Why Has Scotland Never Had a Heavyweight?

Well folks [or, "me laddies!"], now we know. Took 100 more casts to land this fish again after the last catch and release. We need better bait!

 

The pun was intended.

And I must confess the thought of a Mars bar fried in batter appears to be anything other than appetizing to me, particularly if it was mingled with the fish in a chip shop.

That said I do like their Scotch pies, ( which they tell me is primarily Mutton ) and their square sausage.

 

interestingly there have been very few good Northern Irish heavyweights of shall we call it good Scottish stock, except Dave Magill and Gordon Ferris who were both really just blown up l/heavys and neither World class either. Yet as a sporting group they gave us George Best, Mary Peters, Alex Higgins, WJ McBride, Mike Gibson, Darren Clarke to name a few off the top of my head.

 

Enter Gary Cornish from Inverness, Scotland. Who? I didn't know either but he was mentioned in Ring Magazine as one to watch.

So I looked him up. Cornish is 6'7" tall, and has a professional record of 18-0 with 10 KO's. His opponents are very limited so far, but Ring Magazine said he has good skills for a big guy.

 

Bigger Scottish men prefer poll throwing and hurling.

 

to produce good heavyweights it takes having good heavyweights to spar and learn from at critical points in a fighters progression.

thus the reason for a lack of good HW fighters from any country or area is ALWAYs going to be because it is FAR HARDER to obtain decent level of calibre HWs to spar with any potentially young HWs. When I say calibre of sparring partners I mean that MANY calibre of HW sparring partners will be needed to TRAIN a young HW into a good or great HW. Massive HWs will be needed, smaller HWs will be needed. If one does not get both as a HW one will not develop as a HW. Tall rangy HWs with long fast hard jabs are needed to spar to become good, Big heavy dudes that can lean on you while always pushing you forwards are needed to become a GOOD to great HW. There is simply not a lot of decent calibre HWs to spar with that meet these requirements with boxing skills.

This problem is not a problem at LIGHTER wieghts

take me for example, lol, I am 6 foot 190 and would come down and fought as a LHW when I was a young buck. I was a good but started late and didn't take to the day in and day out rigors of boxing after a few years. Thus I was good at a LOW level but a inexperienced rookie when I came up against higher competition and i stopped fighting in the am's pretty soon after I stopped winning. I kept on training and sparing, I just stopped competing.


So whats my point? After I stopped competing I became a sparring partner for HIGHER level boxers than myself that were LIGHTER than myself.

My point is at the gym I trained at after I stopped competing used me to help spar SMALLER dudes that were coming up in learning and getting better in level and ability. It was a symbiotic relationship. I got to spar with boxers far better than I had ever faced in competition and learn from their skills while also being big enough to not get my face pounded. So my point is that not only did I get better simply training and sparring with far better but smaller opponents the smaller opponents I kept sparring with got better and got better FASTER. The coaches got me to spar this LW one time that was a eastern European kid that had just moved with his boxing dad and family to Toronto. He was amazing and went onto make our Canadian National team within a year or so if memory serves. I gave this guy close to a dozen sparring sessions that were intense and pretty much full on for both of us until he finally figured me out and wanted no more part of me. At the beginning he couldn't land on me and couldn't get past my jab and I was the one that was holding back on him. Each week this dude figured me out step by step until after a dozen or so times I was secretly happy when he and his dad coach didn't want to spar me anymore.

I would of been one of dozens of dudes that this guy sparred with and learnt from along his progression while advancing. If this dude had been my size or bigger than me it would of been a total waste of his time sparring with me. After this guy figured me out other better dudes many as heavy as me sparred with him as well. Which is my overall point. Unless your going to a gym that has a lot of ex-pro HWs and ex-am HW's and or dudes that are competing in the pros and the ams as HWs, well it is next to impossible to become a GREAT HW. Whereas, most boxing gyms will have many levels of different calibre boxers that can help a smaller boxer progress and develop at a fast rate.


