Earnie

 

 

You might've seen him at one of those  two-bit memorabilia shows at a local armory,  or  the International Boxing Hall of Fame annual dinner. He'd stand out. He looked like the strongest man in the room.

He was as amiable as any ex-jock on the autograph circuit, greeting well-wishers with a surprisingly soft voice.

He was always on the hustle then, peddling his memoirs and his VHS tapes. The shoulders and long arms gave him away. His arms looked like the guns on an old battleship.

Sometimes younger fans didn't recognize him.  You'd say, "That's Earnie Shavers. The best puncher of all time." 

The name wouldn't register. Surely, they'd say, he didn't hit harder than Tyson. 

You'd explain about knockout ratios, and the time Earnie put Larry Holmes on the canvas and was just a few clicks away from becoming the heavyweight champion. You'd talk about his fight with Ali at Madison Square Garden, and that even though he lost a 15-round decision, his every punch seemed to make the walls of the arena quiver.

Earnie was in his 50s by now, but like a lot of ex-athletes, seemed too powerful for the surroundings, like he might rip off his clothing at any moment and lope out into the night.Yet he signed everything put in front of him.  For Earnie, the lines were always nice and long. 

Earnie never won a championship, but he had something almost as good if not better: a sense of mystery. How did he do it? How did he hit so hard? He had the gunfighter mystique: it was was always high noon when Earnie was in the ring. It was either you or him.

There's no doubt that Earnie's right hand, when it landed, was as destructive as any punch ever thrown in a boxing ring. There was a stretch between August 1970 and June 1973  when Earnie rang up 32 consecutive wins, all but one ending with his opponent splattered on the canvas. "Sometimes," he once said of hitting a rival, "I can feel the flesh separating from the bone." 

Then he was matched against Jerry Quarry, already a bit washed up. When Earnie was stopped in a round, a new image prevailed. Earnie's better opponents knew they had only to wait him out, to let him launch his bombs, and then lay into him, usually resulting in the  game's hardest hitter face down on the canvas. He became one of boxing's great "If only" stories. If only had had a better chin. If only he had a better  defense, more stamina. Shavers was the stone upon which other fighters sharpened themselves. Boxing historian Jim Jacobs once said that Earnie was the most dangerous man in boxing for 15 minutes.

Earnie admitted his shortcomings. He told journalist Howard Brunt, "Because I could punch so hard, all the trainers wanted me to do was improve on my punching, not on my boxing skills. I never became a complete boxer, a complete fighter." 

Yet his admirers were all on record when it came to the shear bludgeoning power of his right hand. Holmes described the punch that dropped him as, "a blinding flash. I was sure a photographer's flash bulb had gone off right in my eyes." Ali claimed Shavers hit him so hard that he "shook up my kinfolk back in Africa." 

Earnie lingered on the fringes of the sport long after he should've retired. The money he'd earned by fighting was long gone, carved up by five divorces and nine children. He seemed to be another sad boxing story in the making, a man with impaired vision and no money. He surprised us, though.

For years he enjoyed success on the autograph circuit. He was a man of God now, a fellow who only wanted peace of mind. His favorite story to tell was about finding salvation in a small church in Ohio. "The minister preached that worldly values never pay what they promise, and I said to myself, How well do I know."

The funny thing about Earnie was the sense that he was telling tall tales. He presented himself so humbly that he was able to spread a good line of BS. 

He talked about his contract being owned by Cleveland mobsters, and million dollar ventures that never came off, all of which may or may not have been true. He talked about being in demand as a motivational speaker, though he never mentioned that many of his appearances were in shabby venues for tiny or non-existent audiences.

He also spent a lot of time in England where, to hear Earnie tell it, he was nearly as famous as Ali. If it seemed he was exaggerating, he probably was. 

His most unlikely revelation was that Don King kept him on a payroll that amounted to $200,000 per year. It was easier to believe Earnie had daily conversations with God than to believe King treated him to an astounding retirement fund. But he seemed so happy in retirement, no one dared burst his bubble.

Wast Earnie revising his third act? Maybe. Why not? It was his story to tell. He wanted us to think he was rich, friendly with God and Don King.That was better than being thought of as a fighter  who tired out after five rounds.

Earnie Shavers died recently, one day after his 78th birthday. He died in the South, at the home of one of his children. He'd been a Cleveland fighter, but you wouldn't have known by the scant coverage in Cleveland newspapers. A few boxing websites gave the story some brief coverage, a paragraph or less.  Social media was a little better, with many of his old admirers posting clips of his best moments: the staggering of Ali, the wrecking of Jimmy Ellis and Ken Norton, the street war with Ron Lyle, and the time he put Holmes on the canvas.

It would've pleased Earnie to know they wrote about his punch, and also his second life as a motivational speaker. The stuff about his later years may not have been true. The punch was real, though. The punch is what we'll remember.