how effective would the lighter heavyweights be today?

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by OMGWTF

It would enhance him if done correctly.

If he did body building to put the weight on then yes you are right it would work against him, he would be less enduranced and maybe slower (its shameful how much bodybuilding has crept its way into athletics./sports in general)

If it was done properly he would be an even harder puncher, faster, not much less endurance and more strength and a better chin.

People dont realize theres more than one type of muscular hypertrophy, and that sports science has had alot of advances since Marciano's day.

But having said that p4p he would probably be more optimal in a lighter weight division. (The best version of you isnt the best p4p version of you.)

Also you gotta remember people are bigger these days they have better nutrition consume more food etc who knows how rocky would have turned out if he ate what we ate. Its hard to compare eras there are so many complicating factors involved.

I don't want to be impolite but do you have any experience with strength and stamina training?

I'm no PhD in the subject but have been a pretty serious gym rat for 25 years or so. I know that probably qualifies me for nothing. However, in my experience both in training and competition, I would suggest that Marciano knew his best weight and it was in the low to mid 180's. Twenty pounds, let alone forty pounds, would have ruined him as a fighter. It would be like taking a 140 pound 5000 meter runner and having him add 25 pounds. He would go from world class to weekend warrior.

Marciano was small boned and small framed with extremely stubby limbs, narrow shoulders, not a particularly deep chest and a long, long torso. There is no frame there to build on. Furthermore, his style was based largely on stamina, relentless, hard punching. If he had slowed his work rate down he would have been easy pickings for even the smaller guys in his era.

There is no more wrong-headed suggestion on this board than that Marciano would be any bigger with "today's training and nutrition regimen". Simply not true. He was shredded and in immaculate shape... and he never starved a day in his life, feasting on rich, nutritious Italian-American fare from the mid-century.

[Absolutely!]

Originally Posted by lufcrazy

I'm talking very generally here but in recent times we've seen guys pile on muscle and become a threat in the he division to varying degrees of success.

Holyfield, hide, Byrd, Toney, Jones, adamek, Huck, chambers and haye.

Some reached the top and almost all cracked the top 5 at some point.

Should it be assumed that today guys like marciano, Dempsey, Paterson, Corbett, fitz, Charles, Walcott and others could campaign successfully as 200+ fighters?

I'm not saying all would beat wlad but I'm asking whether all could carry the weight as easily as others have done.

It's impossible to say. Some fighters would, some wouldn't. It would depend on their frame, their body's ability to retain speed and mobility, whether or not they'd feel comfortable at the higher weight and so on. Marciano reportedly felt sluggish at 200lbs, but felt at his peak at 185. I don't know if he'd be able, or even willing, to pack on twenty or thirty pounds of muscle. Dempsey on the other hand I feel would have filled out nicely.

But honestly, muscle mass is overrated as an attribute at heavyweight. I'd much rather a fighter trains their ass off to be the best they can be, and come into the ring a little on the light side, than pack on useless muscle mass that does nothing but slow them down, make them stiff, affect their stamina or whatever, just to fulfill some arbitrary size quota.

Look at Adamek. Who would you say was the better fighter, the sharp, fast combination punching machine at cruiserweight or the sluggish and sloppy featherfist at heavy? What has that added ten or fifteen pounds (accounting for weight cutting at CW) really done for Adamek as a fighter?

Now look at Haye. Enters the ring against Chisora at 210lbs (his in-ring weight at cruiser) and does the business on his larger but far sloppier foe. Look at Huck. Another 210lber who pounds the crap out of Povetkin because he isn't an immobile tub of meat, and hasn't sacrificed his attributes at the altar of mass.

One of the troubles with the modern heavyweight division is that normal sized heavyweights, perhaps out of a misguided belief that it allows them to compete with the naturally larger men, are packing too much weight. For some it's too much muscle, for others too much fat. Either way, they're not in peak condition. Haye showed that a smaller fighter who's fast, athletic and willing to put the work in at the gym can triumph over a heavier, but ultimately less talented, and less well conditioned fighter in Chisora. Chambers showed that a far talented smaller fighter could quite handily beat a much larger foe in Dimitrenko.

Anyway, I'm digressing slightly. My point is that a smaller fighter shouldn't feel pressured into adding muscle weight unless he feels it will be beneficial to him in some way. If it improves them as a fighter then I'm all for it, but the impact on performance should always be the main thing, not the end result on the scales.

Originally Posted by lufcrazy

I mean if Byrd can reach the pinnacle of the division in the post 90's era should we assume that others could as well?

No, why should that follow? Byrd was an extremely skilled and tricky fighter who specialised in fighting larger, stronger fighters and clowning them to decisions. A fighter like Young might have emulated his success, but it doesn't follow that a come forward brawler like Dempsey or Marciano would.

[Absolutely!]

