Classic Forum Chat: Size isn't the only factor.

Douglas is rated behind Bowe on all lists unless you have something to the contrary.

Even on their best night i'm not certain Douglas has the fight in him Bowe does.

Bowe could easily be outside the top 20. Probably should be.

 

This is actually true. Cooney still had that mystique and aura about him and Spinks was still considered suspect at heavyweight.

 

I have Bowe higher than Douglas.

I have Bowe at 22 and Buster at 26.
Prime for prime They’re not so different.

 

I remember being laughed at after the Huck vs Povetkin fight…

 

There is a palpable difference between the "greats of yesteryear" Dempsey 6'1" 190lbs,Louis 6'1.1/2" 200lbs,Marciano 5'.10"187lbs, and Usyk 6'3" 221lbs.
For the record personally I've never said ALL the greats of yesteryear would not be competitive today,neither did I use the term cherry pick regarding the Spinks v Cooney fight ,I said Spinks chose Cooney because he was thought to be the easier match,inactive ,unranked,and ,more decisively the much bigger purse.I think the result justified that pick!
Has ONE fight result actually turned the size differential debate on its head?
Povetkin whom you named was 6'.2'' 220+lbs very good box fighter=Good enough
Tyson scaled around 220lbs and had tremendous speed and two handed power= Good enough
Byrd 6'2" 215lbs Smart defensive fighter with good footwork, who rarely got caught flush=Good enough

Hello! These are not small men!
Bottom line 6'3" 220lbs is big enough if the fighter is good enough?
To counter this newly found revisionism posters have to ask themselves why Byrd,Holyfield, Haye,Spinks and now Usyk DID BULK UP if it is not deemed necessary?
Haye beat a man 100lbs heavier to win a version of the title,he was successful because all his opponent had was his size.
He was miserably unsuccessfull against Wlad because Wlad had the talent to complement his size!
Some of the comments here are frankly baffling, the frantic grasping of ONE fight result as a vindication that size does not matter is akin to a few sheep being separated from the flock and bleating in the field.

Ali was 6''3" and at his best 212lbs has anybody suggested he would not be competitive today?

Good God Almighty it isn't rocket science! Get a grip some of you!
Edited to add, nothing personal ,trawling through the posts today I was a struck by how antagonistic and uneccessarily combative many posts are now.I havent posted for awhile and this fact has leapt out to me.

 

Inactive and unranked.

 

"Although Cooney had only fought three official bouts in five years following his loss to Holmes, in 1987 he challenged former world heavyweight and world light heavyweight champion [url]Michael Spinks[/url] in a title bout. Cooney appeared past his prime and Spinks, boxing carefully with constant sharp counters, knocked him out in round 5."
Tune ups? Cooney hadnt fought in a year and a half.

 

That idiot Cojimar said he’d have a time beating the cruiser weights of today

 

Also true, just like what luf said was.

 

And that's scarcely the start of it!!

 

Even though I am a Mike fan, I thought Cooney would win due to size and power. Silly old me lol.

 

I don't see how Usyk's fight is much different from Weaver over Tate, Holyfield over Douglas and Bowe, Holmes over Cooney, Spinksnover Holmes, Roy over Ruiz, etc. And it's nowhere near the size gap of Haye against Valuev.

 

He was talked of as a challenge, because he was easy to hype and his hype brought in ticket sales; not because he had continued to prove himself against highly ranked contenders, since losing to Holmes. He had not and never again did.

(Neither did Spinks for that matter, post-Holmes).

No, but Cooney had retired in July '85, after having had only 2 fights in three years, citing that he couldn't get up for the level of the guys he was fighting - Yet, he did not seem interested in fighting genuine contenders, either.

Essentially, he was unable to bring himself to train or fight anymore.

Coming back again, in '86, and beating Gregg inside a round didn't change that.

Holmes had always maintained there would never be a rematch with Cooney, unless he was paid $25M; later, explaining that he intended to price himself out because he didn't want the "aggravation" of another Cooney fight.

Only after he'd lost the title to Spinks - and Cooney had come back (again) to beat Gregg - did Holmes change his tune and indicate an interest in the rematch.

Holmes would announce his own retirement, later the same year.

As previously mentioned, he was seen as hot property because he was easy to hype - his *puncher's chance* being a large part of this hype - and The Ring Magazine feature was just that - hype. Tyson and King had no genuine interest in including Cooney in their plans.

Yes - all the talk was about the money, which incidentally ended up being capped, due to a general lack of interest in the fight, with many of the venues slated for the Closed Circuit TV broadcast having to pull out.


So, sure - Cooney remained marketable enough to make picking him as an opponent a viable risk/reward decision. His handlers kept him in the frame as a money draw, but that did not translate into him being a genuine title challenger, after 5 years of relative nothingness, since losing to Holmes.

Of course, Spinks still had to go out there and win the fight, but he was facing seriously damaged goods, both physically and mentally.

 

What became quite obvious, at the time, was Spinks lack of interest in fighting genuine heavyweight contenders.

Spinks knew the time he had left in boxing was limited and made a mint from the home-straight of his career, at heavyweight. Fair play to him - even as he got spanked worse than just about anyone by Tyson, for roughly $150K/second.

To tie this back into the thread's topic, Spinks doesn't strike me as a particularly good example for the 'Size isn't the only factor' debate, even though I generally agree with the sentiment.

I think it likely that Spinks could have been paneled by quite a number of the genuine Heavyweight contenders, in both his own era and those that followed.