Thus if I sparred HIGHER level LHWs it would have only been to work them out as if it was intense sparing they would kick my ass and need another sparing partner. However, high ranked SMALLER guys loved sparing with me because I could keep them from killing me with a decent jab, decent skills and SIZE relative to their lighter weights. Some small guys really got better after sparring with me on and off for a few months simply because they could LEARN from a BIGGER GUY that wasn't good enough to hammer them into the mat.

Big guys came into our club all the time but very rarely stayed and committed to boxing. The smaller guys were by far the most committed boxers in our gym.

Interesting THREAD I must say.

Let me make one more point, this time more focused on big guys rather than the smaller guys.

In the several years I trained and hung out in a boxing gym it was not uncommon for a athletic well built HW to walk into our gym. The vast majority of these dudes were the same. They would train on the heavy bags and **** for a few weeks or months and then they would want to SPAR. They would then begin sparring and as soon as they would get in the ring with a experienced old not too athletic HW they would get their BELLs rung while finding out it was for some reason almost impossible to connect solidly against a old apparently washed up ex hw. They would spend a round or two chasing the old dude around the ring winging huge shots that looked so impressive until they got tired out and then the old codgers would feast on these young big impressive athletes and more often than NOT they would stop coming to the gym, lol.

Now maybe this does not happen at every boxing gym over the globe, however, this was like clock work at our gym and from those I have talked to over the years it appears to be a not uncommon situation. A bigger dude will naturally not had the **** kicked out of them very often and thus they often don't want to bother paying their dues. Whereas, often a smaller guy is coming to the gym because he has had the **** kicked out of him many times already and he is sick of it and wants to learn how to stop having the **** kicked out of him and in the process smaller sized boxers at our gym were far and away the most committed dudes to walk in the doors and stick around thereafter.

I have no doubt that at least some of those big dudes that came into our gym for a good few months COULD have become very good boxers. Some of the individual sills on a few of these guys were far and away more impressive than any of the old HWs that hung out at our gym. Some of the hand speed and power in several of these short lived boxers was off the charts. Simply put, once they found out that was only part of what they needed to become really successful at boxing they quit. Plus most of these dudes if big were already a STAND OUT in another sport to some degree at least. Thus why go back to a sport that is going to humiliate your ego for a good few years before you can really begin excelling at it when your ego is already being fed from another sport that does not hand you your ass as brutally as Boxing does before you can excel at it ???

In closing, lol, I have no doubt that Scotland and many other countries COULD of produced several world class HWs if boxing gyms and boxing communities actively attempted to cultivate a large base of ex HW boxers of all calibres and levels that hung out together encouraging young HW bucks to become as good a boxer as they could become. However, that really does not happen in boxing as it does in other sports. In North America, if your HUGE and athletic looking you really maybe asked if you play basketball and or football and if not why not. They don't ask you why don't you become a boxer, lol, I don't know what they ask you if your young and huge in Scotland but I very much doubt that it is boxing either. That said, I am not claiming that if Scotland actively attempted to harvest future HW champs it would rule the globe with haggis spitting Pasty Ali like champs. I am simply stating that if Scotland actively attempted to harvest young HW champs lets say for the last 50 years I have no doubt at least a few of them would have made it far enough to at the very least get their name remembered being pasted by Ali, Holmes, Lewis etc etc.

Then again, maybe its the Haggis ???

 

In the past I would say that the fact that a great many young Scots fought in England's wars and ended up dead or mangled may also have had something to do with the lack of Scottish heavyweight boxers in the 20th century. Many Scots emigrated to Canada in the 19th century and produced good fighting men but few bothered with boxing. Most who did were smaller guys like Mickey MacIntyre, but there was Bill MacKinnon and Roddy MacDonald, both light heavies. The big guys fought behind the schoolhouse at the local dances but there was no real organized outlet to recruit them into the sport. If they wanted to fight they joined the army.

 

deep fried mars bars are ****ing delicious.

why no scottish hw's - i'd say a mixture of random chance and that not enough people were looking for talent and encouraging big guys into gyms.

 

No country that created haggis has any room to talk shiit about another's diet.

 

Scots are small men

 

They are really not.

 

Needs some work but did OK vs Wach



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdqvUPyvZXU

 

Average male height is 5-8… less then the UK average of 5-9.

They are wee.