Overly-muscled boxers

[bballchump11]

Originally Posted by carlos200587

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hasn't really hurt him

[irishny]

Originally Posted by Brickhaus

More muscle uses more oxygen, period. A guy with more muscle needs to do more to have better endurance. It's simple biology.

How do you explain guys like Holyfield or Wlad who can go hard for 12 rounds and are carrying serious muscle.

Muscle also is what carries you around.

You also leave out the advantages of muscle.Its no co-incidence that some of the most explosive,hardest punching guys are guys who are jacked.

Tyson,Wlad, Haye,even at the lower weights,Kirkland,Gamboa, Froch are all the hardest punchers. Lots of time they're also the fastest.

[pistal47]

I think a great example of an overly-muscled boxer being hindered by their physique in a fight would be olympian Anthony Joshua against Solis. Joshua looked so stiff, slow, and plodding in there against Solis - who had the physical ability to really exploit that.

A lot of posters aren't posting very good examples. Without his physique, James Kirkland wouldn't be anything in boxing. To be as short as he is, he needs to be able to compensate with explosive power and burst so he can get inside on his opponents and chop them down. Gamboa? WTF? Berto? RJJ? These are ridiculous inclusions.

[aramini]

Originally Posted by irishny

How do you explain guys like Holyfield or Wlad who can go hard for 12 rounds and are carrying serious muscle.

Muscle also is what carries you around.

You also leave out the advantages of muscle.Its no co-incidence that some of the most explosive,hardest punching guys are guys who are jacked.

Tyson,Wlad, Haye,even at the lower weights,Kirkland,Gamboa, Froch are all the hardest punchers. Lots of time they're also the fastest.

this depends on natural build and type of muscle fiber as well. Those douche bags who lift weights to gain muscle weight at the gym are the most sluggish idiots around, especially if they are artificially putting on like 30 pounds when running would take it off.

Tyson, Wlad, Haye, and Gamboa are naturally built as they are (and Wlad, in my opinion, is kind of slender for his height, just with nice aesthetics) and also have a nice ratio of fast and slow twitch development - they can still explode when they have to.

[bballchump11]

Originally Posted by aramini

this depends on natural build and type of muscle fiber as well. Those douche bags who lift weights to gain muscle weight at the gym are the most sluggish idiots around, especially if they are artificially putting on like 30 pounds when running would take it off.

Tyson, Wlad, Haye, and Gamboa are naturally built as they are (and Wlad, in my opinion, is kind of slender for his height, just with nice aesthetics) and also have a nice ratio of fast and slow twitch development - they can still explode when they have to.

yeah good point. A lot of those guys are just naturally like that and may have added some muscle do to training and weights, but aren't hurt by it.

Berto's family is naturally jacked

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[aramini]

Originally Posted by bballchump11

yeah good point. A lot of those guys are just naturally like that and may have added some muscle do to training and weights, but aren't hurt by it.

Berto's family is naturally jacked

[IMG]********a.espncdn.com/photo/2010/0119/box_jh_bertofam_600.jpg[/IMG]

Berto's dad is HUGE. that's mostly a genetic predisposition, for sure.

[devon]

Mike Tyson post-prison just check out the difference

Pre-Prison
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Post-Prison
[IMG]********cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/332/789/original_display_image.png?1281121093[/IMG]

[aramini]

Originally Posted by devon

Mike Tyson post-prison just check out the difference

Pre-Prison
[IMG]********a.espncdn.com/media/pg2/2002/0520/photo/tyson.jpg[/IMG]

Post-Prison
[IMG]********cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/332/789/original_display_image.png?1281121093[/IMG]

remember though that he was very very young as a champion. A lot of guys, even tyson, aren't done developing and maturing physically until they are 25-7.

[Brickhaus]

Originally Posted by irishny

How do you explain guys like Holyfield or Wlad who can go hard for 12 rounds and are carrying serious muscle.

Muscle also is what carries you around.

You also leave out the advantages of muscle.Its no co-incidence that some of the most explosive,hardest punching guys are guys who are jacked.

Tyson,Wlad, Haye,even at the lower weights,Kirkland,Gamboa, Froch are all the hardest punchers. Lots of time they're also the fastest.

Of course there are advantages, and there are guys who train hard enough or have other advantages (higher red blood cell counts, for example, would counteract this) where they don't suffer due to having a lot of muscle, but mitochondria don't just work differently for some guys than others. Muscle cells take a lot more oxygen and fuel to maintain than most other cells. That said, they're not dead weight like fat cells. But a lot of guys suffer endurance problems because they have too much muscle, and there's a very simple (and well settled) biological explanation for it.

Some of the guys you mentioned are just ripped, not musclebound. I doubt Wlad has that much more muscle than a guy like, say, Ustinov, he just has a lot less fat covering it up. And I've never heard a solid disadvantage to being trimmer.

[Speechless]

One of the first pics is of Vinnie Pazienza. The only memorable fight of his that I remember was against Roy Jones Jr. RJJ can make most light-weights look slow, so it's probably a bad example. But all things considered, I was surprised at how remarkably well he moved for a stocky muscular guy. I can't say it hindered him much.

[FrankinDallas]

I remember Fernando Vargas on TV bragging about his muscles. Said "you've never seen a Mexican cut like this!".

Then he got busted for taking PEDS.

[Skilletscuz]

Originally Posted by irishny

?? How would him losing any muscle make him any better?

Part of the reason he got this far is because hes so explosive and powerful.

Which is partly due to his build.

Being muscled helpsfar more than it hurts. Some guys just arent that good to begin with, all the muscle does is make them more powerful,but they still dont have the skill to use it.

Theres ample example of boxers who look like greek Gods who've done just fine.

Wlad, RJJ. Holyfield, Bradley, Berto,Haye, etc

lol basically

The dood is not salvageable, his raw power is his ONLY selling point

[Skilletscuz]

Vinny Paz, Gamboa, Berto.... these guys grew up naturally athletic and muscular. There's a noticeable difference in growing up this way - differences in stamina and speed.

MT is a great example of this. At first thought, you'd look at him and think - **** is he a hulk! Then you see him in the ring and watch his delivery speed and think - WTF, he's not suppose to be able to punch that fast!

But looking back in his history, he didnt build up all that muscle in a couple short years, he grew up into and with it. He was a freak at 16 already! RJJ and the like were prior strong athletes in their youths....

[aramini]

When you have been hit by a variety of guys, you realize very quickly that there is practically NO correlation between muscular appearance and actual punching power. Low body fat might be an indication of relative fitness for that individual, and a short stocky guy might very well be hard to push around, but you can get KTFO by a guy that looks like sugar ray leonard or Erik Morales and laugh as a guy that resembles prime Mosley or Bradley (but not the real Mosley, of course) has punches that just bounce off you.

[dealt_with]

Originally Posted by Brickhaus

More muscle uses more oxygen, period. A guy with more muscle needs to do more to have better endurance. It's simple biology.

No it's not, muscle is capillarised and holds stores of haemoglobin, glycogen and creatine to power it when it needs it. Your stroke volume (central) doesn't provide all the oxygen, there are peripheral (muscle) adaptations from training. More muscle improves your stamina if it was built with your sport in mind.