Originally Posted by lufcrazy

What bout Dempsey

I think Dempsey had the height, the frame width and the bodytype to add a decent amount of muscle mass to his 187lbs without becoming an overweight plodder. Provided he still trains for speed and explosivity then he could potentially become a very fearsome fighter. Not sure if he'd compete in the heavyweight division though. I think he'd be bang on the mark for Cruiserweight.

[Flea Man]

Great post Absolutely!

Adamek should weigh in no more than 210-15, just like Haye did in his best heavyweight showings.

[OvidsExile]

Originally Posted by Absolutely!

It's impossible to say. Some fighters would, some wouldn't. It would depend on their frame, their body's ability to retain speed and mobility, whether or not they'd feel comfortable at the higher weight and so on. Marciano reportedly felt sluggish at 200lbs, but felt at his peak at 185. I don't know if he'd be able, or even willing, to pack on twenty or thirty pounds of muscle. Dempsey on the other hand I feel would have filled out nicely.

But honestly, muscle mass is overrated as an attribute at heavyweight. I'd much rather a fighter trains their ass off to be the best they can be, and come into the ring a little on the light side, than pack on useless muscle mass that does nothing but slow them down, make them stiff, affect their stamina or whatever, just to fulfill some arbitrary size quota.

Look at Adamek. Who would you say was the better fighter, the sharp, fast combination punching machine at cruiserweight or the sluggish and sloppy featherfist at heavy? What has that added ten or fifteen pounds (accounting for weight cutting at CW) really done for Adamek as a fighter?

Now look at Haye. Enters the ring against Chisora at 210lbs (his in-ring weight at cruiser) and does the business on his larger but far sloppier foe. Look at Huck. Another 210lber who pounds the crap out of Povetkin because he isn't an immobile tub of meat, and hasn't sacrificed his attributes at the altar of mass.

One of the troubles with the modern heavyweight division is that normal sized heavyweights, perhaps out of a misguided belief that it allows them to compete with the naturally larger men, are packing too much weight. For some it's too much muscle, for others too much fat. Either way, they're not in peak condition. Haye showed that a smaller fighter who's fast, athletic and willing to put the work in at the gym can triumph over a heavier, but ultimately less talented, and less well conditioned fighter in Chisora. Chambers showed that a far talented smaller fighter could quite handily beat a much larger foe in Dimitrenko.

Anyway, I'm digressing slightly. My point is that a smaller fighter shouldn't feel pressured into adding muscle weight unless he feels it will be beneficial to him in some way. If it improves them as a fighter then I'm all for it, but the impact on performance should always be the main thing, not the end result on the scales.



No, why should that follow? Byrd was an extremely skilled and tricky fighter who specialised in fighting larger, stronger fighters and clowning them to decisions. A fighter like Young might have emulated his success, but it doesn't follow that a come forward brawler like Dempsey or Marciano would.

Haye versus Chisora is a bad example. Haye isn't just a far better fighter, he's also the bigger man. Haye is 6'3" with 78 inch reach and Chisora is 6'1.5" with a 74 inch reach. Big difference between fighting a Chisora who weighs 245 pounds and a 6'6" Klitschko who is naturally 245 pounds.

As for Adamek, you attribute his lack of power to his extra weight and not to the fact that he's fighting opponents thirty or forty pounds heavier? It's true that when he was a Cruiser he got 70 percent KOs and now that he's a heavy he gets 70 percent decisions, but that's just what happens when you step up in competition. Adamek is 6' 1.5" with a 75" reach. He's as big as Chisora, and he's got a frame that can handle a few extra pounds. Chisora should think about slimming down to Adamek's weight and getting some speed back. Marco Huck is the same size and I wouldn't say he's as successful as either man. He's had one fight against a heavy and he lost. It's too early to hold him up as an example.

[OMGWTF]

Originally Posted by Seamus

I don't want to be impolite but do you have any experience with strength and stamina training?

I'm no PhD in the subject but have been a pretty serious gym rat for 25 years or so. I know that probably qualifies me for nothing. However, in my experience both in training and competition, I would suggest that Marciano knew his best weight and it was in the low to mid 180's. Twenty pounds, let alone forty pounds, would have ruined him as a fighter. It would be like taking a 140 pound 5000 meter runner and having him add 25 pounds. He would go from world class to weekend warrior.

Marciano was small boned and small framed with extremely stubby limbs, narrow shoulders, not a particularly deep chest and a long, long torso. There is no frame there to build on. Furthermore, his style was based largely on stamina, relentless, hard punching. If he had slowed his work rate down he would have been easy pickings for even the smaller guys in his era.

There is no more wrong-headed suggestion on this board than that Marciano would be any bigger with "today's training and nutrition regimen". Simply not true. He was shredded and in immaculate shape... and he never starved a day in his life, feasting on rich, nutritious Italian-American fare from the mid-century.

