Average weight of top 10 HW fighters throughout history

Whoa there, tiger. Makes perfect sense that substances that weren't even banned in boxing and were rife in other sports took until the 90's to get there. Boxing had too much honor, integrity, and tradition to latch on to them in the 60's, 70's, and 80's.

 

Wlad every time....

 

Me too. He had a lot of great fights before Steward perfected his jab n grab

 

I'd rather watch the career of butterbean! Lol

 

Another reason is that before the 90's any hw over 6'4 and 230lbs had the stigma of being overweight ,
fat or too musclebound and uncoordinated. Bowie , Lewis changed this and once this stigma had been
broken like lifting weights the giant coordinated hw has now become the norm.

 

This is correct. On reflection Big John Tate should have looked a very good prospect beating Kallie knotze after all he had skill, but at the time he was no bigger deal than a bunch of other guys.

The interesting revelation we have in this thread is the significance of the extra weight becoming so functional after 1985.

The discovery might not be Bowe and Lewis themselves, but what it was that made them so coordinated at that size?

 

This is a joke, right?

 

Absolutely. If my tongue were any more in my cheek, it'd have gone through it

 

This wasn't adressed to me, but >I'll hazard an answer.

From Wikipedia and some other sources I gathered that steroids started being used by the Soviet bloc in for example as weight lifting soon after steroids were invented. The US tagged along in the 50's.

By the 1970's it seems to gave become wide spread in Olympic sports. Someone on this board quoted a low over boxer from the 70's, that said it was rife in the sport by then.

Going by your numbers there was a pretty substantial jump in size 1967-1977 that tapered off a bit 1977-1987. But the size increase from 1967 to 1987 was still not all that much (13-14 lbs from memory). It was after 1987 that the average size among top HWs really shot up.

That could be interpreted as that steroids didn't get really wide spread use until the late 80's onwards. Another interpretation is that the use of steroids was wide spread already in the 70's, but didn't have a major effect on average weight until weight and interval training became a more common feature.

 

From '67-'77, I just looked and it seems the height increase was a lot too so the weight increase most likely comes with bigger fighters in general. A guy that is 6'3 is going to weigh more than a guy who is 6'-6'1 at optimal fighting weight, in general. A bigger frame supports more weight. I like what you said in the last paragraph, I came to the same conclusion.

 

As you said, the weight increase could be down to height increase rather than increased bulk due to steroids. Height has increased since 1987 as well, of course, but I don't know if it has increased at the same rate as weight.

 

At the risk of beating a dead horse re: the importance of shortening the distance of fights, 1987 was also the last year a 15 round title fight was fought at heavyweight.

The shorter the fight, the less cardio is required to be successful. The less cardio required, the heavier your athletes will become.

The same thing plays out in U.S. football, where 300 plus pounders are supported by a combination of PED's and only actually playing 5 minutes over the course of a game that takes over 3 hours to finish (There's only about 11 minutes of whistle to whistle football, players only play offense or defense, and most starters won't play special teams).

 

Average height in 1987 (the Ring champion and top 10 contenders) was 189,36 cm. In 2007 (only top 10 contenders, since there wasn't any Ring Champion) it was 193,4 cm. An increase of 4 cm, or about 1,5 inch. So that's about 7-8 lbs per cm, or 18-20 lbs per inch.

What was the increase in average height between 1967 and 1977?