Two heavyweight sluggers, neither of them still with us, share an important date. Heavyweight warrior, puncher, and absolute legend Rocky Marciano tragically lost his life on August 31, 1969, in a plane crash that happened just a day before the former heavyweight king would have celebrated his 46th birthday.

While on the same August 31 date, fearsome heavyweight banger Earnie Shavers was born. Both men carved out a special place in boxing history.

The Puncher of the Century

And, boy, does the mind boggle when it comes to trying to picture how a fight between “The Rock” and “The Puncher of the Century” might have gone!

Rocky is deservedly referred to by so many as one of the greatest, one of the toughest, and one of the most brutally hard-hitting fighters in heavyweight history. And of course, Marciano’s perfect, never-beaten (by a heavyweight) 49-0 ledger really is the most famous record in all of boxing.

The old timers, so rapidly fading away as they sadly are, say Rocky was “almost impossible to hurt,” that he would never give in to pain; that he would always, always find a way to win. Marciano pushed himself with a truly punishing training regimen, with him even doing miles of roadwork on Christmas Day. “The Brockton Blockbuster” also used one mammoth heavy bag when blasting away to get his lung power up to the optimum level.

Rocky’s Perfect Record

And then there’s Marciano’s chin. Dropped a couple of times, he may have been during his career, but Rocky was never, ever stopped. Not a bit of it. The man who ruled as world champion from 1952 to 1956 would never allow another fighter to render him unconscious.

Speaking of rendering another fighter unconscious, Shavers was one heck of a bad dude. Earnie, who ranks as one of the best, most lethally dangerous heavyweights never to have managed to win a world title, nevertheless scored some chilling KOs – and knockdowns – during his career. In total, Shavers put 70 men to sleep, this out of the 91 pro opponents who shared a ring with him. Not holding as famous a record as Rocky’s, Shavers still made a huge impact on the sport.

In terms of the knockdowns he scored where the other guy had no right to get back up, Shavers’ hefty knockdown over the great Larry Holmes, in 1979, still has fans who watch it gasping. The right hand that folded Holmes would perhaps have ruined most other heavyweights in history, yet up Holmes got. To his dying day, in September of 2022, Earnie never knew how Holmes did what he did.

Shavers also gave the incomparable Muhammad Ali sheer hell over the course of 15 rounds, and it was only Ali’s phenomenal chin that allowed him to survive Earnie’s bombs. Shavers was more successful when facing other heavyweight champions in Ken Norton and Jimmy Ellis, both of whom he wiped out with a cannon blast of opening round artillery.

If Shavers had been blessed with the kind of chin Marciano had, well, Earnie may well have never lost, and he would instead have won the crown.

But as it is, Shavers, like Marciano, is remembered as one fine, one exciting, and one courageous heavyweight warrior.

Now, to ‘Dream Fight’ territory: who would have won and how if Marciano and Shavers had collided?