Earnie Shavers: Boxing's Heavy Hitter

Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes called him the hardest puncher they ever faced, harder than Joe Frazier, George Foreman, and Mike Tyson. Randall Tex Cobb said: “He hit so hard you felt it in your ankles.” The man they were talking about was Earnie Shavers.

Once when George Foreman was asked who the hardest punchers he ever faced were, George responded, “Gerry Cooney, Ron Lyle, and Cleveland Williams.” When asked why Earnie Shavers wasn’t on that list, George responded, “I never fought Shavers, thank goodness!”

Actor Sylvester Stallone once got a taste of the punching power of Shavers when he invited Shavers to audition for the role of “Clubber” Lang. While Stallone was sparring with Shavers, Earnie, not wanting to hurt him, was hitting Stallone with soft jabs. After a few minutes, Stallone said, “Show me something real Earnie.”

So, Shavers let him have it, punching him once near the liver. Stallone later said: “Earnie nearly killed me. I went straight to the men’s room and threw up”.

Earnie Shavers

Raised in Alabama, one of ten children, Shavers built his muscular physique and formidable strength through strenuous labor on the farm. His family eventually moved to Ohio where he became a stellar athlete in high school, but Earnie didn’t start boxing until he was 22.

After winning the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) heavyweight title, Shavers turned pro in 1969 but had to work other jobs, including one at a General Motors plant in Ohio to make money which affected his training.

Earnie’s career didn’t start as he would have liked, losing two of his first fourteen fights, but he then won 27 in a row all by knockout. His two most notable victories during this stretch were a third-round knockout of Jimmy Young and a first-round knockout of Jimmy Ellis.

With a 45–2 record, Shaver’s was moving up in the rankings. Earnie’s next opponent was the always-dangerous Jerry Quarry. Whoever won this fight might be in line to get a title shot. It didn’t go well for Shavers as he got knocked out in the first round. Not one to make excuses, Earnie said: Jerry caught me with a hard punch, he’s a great fighter.

Five months later he bounced back with a first-round knockout over Roy Wallace. Six months later he lost a unanimous decision to Bob Stallings, a non-ranked fighter. The Stallings fight was supposed to be a tune-up for his rematch with Jimmy Young only 22 days later.

With his confidence shaken, Shavers fought to a draw with Young and then won his next three fights by knockout. If he could win his next fight against Ron Lyle, he would again be considered a top contender.

Lyle was already a top contender with a 30–3–1 record and had just gone eleven rounds with heavyweight champion Muhammad Ali before being stopped on a TKO.

Shaver’s knocked Lyle down in the second round but Lyle got up just as the round ended. Shaver’s had Lyle in trouble again in the third round but couldn’t finish him off and Lyle came back towards the end of the round to land some big blows of his own.

In the fourth round Shavers again had Lyle pinned in the corner but again Lyle withstood the punishment and even landed some good punches himself. The two fighters traded punches in the fifth round, with Lyle getting the better of the exchanges. Sensing that Shavers was running out of gas, Lyle came out swinging in the sixth round and knocked Shavers down for the count.

But Shavers came back to win his next three fights before taking on the six foot five 240 pound Roy “Tiger” Williams. Williams was a highly regarded prospect and had been a sparring partner for Muhammad Ali until he got fired for a dispute over his pay.

Williams had a reputation for having a nasty disposition. The fight was scheduled for ten rounds and was a brutal back-and-forth battle. By the start of the final round, the 32-year-old Shavers appeared to have nothing left.

Williams rocked him with several hard shots to the head and it looked like the referee was about to stop it but he gave Earnie the go-ahead and Shavers reached down deep inside and knocked Williams out. Many years later, Shavers recalled it as one of the toughest fights of his career.

Next up for Shavers was the hard-hitting Howard Smith, whom Shavers dropped in two rounds.

Earnie Shavers' Title Match

On Sept.9, 1977, at Madison Square Garden, Shavers would finally get the title shot he had waited for. The 54–5–1 Shavers would fight Heavyweight Champion Muhammad Ali, who had a 54–2 record. Shavers had once worked as Ali’s sparring partner and knocked the champ down in one of their sessions.

