1? I got back up, took a beating, withstood the storm, and came back in Round 2 … “
“But that’s your heart.”
“No, that’s resistance,” Joshua stressed. “Resistance is spirit, resistance is durability, resistance is everything combined. It’s not just one thing. I showed you where I’m at. I was in with someone who had knocked out 20 people [Prenga’s pro record was 20-1, 20 KOs] and he’s a strong guy. He hit me with a good uppercut.
“Boxing’s not pretty. If I get in there and expect it to be pretty, I wouldn’t get back up. I know it’s going to be tough in there. It’s not so much about resistance, it’s that I’m in the ring with strong, heavy-handed guys that are live and they’re coming to win. He hit me with a good shot. So what? You roll it off, get up, take some more punches, keep going until it’s my turn. Let’s see who’s tough now. I came out on top. You need to be asking him about his punch resistance, not asking me about my punch resistance. I’m sitting here victorious. I ain’t the one with issues with my punch resistance.”
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Because he can take it — criticism, that is — the exchange between Joshua and the reporter ended amicably, with Joshua smiling away any concerns regarding his durability and believing his final point won the argument. Whether it did or not is a matter of opinion, but somewhere in the fighter’s response was an acceptance of reality which, in most cases, is viewed as a strength. Joshua, as a former champion, seems to now accept not only the treacherous nature of his profession, but also both the inherent danger of his division and the fact he is aging and perhaps on the decline.
Still, for a fighter it’s the touchiest of subjects, one’s chin, and to quiz them about it is a risk, akin to asking a male porn star about their struggle to remain tumescent. Durability, after all, is rightly considered a prerequisite of a fighter’s trade. To be seen to be lacking it therefore makes them feel like half a fighter, if not half a man.
Sometimes even between two fighters, the chin issue can be a contentious one. Just this month, in fact, we saw evidence of this when Moses Itauma and Filip Hrgović discussed the subject ahead of their IBF heavyweight title fight on Aug. 29.
“I don’t know why you’ve been praised for having a good chin,” said Itauma during a head-to-head with his opponent on DAZN. “That’s not something you should be praised for. Is that a good thing?”
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“It’s the most important thing in boxing,” replied Hrgović. “Without a good chin, you can’t be great.”
“But if you don’t get hit … “
“You’ll get hit at some point. You must get hit sometimes, and if you don’t have a chin, you cannot be a great fighter.”
Which in turn begs the question: Why do some fighters have great chins and others do not?
Moses Itauma (L) and Filip Hrgovic (R) face off ahead of their IBF heavyweight title bout.
(James Fearn via Getty Images)
“I think it’s all to do with genetics,” said Steve Collins, a former WBO middleweight and super middleweight champion who boxed professionally for 11 years, lost just three of 39 fights, and was never once stopped in the ring. “I had an uncle who was one of the hardest men in amateur boxing. He bashed up [London gangsters] the Krays and he bashed up everybody. He wasn’t a great puncher but he was the toughest man you’ll ever see. I then had another uncle on my mother’s side who was an Irish middleweight and heavyweight champion, and also British army champion, and he used to spar and not even know he was being hit. It was pointless sparring him. He just wasn’t fussed.
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“So, I guess it’s hereditary. Some guys can train as hard as possible and do everything right in the gym, and on fight night one punch undoes everything. Then there are other guys who perhaps don’t train as hard and don’t fight intelligently, who can somehow weather the storm and take punches without flinching.”
Interestingly, no sooner had Collins attributed toughness to his family lineage that he wobbled ever so slightly, remembering that he too should get credit for remaining upright. “Mindset has something to do with it as well,” he added. “I never accepted the possibility I could be knocked out. Pain was nothing to me really. I knew when I’d been tagged, but I’d block it out. I didn’t want them [the opponent] seeing. I’d never change my expression. I felt the shots, of course I did, but my opponent might not have known that at the time. And that’s the most important thing.
“On reflection, I reckon there were actually times when I was knocked out on my feet but I stayed upright because I wouldn’t accept the reality.” He paused to laugh. “What was I thinking? That’s madness. But that’s the mindset I thought you had to have. It worked at the time, but I do look back now and think, ‘Oh my God, what was all that about?'”
Steve Collins ate plenty of good shots throughout his Hall of Fame career.
