Gerrie Coetzee and his"Bionic" right hand

[Caractacus]

Would anyone here know exactly how many times Gerie Coetzee had broken his right hand over the course
of his amateur and professional boxing career?
I know he broke it at least once while sparring while getting ready to fight Pinklon Thomas and that fight had to be delayed as a result.
and did he ever break his left fist as he had a pretty good left that he rarely seem to utilize.

[Caractacus]

Going into the fight with Dokes, Coetzee was said to have broken his right hand either five or six times
with a total of 11 fractures.
It would appear the first metacarpal bone of the right hand mostly.
Which was what he broke on Dokes head,so at that point it must have been broken seven times.

[Caractacus]

also I think Coetzee may have either broken or injured his hand when
there still were plans to go ahead with the title fight with Larry Holmes.
I remember reading Coetzee injured his hand three weeks before the bout with Greg Page too.

[Caractacus]

It says here on boxrec that Gerrie Coetzee had "23" surgeries on his right hand.
How did he ever find the time to box?

[Ilya Muromets]

A hand injury ended boxing for me. Guys who hit very hard and don't have heavy bone structure, like Coetzee - and moi - are prone to that. Not bothering to tape up my hand for an exhibition, and a previous baseball injury, didn't help any either.

[witherspoon]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1863580/

Here is an interesting article which correlates bone density with skin colour.

[Caractacus]

You know I dont think that I have read in any boxing magazine back in the 1980's,
where Gerrie Coetzee was ever interviewed(other then quoted).
I was wondering if it may have been that his hands were not wrapped properly either
in his amateur days or very early pro career.

But I seem to remember a breif interview before a televised fight
where he said he thought he had brittle hands,not because he punched so hard.

[Ilya Muromets]

Denis Boytsov is another fighter plagued by hand injuries. Lots of other guys too. The saddest hand injury of all, though, was Abdusalamov's. He broke his hand in the first round, and if that hadn't happened he'd be undefeated and a top contender today, instead of...

"Magomed Abdusalamov, a title contender before he suffered a devastating brain injury in late 2013, is in stable condition in a Connecticut hospital with blood and bone infections that his wife said doctors describe as "life-threatening."

http://espn.go.com/boxing/story/_/id/12 ... rding-wife