The fight was televised on NBC and I remember watching it with my family. Shavers hurt Ali in the second round but couldn’t knock him down. Going into the 13th round, Ali was ahead on the scorecards, although some think he shouldn’t have been.

Shaver’s, whose biggest weakness as a boxer was his stamina, came alive in the 13th round and battered Ali badly in the 14th round. At the start of the 15th round, Ali looked done as Shavers scored some heavy shots to the head. But Ali regained his strength towards the end of the round and almost knocked Shavers down. Ali won a controversial unanimous decision.

After The Title Shot (Larry Holmes)

Shavers’ next opponent was the fourth-ranked Larry Holmes, whom he lost to by unanimous decision. The 34-year-old Shavers looked slow, tired, and old in this fight, but he won his next five fights, including an impressive first-round knockout of Ken Norton. Many boxing fans regard this as the best win of his career.

The win over Norton earned him another title shot, this time against the newly crowned champion Larry Holmes, whom he had lost to a year and a half earlier.

Shavers knocked Holmes down in the seventh and ninth rounds and it looked like there would be a new heavyweight champion. But Holmes came back strong and retained his title with a TKO in the eleventh round. Holmes said later that the punch Shaver’s knocked him down with in the seventh round was the hardest he had ever been hit in his career.

The fight against Holmes would be Shaver’s last chance to win the title. Shavers, now 37 years old with a detached retina was advised to retire but couldn’t because of financial trouble. His next opponent was 28-year-old contender Bernardo Mercado. Shavers lost again on a TKO in the seventh round.

Now fighting strictly for the money, Shavers won his next fight over Leroy Boone in a 10-round decision. After this fight, Shavers had surgery on the detached retina but didn’t give himself enough time to heal before taking on Randall “Tex” Cobb. The two fighters slugged it out for eight brutal rounds before Shavers ran out of gas and lost on another TKO.
He won his next seven fights against no-name opponents except for Joe Bugner, whom he knocked out in the second round.

Shaver’s streak of seven straight wins was broken by James “Quick” Tillis, who had fought for the WBC title eight months earlier. After knocking Tillis down early in the fight, Shavers was outboxed for the remainder of the fight and lost by unanimous decision.

Shavers knew full well that his skills had deteriorated and it was time to retire, but he had lost his house to foreclosure and had to file for bankruptcy. He had to keep fighting to get himself out of debt.

Earnie won his next fight but then lost another decision to an unknown Walter Santemore. He won his next six fights against relative unknowns and then lost his next fight to George Chaplin on a disqualification. He retired but returned four years later and knocked out Larry Sims in the second round.

He retired again and returned eight years later at age 51 to win an 8-round decision over Brian Morgan. Two months later Shavers was knocked out in the second round by Brian Yates. He retired for good with a 76–14–1 record.

Six of his fourteen losses occurred when Shavers was well past his prime. In his first 47 fights, he won 44 by knockout or TKO. Twenty-three of those were first-round knockouts. Of his 76 wins, seventy were by knockout or TKO.

After retirement, Shavers made amends for making some bad decisions in his life, one of which was tax fraud.

He moved to Phoenix and became an ordained Christian minister. Later, he moved to England where he was a pastor at a church. He also worked with a children’s charity helping families who had children with life-threatening conditions.
Shavers also gave motivational speeches designed to help teenagers make the right decisions in life.

In 2001, Shavers released an autobiography titled Welcome to the Big Time.

Shavers died on Sept. 1, 2022, at age 78. Ring Magazine voted Shavers one of the top ten hardest punchers in boxing history.

Welcome to the Big Time

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10/03/2024 04:29 pm GMT

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Mark Morthier is the host of Yesterday’s Sports, a podcast dedicated to reliving memorable sports moments from his childhood days and beyond. He grew up in New Jersey just across from New York City, so many of his episodes revolve around the great sport’s teams of the 70s for the New York area.

He is also an author of No Nonsense, Old School Weight Training (Second Edition): A Guide for People with Limited Time and Running Wild: (Growing Up in the 1970s)