(Getty Images via Getty Images)
Wayne McCullough, another Irishman who based himself in America, knows the feeling. He knows the feeling of taking punches most mortal men would not be equipped to take and he also knows that “madness” to which Collins, now in the relative sanity of retirement, refers. It was, for McCullough, all part of the mindset; something he could then convince himself was part of the method.
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“I remember when I fought [Erik] Morales [in 1999] — he hit me hard, and I yelled at him to hit me harder,” said the former WBC bantamweight champion from Belfast. “It was almost like a game to me. I knew he was hitting me with shots that had in the past knocked people over and now he couldn’t achieve the same result against me. It was the same with [Naseem] Hamed [in 1998]. When he hit me with a great shot on the chin, I felt a little spark — like, ‘oh s*** — but I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. I knew I was going to go straight back at him and that’s what I did.
“When you fight a guy who’s known as a big puncher, if you go straight back at them after they land their best shot, I think you break their heart a little bit. Hamed had 18 knockouts in a row and Morales had nine knockouts in a row when they fought me. After fighting me, though, their knockout ratios diminished and they lost fights as well. I’m not saying I’m responsible for that, but I put them through hard fights and showed them they wouldn’t knock out everybody they hit.”
That McCullough survived 12 rounds in the company of both Hamed and Morales, two of the all-time greatest punchers in the lower weight classes, tells a story of its own. He didn’t just survive, either. He marched forward; he refused to leave them alone. At some points it even appeared as though he craved more, his tolerance for pain clearly higher than it is for most.
Wayne McCullough (left) went the distance with the legendary Prince Naseem Hamed.
(Al Bello via Getty Images)
“Maybe my upbringing had something to do with my toughness,” McCullough said. “Growing up in Belfast doesn’t mean you have been born with a chin, but you certainly feel like an adult when you’re a kid and you learn quickly that you need to be tough to survive. When you see people being shot, hear bombs going off, and have to deal with hatred between religions for no reason, you develop a toughness.
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“Also, my doctor said my skull was twice as thick as the average person’s, so maybe that helped too. Maybe it’s like a shock absorber. By the time the punch registers with the brain, it forgets. I heard [Julio Cesar] Chavez has that as well. It’s not a bad thing to have in common.”
If indeed it is hardship a fighter requires to remain upright in the ring, that might explain why more fighters are considered tough than fragile. Most, after all, have experienced some degree of hardship, whether in the ring or outside it, and most would not be fighting in the first place if they hadn’t endured and navigated at least a few of life’s vicissitudes.
In the case of Howard Eastman, a British Guyanese middleweight who challenged Bernard Hopkins for the world title in 2005, his toughness was something inbuilt, not trained. Like Collins, he credited his ability to take punches to a mindset rather than a physical gift and would laugh in the face of what others call hardship.
“When I was on the streets of London, homeless, I remember walking in the snow,” said Eastman, who for a time would evade rail staff and sleep “among the trains” in the London Underground. “I had never experienced snow before, but my body got so cold, and it got frozen — and then it got warm again. I will never understand how that happened. It was like I had some kind of heater in the body and it just switched on. It was something inside of me I can’t explain, bro. But that’s why when people hit me, I didn’t fall down. I was born with something inside me to overcome all of that. I want to know what it is myself. It’s not a game, boxing. Those guys were hitting me hard. But they never hurt me. I ask myself why all the time. I’m still trying to find out who I am, too.”
Howard Eastman (right) challenged WBC middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins in 2005.
(Myung J. Chun via Getty Images)
The hardest puncher Steve Collins ever encountered was Nigel Benn, whose punches he described as “sickening,” while the toughest man he ever faced was Chris Eubank, someone whose chin was equal to his own. It was for that reason Collins and Eubank went the 12-round distance together twice in 1995; two fights in which neither man looked likely to wilt. It is for that reason, too, the fights and the punches are so memorable.
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“Never did I hit someone as hard and tough as Eubank,” said Collins. “It became abundantly clear just seconds into our first fight that he wasn’t shifting. He was there for the duration and I knew it. He was going to stand there with me and punch when I did and go blow-for-blow the whole way.
“I caught him with shots that I know hurt him — and I could point out those shots to this day — but because he’s such a tough guy, mentally and physically, most people watching at home would never have realized he was hurt. It’s only because I was right there with him, feeling everything, sharing the same experience, that I could sense he was hurt. Even then, within half a minute of me sensing he was hurt, he’d be chucking back dangerous right hands, hard enough to take you out. That’s a very rare ability.”