Yes I do have experience.

Strength training INCREASES endurance.

You under estimate how easy it is to spread 40lbs of mucle over a whole body.

The width of shoulders and length of limbs dosnt limit muscular growth in any significant way at these low levels.

I think he was at a near optimal weight as well and 40lbs is too much too steep.

He would have definitely become a harder faster puncher with the RIGHT strength training. (Again too many people gain size the WRONG way)

I agree his endurance would have suffered. He would have to become a different type of fighter. A scaled down tommy morrison comes to mind with a good chin. It is possible to have reasonable cardio and a large muscle mass, fighters like Tyson can do it.

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by Absolutely!

Now look at Haye. Enters the ring against Chisora at 210lbs (his in-ring weight at cruiser) and does the business on his larger but far sloppier foe. Look at Huck. Another 210lber who pounds the crap out of Povetkin because he isn't an immobile tub of meat, and hasn't sacrificed his attributes at the altar of mass.

One of the troubles with the modern heavyweight division is that normal sized heavyweights, perhaps out of a misguided belief that it allows them to compete with the naturally larger men, are packing too much weight. For some it's too much muscle, for others too much fat. Either way, they're not in peak condition. Haye showed that a smaller fighter who's fast, athletic and willing to put the work in at the gym can triumph over a heavier, but ultimately less talented, and less well conditioned fighter in Chisora. Chambers showed that a far talented smaller fighter could quite handily beat a much larger foe in Dimitrenko.

Haye and Chambers are/were better because they were far more skilled. Chisora throws Trevor Berbick round, pushed punches. Haye throws sharp, straight, fast, leveraged punches that were getting inside Chisora's attempts. Dimitrenko is just tall and that's it. Chambers was in a different league.

Size does not overcome all...

[janitor]

At the risk of stating the obvious, some of the smaller heavyweights would do better than others. The genuinely great ones would be better able to overcome size disparity, and stylistic considerations would also play a big part. The all time finishers would be the most sucessful.

Some fighters who proved in the ring that they would be effective the bigger modern heavyweights include:

Jack Johnson
Sam Langford
Jack Dempsey
Jack Sharkey
Joe Louis
Archie Moore

Could they bulk up today?

Absolutely.

What is less certain is whether it would make them better.

[Seamus]

Originally Posted by OMGWTF

Yes I do have experience.

Strength training INCREASES endurance.

To an extent it does. But a completely different style of strength training that that which adds a lot of weight and mass.

Originally Posted by OMGWTF

You under estimate how easy it is to spread 40lbs of mucle over a whole body.

The width of shoulders and length of limbs dosnt limit muscular growth in any significant way at these low levels.

Low levels? We are talking about 23% increase of weight. That is not low. I don't see where a guy with such a small frame is going to hide this mass and still be effective as a whole. [/quote]

Originally Posted by OMGWTF

He would have to become a different type of fighter. A scaled down tommy morrison comes to mind with a good chin. It is possible to have reasonable cardio and a large muscle mass, fighters like Tyson can do it.

But he was the best type of fighter he could be given his natural gifts. Making into a different style fighter would be making him into a lesser fighter. Against his better opposition (which was limited to the last portion of his career) he was largely an attrition slugger who relied on stamina and output. Slow him down, decrease his mobility and output and he becomes nothing more than a sitting duck with decent one punch power. There are tons of fighters like that. Everyone of his opponents remarked no so much on Marciano's power but his relentless attack, that he never stopped and ultimately overwhelmed any defense. Remold him at even 20 pounds more and this ability disappears.

[Absolutely!]

Originally Posted by OvidsExile

Haye versus Chisora is a bad example. Haye isn't just a far better fighter, he's also the bigger man. Haye is 6'3" with 78 inch reach and Chisora is 6'1.5" with a 74 inch reach. Big difference between fighting a Chisora who weighs 245 pounds and a 6'6" Klitschko who is naturally 245 pounds.

Chisora had just come off a win against Helenius and having given Vitali one of his toughest fights in years. He was considered, if not the most skilled fighter around, certainly one of the toughest. I'd say he's a pretty good example to prove my point, which is that Chisora represented the squat muscled up "true heavy" of the division, whilst a fighter like Haye was still considered a Cruiserweight with all the baggage that term carries. Haye ended up destroying him with ease, a feat which neither Helenius nor Vitali were able to achieve. His 210lbs were certainly sufficient enough to get the job done. Whether he was the bigger man or not (and I'd wager that Paul Williams had much the same dimensions, and perhaps a longer reach) he was outweighed by over thirty pounds by a man who'd withstood the best the superheavyweight power punchers of the division could throw at him.

