Y'all must've forgot about the 118lb Monster in the room...Naoya Inoue knocking on the p4p door.

What the **** did i just read?

 

You read it properly. p4p is a shaky concept anyways. But to rate guys under 120 pounds as p4p when you have other fighters in higher weight classes who make 1 mistake and it's goodnight is flawed.

Not to mention the talent pool for such a fighter is small and basically limited to short and skinny Asians and Latinos.

 

I know it's relative to the size of the opponent and therefore we have weight classes for a reason. The reason I draw the line at Featherweight is because once you reach that weight class you start to encounter fighters that have enough pop to seriously damage you with a single shot. It changes the dynamic of a fight completely. Inoue is rare because he has huge power at a very low weight. But watch him come up to Featherweight or even SFW and take one from a big puncher in that weight class. He might think twice about walking right in.

 

He's KO'd two top ranked guys in the first round each. Julian Jackson level power.

 

Is that all someone has to do to eclipse the man who many feel is pound for pound the hardest singular hitter in boxing history...?

Easy come, easy go with some of you.

 

If you're suggesting that the power difference between a Strawweight and Featherweight isn't enormous then I disagree.

There is a lot more money in the Featherweight division. If any 105 pounder wants to make money he will do his best to get to 126. But the stay in the low weights so they don't get crunched.

Likewise if any LW wants to make money he will do his best to get to WW.

 

Well I would also say that WW champs are usually p4p better fighters than Featherweight champs. And 126 champs are usually ridiculously better than 105 champs.

Exceptions exist. Some eras are particularly strong in a certain weight class. But as a general rule 147 has better fighters than 126 and especially 105.

 

What's with this fetishisation of "KO power"? Boxing isn't a "who can knock people out the most efficiently" contest. I don't know, but as a very rough guess I'd say maybe 40% of bouts end in a knockout. That doesn't make the other 60% (or whatever) a waste of time. What the lower weights lack in cartilage-rearranging knockouts they make up for in the speed and grace of the fighters. Most sensible fans adore watching Lomachenko, but he's not a KO artist, he's merely one of the geniuses of his generation. By your logic Wilder is the all-time P4P king.

 

Point taken, but I've seen FW's beat around LHWs in sparring. There's obviously levels to this, a seasoned LHW isn't getting beat around by a FW but to put it into perspective, a 22 fight SMW amateur was running around the ring trying to survive from the body shots of a national level 126lb amateur. So Inoue would definitely ktfo your average FW, WW or even HW man, but as he goes up in levels in terms of experience, skills and chin, the chances of that drops massively.

That said, we saw Pac ktfo guys from flyweight to WW, sometimes the power is just there and watching Inoue's 1-2, very reminiscent of Pac's 1-2 and the damage it caused in the BW division.

Pac-Inoue at 122 would have been nasty.