Earnie Shavers

So I think he kind of took the shortcut here, where he finally did what he said he would do, which is hire a boxer for this.

Don't forget, Ernie Shavers was up for the Clubber Lang role at one point.

So I, I, I like that he's putting the concentration somewhere else with this.

But Appleton needed to give at least two or three more takes, or give this guy, like, a, a, a acting coach, because God, he, he is damn near toxic.

He's a bit of a melt, to be honest.

But he posted a really good video, and I think it was Ron Williams against Earnie Shavers.

And if you watch it, you go, "Right, the ref needs to stop Earnie Shavers.

This is a wrap." But Earnie Shavers was a guy that came up the hard way, and he dogged it out until he found a punch from somewhere to turn the fight in his favor and ends up stopping Ron Williams, who looked like he was set on, on winning that fight.

We don't train that dog in people anymore, especially amongst the GB lot.

How many times have you seen these GB kids and as soon as the pressure comes on, they just fold? Like these...

Uh, I can't say to, "Oh, you should stop boxing." It's just, mate, what you're trying to do is almost impossible.

It's hard, and if you pull it off, kudos to you, but not many do.

He hits you so damn hard.

Like a Rocky Marciano or, yeah, or Ernie Shavers.

And guys like George Foreman, guys like that.

But then you get hit in the face and, uh-oh.

He would have given Larry Holmes problems just because of his size.

Well, you know what? They do have one thing in common, and that is if you go back in boxing history and hear what other fighters say as far as who's the biggest puncher they've ever been in the ring with, Ernie Shavers right at the top of the list.

He dropped Larry Holmes and looked like he left him for dead.

And somehow Holmes gets up off the canvas like nothing was wrong with him and goes and hunts him down and beats him.

I would think so.

I mean, that's right at the top of the list.

Ernie Shavers, that fight was got a huge television audience here in the United States, a massive, massively popular fight.

And that was probably the one that really put him on the page other than the Muhammad Ali win.

That same day in 76, Stevie Wonder released Songs in the Key of Life, one of the great albums of all time.

Larry Holmes gets the heavyweight crown in 79 today, taking down Ernie Shavers.

We started doing Jazzercise a lot more today, or whatever you want to call it, because today in 81, Olivia Newton-John released Physical.

Somehow that's the song of the year, and I don't know what to chalk it up to.

What Stallone had in mind was he thought that it would've been easier to teach a boxer how to act as opposed to an actor how to box.

So he was going to go with Joe Frazier and/or Ernie Shavers.

Now, Ernie Shavers was a huge contender for many years, and when Stallone got him and th- they rehearsed some of the punches and everything, he looked really good.

When he had him talk, apparently [laughs] he had a pretty high-pitched voice that Stallone just did not think would work for this character.

And he happened to be watching TV one night, and there was a show called Games People Play, which, my God, a- apparently there was a world's best bouncer [laughs] competition.

Is Florida a good enough team to make the playoffs? Probably not, especially with their schedule.

But it's like Ernie Shavers was always supposedly the hardest puncher anywhere.

Just the hardest pure puncher.

Not the best boxer, the hardest puncher.

And so you knew if you got in the ring with that guy, one punch, if you just ever were wrong, you could wind up getting KO'd.

Florida offensively right now is kind of Ernie Shavers.

If you get in a game with Florida and you play really well, but you have a turnover here, one time where you get that holding penalty and it throws you off stride, they could just go stride for stride with you, shoot out, and beat you.

So I don't think anybody's going to look at a trip to Florida, especially, and say, sounds like fun.

North Carolina.

This is like watching a... an afternoon boxing match back in 1975 when it's like Ernie Shavers.

It's the pretenders to the throne that are on their way down, like two old battered coaches.

This is their last gasp, and the loser is definitely going to lose their job by the end of the year.