Can we not introduce some new division for the 'not freakishly tall heavyweights'? These guys would all have far more interesting and exciting scraps with one another, than a Joshua/Wilder/Fury/Klitschko type. We saw with Chisora and Whyte how the shorter heavyweights fighting opponents of similar heights can turn into great wars. Obviously it's a fantasy, but there could be some real wars there.
But Miller will still be the heaviest lol. We need one of those height restriction things they have at theme parks haha.
Povetkin is still the best opponent to fight Wilder and Joshua....................notice HBO refused to mention Povetkin fighting as the mandatory tonight? They don't want him to fight................
Going by what I saw vs Duhapas, Miller represents a small threat to Joshua although he might go the distance like Parker did. To my mind he's the easier option to Povetkin. Wilder is also ducking Whyte, so neither of these characters want a tough examination before their big pay day.
With weight cutting most cruiserweights these days enter the ring at around the 210-215 pound mark. That's as big or bigger than many fighters historically regarded as monstrous heavyweights, like Earnie Shavers and Sonny Liston (210 and 215 respectively). If one's prepared to call these men heavyweights then it seems a bit odd to consider cruiserweights as small men just because a label has been appended to them that didn't exist in those earlier fighters' times. Anyway, I don't want to derail the thread further so I'll stop there.
A height division? Hmm. In terms of weight, all the guys you’ve mentioned are all floating around Joshua’s weight. All of them weigh considerably more than Wilder. Having said that, I’m sure that if they followed a strict diet plan, and lived clean, like an athlete, they’d weigh considerably less.
I love to rag on Wilder, but he's a great example of what heavyweights should train like if they want to be in the best possible condition they could be. Wilder's six feet eight, or thereabouts, and never weighed more than 228 in his pro career (at least for any of his big fights). His best performances have come around the 215-220 mark. I look at these guys like Chisora and Charr, Whyte and Ortiz and know that they all have a good twenty pounds of useless flab hanging on their bodies which they're too lazy to burn off. Perez was around a similar weight at heavy and managed to shave off enough to fight at CW, so the only thing really holding them back is hard work. Chisora and Charr could both probably boil down to 205-210 and have a far greater workrate and level of speed that would benefit their styles enormously. Ortiz is naturally thickset and would probably be around 220, while Whyte could be anything really; he doesn't look like a particularly large fighter, though that might be the minuscule size of his head throwing off his overall proportions. I've really come to realise in recent years how little heavyweights frames have fundamentally changed. Only the level of commitment to training.
Absolutely. Being a professional athlete should be about gaining that extra 1% or 2% in terms of performance, because they’re literally in peak condition. But my oh my, how boxing, predominantly the heavyweight division likes to break that mould. Heavyweights like Breazeale, and the others that you have mentioned could add 10 or even 20% to their game, simply by being disciplined. Getting in actual shape. It’s really not a coincidence that both Joshua and Wilder are at the top of the division. History tells us this. I’m not saying they need to be ripped, but so many heavyweights simply carry excess fat.
