Was the weight limit higher before? i mean foster,spinks,moorer,qawi and lots of others all went up too heavyweight and some of them did really well. i cant see any lightheavyweights doing this now, stevenson, kovalev, obviously not hopkins now. the leap seems too big nowadays was it the introduction of crusierweight or were the old lhw's bigger men cut down alot.
The introduction of CW makes it so that modern LHWs have to come in over 25 lbs heavier to mingle with HWs, which is obviously a discouraging road block. Pre Cruiser Era LHWs like Tommy Loughran, Billy Conn, Ezzard Charles, Harold Johnson, Archire Moore, Joey Maxim, Jimmy Bivins, Bob Foster, and the like could just come in at 175-190 and mix it up with anyone they wanted. In recent years we've still seen Byrd, Adamek, and Toney have sustained success at HW. And obviously the 90s saw Holyfield and Moorer become the HW Champion despite LHW beginnings. I don't doubt LHWs like Hopkins, Kovalev, and Stevenson at their rehydrated weight of 185-190 ish could probably be competitive with the current HW top 10, excluding Wlad whom nobody stands a chance agaisnt. If Adamek didn't add so much slowing bulk, he probably would have been even more effective than he was.
must say kovalev,stevenson and hopkins are already seasoned fighters and filled out, so probably cant grow much more, all solid lightweights. where as evander and moorer were bigger men that grew into heavy. so the old light heavyweight division was 175-190lbs?
Heavyweights have gotten a lot bigger and the top ones usually weigh around 240. That a lot heavier than in Ali's day so its a lot harder for light heavys to have success at heavyweight
As I said, they come in on fight night at 185-190 lbs. They wouldn't need to grow if there was no CW division. Moorer nor Holyfield grew into HWs. If they didn't go out of their way to add weight, they probably would be in the 180-190 range. No. LHW was always 175. The guys I mentioned would just come in at 175-190 to fight HWs. Old HW was 176-no limit.
ah right thanks, so the older 30s-70's lhw's 175 went 190-200lbs usually fought heavies up to 200-220lb, 80s-00's lhws went from 175 to 200-210lbs to compete vs 215-240lbers. and now its cruiserweights from 190-200lbs grown to 210-230lbs vs 230-250lbers.
I wouldn't generalize it like that. The best big man of the 30s, Carnera was 270. Loughran gave up 84 lbs against him. And I wouldn't say only CWs are moving up today. Adamek, Byrd, and Toney started below CW.
They wouldn't sanction it now. They'd ask fighters to be at least 200. To be fair to Roy Jones Jr., he weighed in at 193 to fight a decent-sized heavy in John Ruiz. Chris Byrd started out at about 169 before moving up to the 200-212 range to compete with some huge heavyweights. This is quite recent history. For the last 10 years now, the only real big money at HW is in fighting the Klitschkos, who are particularly HUGE and very good too. If, say, David Haye had been champion for 5 years , you'd probably have more light-heavies coming up fancying their chances.