Just as rare is the ability to recount details of fights with such clarity, both in the immediate aftermath and with the passing of time. That is a luxury enjoyed only by those whose brains keep count rather than shut down.
“Fighters with good chins still get hit and hurt by punches, but they react to them differently,” explained Carl Froch, a former WBC, WBA and IBF super middleweight champion who was also never stopped in his 35-fight pro career. “Rather than taking a shot and landing flat on my back in a daze, I can recall each time I’ve been buzzed and remember exactly how I felt at the time. Fighters with bad chins, or even just decent chins, don’t remember stuff like that. They switch off and short circuit when something big lands on their chin. I was still able to think fairly rationally when hit by something big. I was aware of what was going on, even if I happened to be a bit hurt by the punch itself.”
To prove his perfect recall, Froch said: “Early on in my career, Robin Reid hit me with a really big overhand right [in 2007], and that was probably the most hurtful shot I had taken in my career to that point. Then there was Varujan Davtyan [in 2003] — he hit me with an absolute pisser back in the day. I felt that one run right down my leg all the way to my foot. I can still remember the moment it landed and how I felt. I backed him up to a corner, continued backing him up, got a little bit wild, and then I remember him putting his head down and winding one up straight on my chin. I then backed up, ducked the next shot and the one after that, rolled a little bit, and the bell went. As I walked back to my corner I thought, ‘F***ing hell, that hurt.’
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“When I watched it back on the replay, it was an absolute pisser. My arms were down by my sides and I was backing him up into a corner and he just threw a Hail Mary over the top that nearly paid off. Some of those can hit you and flatten you. You don’t have a lot of choice in the matter. It’s best to just not get lazy and try avoiding them altogether.”
While avoidance in a “not pretty” sport can be difficult to achieve, even the sturdiest fighters understand the importance of trying. In fact, many would, if offered a different hand, choose to avoid punches rather than take them, irrespective of the praise they receive and the reputation they have established for taking them.
“Even if you’ve got a good chin, you can’t depend on it,” warned McCullough. “I’ve spoken to people who have been knocked out, and they say that every time they have been knocked out, it has depreciated them a little bit and their punch resistance has decreased as a result. You basically get weaker and weaker.
“I didn’t want to get to the point where my chin was just completely smashed and I ended up on my back. But that could have happened if I went on and on.
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“I have brain scans regularly and nothing has changed in mine, thankfully. One thing they do say, however, is that your skull changes as you get older and that the top part of your head sort of opens up a little bit. They say it’s perfectly normal, but it’s probably not so normal if you’re still getting hit upside the head for a living.”
Robin Reid takes a punch from Carl Froch (right) during their 2007 fight in Nottingham, England.
(Laurence Griffiths via Getty Images)
For the ones less fortunate, comfort can be found in the argument that it is better to go quickly than to take a sustained amount of punishment and be called “brave.” It is certainly less damaging that way.
As for why some go down when others stay up, there are numerous reasons, only a few of which relate to physical toughness or strength of mind. Look at someone like “Prince” Naseem Hamed, for example. He touched the canvas a number times in his professional career, yet never would anybody accuse Hamed of having a bad chin or some mental weakness. That’s primarily because most of Hamed’s knockdowns were more the result of his unorthodox, switch-hitting style and his habit of being off balance than a lack of punch resistance.
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Similarly, there are countless fighters for whom a tough weight cut has been a justifiable reason for their inability to hold a shot. One example of this is Flint’s Chris Byrd, whose reputation at heavyweight — for toughness, for being a small man standing up to giants — was swiftly undermined when he chose to move all the way down to light heavyweight for a fight in 2008. Suddenly, with the extreme drop in weight went Byrd’s capacity to take punches.
“Losing the weight was a challenge for me and I became obsessed with it,” said the former IBF and WBO heavyweight champion. “The lowest I got down to was 168 [pounds]. I was thinking, ‘Man, I’m going to fight at super middleweight or middleweight after this. I can do that no problem.’ I was having crazy thoughts. You get on this series of highs — workout highs — and there was no bringing me down until fight night. But it was a major detriment to me. It killed me.”
Chris Byrd (right) did not fare well after cutting down multiple weight divisions.