Originally Posted by OvidsExile

As for Adamek, you attribute his lack of power to his extra weight and not to the fact that he's fighting opponents thirty or forty pounds heavier? It's true that when he was a Cruiser he got 70 percent KOs and now that he's a heavy he gets 70 percent decisions, but that's just what happens when you step up in competition. Adamek is 6' 1.5" with a 75" reach. He's as big as Chisora, and he's got a frame that can handle a few extra pounds. Chisora should think about slimming down to Adamek's weight and getting some speed back. Marco Huck is the same size and I wouldn't say he's as successful as either man. He's had one fight against a heavy and he lost. It's too early to hold him up as an example.

Adamek to my eyes is a slower and sloppier fighter today than he was at Cruiserweight. That might be partly to do with age, partly to do with ring wear or partly to do with a change of style to compete with larger and more powerful men, but he's definitely not as good a fighter as he was. This was most evident against Aguileira, I think, a very average, not especially tough and relatively small heavyweight whom Adamek failed to knock out. He was also clearly less adept at putting his punches together when he caught Walker against the ropes, slapping with his shots on gloves, top of head etc. Compare that to the Banks fight where he caught Banks in a very similar situation but executed a brutal and swift finish.

I understand that he's not going to get knockouts against the Arreolas and the Grants and even the McBrides of the division, but the extent to which his power has suffered cannot be explained away by size alone. He was a killer puncher at Cruiserweight, and like I said above, that's not as massive a gulf as people think.

[Absolutely!]

Originally Posted by Seamus

Haye and Chambers are/were better because they were far more skilled. Chisora throws Trevor Berbick round, pushed punches. Haye throws sharp, straight, fast, leveraged punches that were getting inside Chisora's attempts. Dimitrenko is just tall and that's it. Chambers was in a different league.

Size does not overcome all...

I'm perfectly aware that size does not overcome all. That was precisely my point.

Chisora, on paper, had certain advantages against Haye that were dependent upon his stockiness and bulk. The fight proved that those advantages were all just smoke. Haye not only had the skills to overcome Chisora's brute strength, but the power to knock him out as well.

The idea that a fighter can "bulk up" and this somehow makes them a better fighter is such nonsense, yet still gets bandied about by fans as if it's a gospel truth. I'm not against strength training per se; in fact I think it's an integral part of training. Rather, I'm against the idea of adding muscle mass willy nilly and somehow hoping it'll lead to magical gains as a result.

A skilled and athletic 210lbs fighter can potentially beat all but the best superheavyweights. The limit might be even lower than that, I don't know. Of course there is a limit, a point where lack of size genuinely becomes a problem, but I don't think Cruiserweight is it.

[OMGWTF]

""To an extent it does. But a completely different style of strength training that that which adds a lot of weight and mass.""



Not true, see I knew id catch you out, literally low reps high weight increases endurance. Do you know how?




""Low levels? We are talking about 23% increase of weight. That is not low. I don't see where a guy with such a small frame is going to hide this mass and still be effective as a whole. [/quote]""




Low levels compared to bodybuilding which is the only time "maxing out your skeletal frame" is even possible, which is why I made that comparison.







""But he was the best type of fighter he could be given his natural gifts. Making into a different style fighter would be making him into a lesser fighter. Against his better opposition (which was limited to the last portion of his career) he was largely an attrition slugger who relied on stamina and output. Slow him down, decrease his mobility and output and he becomes nothing more than a sitting duck with decent one punch power. There are tons of fighters like that. Everyone of his opponents remarked no so much on Marciano's power but his relentless attack, that he never stopped and ultimately overwhelmed any defense. Remold him at even 20 pounds more and this ability disappears.""





I agree theres a good chance he was at his best at his weight. Im not arguing against you on this one just throwing an argument at you to see what your response will be....

....A guy like Tyson can hold huge amounts of muscle for his short stature, and still have good cardio and power. Why not rocky? Why would 20lbs make such a difference? There are many other examples not just Tyson, guys with alot of muscle mass that still have decent cardio.

[PowerPuncher]

Against the Klits all of them would be dominated. The like Corbett and Fitz wouldn't even be top light heavies or crusers today, boxing moved on too much

Charles and Walcott fought in a golden era of skill so could outhustle less skilled big men, but against the Klits? No chance.

Dempsey no chance against the Klits, wins some and loses some against the HW top 30

[PowerPuncher]

I'm not sure why the posters on this forum who for the most part haven't boxed think they know better than boxers who bulked up or trainers who had them bulk up

[OMGWTF]

Originally Posted by PowerPuncher

I'm not sure why the posters on this forum who for the most part haven't boxed think they know better than boxers who bulked up or trainers who had them bulk up

Alot of trainers and fighters are thick. Plain and simple.


It makes me cringe to hear the term bulking up when used in the context of sports or athletics.


Bulking up which is what bodybuilders do, it WILL absolutely make you slower, and less enduranced. Its utterly insane to "bulk up" if you are a boxer.


You can put on weight the right way though. Its clear not many people know how or what im talking about.