(AFP via Getty Images)
Stopped inside nine rounds by Shaun George in his first fight at light heavyweight, Byrd was left to rue his decision to sacrifice durability for adventure. “Shaun George did his thing,” said Byrd, who was 37 years old at the time of the fight. “He did what he was supposed to do. He beat the hell out of me.
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“But I didn’t even warm up before I fought. I was a dead man. I had no energy whatsoever. When I got in the ring, everybody was surprised that the Las Vegas commission actually passed me. I think they passed me only because they knew me. They knew I was a good guy, I looked OK, and I was reliable.
“They got it wrong, though. Look at me. I was a skeleton. I shouldn’t have fought. It was a bad move. Every punch shook me up.”
Another fighter who would argue the knockdowns he suffered in his career were as much a style and weight-making issue as a durability issue is Amir Khan, the former WBA and IBF super lightweight champion. Ever the risk-taker, Khan was the type of fighter to routinely put himself in harm’s way and more often than not escape unscathed due to the sheer speed of both his hands and feet. However, sometimes, especially against punchers, Khan would get caught by shots when exiting and would find himself on the deck. Some fighters, like Danny Garcia, sensed this flaw in Khan’s approach and readied themselves to stand in the pocket and punch with him, confident their chin could withstand the kind of punches Khan’s could not.
“The shots that have caught me have been big shots,” Khan told me in 2014. “Whoever they’d hit, they’d have gone down. But one thing about me is that I always get up from a knockdown. I probably get put down, but I always get back up again. The times I did get caught with shots and put down, I was always off balance. I used to lunge in with my chin in the air and with no defense. My positioning was wrong.
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“The weight-making was another issue. Two days before a fight at 140 [super lightweight], I’d be at 150 pounds and have to drop down to 140. I had to lose 10 pounds in a day. That does affect you. I’m now getting older and I’m getting wiser and smarter.”
Yet that’s the cruel thing about chins: no amount of experience and intelligence can improve them when touched by something heavy. Alas, just 18 months after we discussed punch resistance, Khan was knocked out cold by Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez in the sixth round of a middleweight fight he had no right taking.
Amir Khan was brutally knocked out by Saul “Canelo” Álvarez in 2016.
(JOHN GURZINSKI via Getty Images)
If, for Amir Khan, the film occasionally cut to black, something else happened whenever Wayne McCullough took a punch flush to the chin. In 1994, when Victor Rabanales nailed him with his best shot, McCullough experienced what can only be described as time travel. One moment he was in a boxing ring, the next he was in his hotel room.
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“The only time I was out on my feet was against Victor Rabanales,” McCullough recalled. “I remember I was watching TV with my wife in the hotel room after one of the punches landed. I thought I was somewhere else. It was almost a calming effect. You relax. Then all of a sudden I saw black and a flashing light and three people in front of me. I remember nodding at [Rabanales] and he didn’t even know. I didn’t show any real signs of being hurt, but I knew I had been. I knew I had just gone somewhere else.”
That night McCullough managed to stay upright, hear the final bell, and ultimately win a unanimous decision after 12 rounds. He then later watched television in his hotel room with his wife — for real this time — and came to understand and appreciate the difference between himself and the others. For had he been just like the others, there would have been no fleeting trip to his hotel room mid-fight upon tasting his opponent’s heaviest punch. Instead, once there, it is there McCullough would have remained, the room not a brief stop but his final destination. It is there, in his hotel room, he would have been told how the fight had ended and how, although he had been brave and strong, it just wasn’t his night. It is there he would have had to watch the fight on television to determine exactly what had happened.
“People think I got hit a lot because I was able to take a good shot,” said McCullough. “But that wasn’t the case.
“Eddie [Futch, his coach] always showed me these little moves, like tilting your head, catching shots with your palm, and giving your opponent your temple. Eddie practiced these with me when I came here [to America]. He would teach me to block body shots with my elbows and then deal with head shots by tilting my head a little bit.
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“But the commentators watching my fights weren’t seeing or remarking on that. They were just seeing the one big shot I got hit with now and again. They would always say, ‘How does he take that shot?’ I did have a good chin, thank goodness, but I didn’t get hit as much as people thought. If I did get hit that much, we wouldn’t be speaking now. I wouldn’t be able to put a sentence together.”
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