Why did dominant super tall heavyweights only emerge relatively recently?

The question is why super tall fighters have emerged as the best HWs recently and your answer is the creation of the CW division.

The only logical conclusion as to your rationale is that there have been fighters active in the CW division, at the time these super tall boxers established themselves as the best HW in the world, who would have beaten them.

Let's examine this hypothesis a little. There have been 5 x 6ft 5ins+ HWs who established themselves as the best in the world since the creation of the CW division.

1. Bowe - Which boxer, active at CW between his 1st and 2nd fights with Holyfield (I.e. during his lineal reign) would you favour over him? Bowe going 2-1 with a top 2 CW GOAT and there being no fighter active at CW who was close to Holyfield's league, during Bowe's lineal reign, doesn't support your hypothesis, imo.

2. Lewis - which boxer active at CW between 1998 and 2004 would you take over Lewis? On fair scorecards he went 2-0 over a top 2 GOAT CW, who whilst admittedly may have been a little faded, had, had several years of boxing at HW and had, legally or otherwise, added c25lbs of muscle since his CW days.

3. Vitali - Arguably briefly lineal and/or the best HW in 2004 after he beat Sanders. To give you more to work with, let's include his comeback as an old man. Which boxer active at CW between 2004 and 2012 would you have over him? Adamek was lineal at CW during this time. Their fight was a disgusting physical mismatch and I'm convinced Vitali carried him from the KD in the 2nd round, despite Vitali being in his 40's. Difficult to imagine a boxer active at CW in 2004 beating a prime Vitali.

4. Wlad - Which fighter active at CW from 2009 to 2015 would you favour over him? As a guide, Wlad fought 2 x lineal CW champions, Haye and Mormeck. The latter admittedly was faded by their fight, in what was another disgraceful physical mismatch.

5. Fury - the only one of the 5 where a credible argument can be made there was a fighter active in the CW division during his reign who could beat him, i.e. Usyk. Personally I doubt that and as you say, I hope we found out soon, but it is at least a reasonable and defensible position to take, unlike the previous 4.

Fighters can make substantially more money as the best HW in the world than as the best CW in the world. Any boxer capable of making CW and also capable of beating the best HW in the world, would fight at HW.

 

I have looked into Steve Dalkowsi quite a bit. And the stories about how hard he could throw are pretty amazing. He might be the hardest thrower all time and by quite a margin. Imagine if he was on peds. Or Babe Ruth, Mantel or Owens for that matter.

The nhl player Bobby hulls slap shot was clocked at 118 mph with a wooden stick in the 1950s. That would be the hardest slap shot by a fair margin if that’s true. On steroids he might be well into the 120s.

In the 80s there were no gyms around where I live now there are tons I don’t really see weight lifting being as popular in the 80s like you say.

older athletes have bad joints that’s why they can’t compete. It’s not because their muscles are much weaker.

 

You are seizing on the things you like; very well.
However you cannot go by one region/anecdotal evidence.
Tons of evidence shows how popular weightlifting, gyms, PEDs got, reaching a critical mass, in the 1980's.

I do not know if the Hull stats are true, but at least it is similar to the one kind of activity, throwing or hitting something light, where an outlier could still potentially be the GOAT.

 

I don’t know that much about Olympic weight lifting or power lifting besides that the Russians were very dominant in the 80s, I assume it’s a bigger sport now, but I don’t know,

I do know a top power lifter who wrestled Andrea the Giant and he said he would have shattered every record in any weight lifting displine without much effort. When he was younger he had good joints.

Also if your into that sort of thing Angus Mcaskil in the 1800s by many is reported to be the strongest man in documented history and weighed in at a lean 500 pounds. His feats of strength are crazy.

 

For curio value, check out this giant, a 7’2” Dutch fellow considered to be the worlds tallest bodybuilder.

Notably his proportions are very good - he doesn’t look necessarily stretched or elongated at that height, just looks like a powerful, heavily built guy proportionally sized up, appearing like a “real” giant.

If his height is accurate he has 2” on Valuev.


https://youtube.com/shorts/AhxZdwlJd5g?feature=share

There was also this Finnish giant back in time - ultimately hit a max 8’3”. Again, his proportions are pretty good which makes him look even more massive. He is well mobile also - as opposed to a lot of guys who have hit that height and beyond - and there hasn’t been many.

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The Angus thing is dubious-or just exaggerated. I never heard he was lean, that is extreme.
But older athletes while not always having joint issues, PEDs enhance many things.

Andre was amazing even with crumbing bones.
But extreme statements like break all records with little effort are implausible.
Maybe break them with a lot of effort.

 

Yeah Angus was not really fat at all. I studied him for awhile sometime ago and there are what seem like well documented things about him. He was a meter across the shoulders , 7”9 in height with a 80 inch chest. And was a natural giant, with no gigantism like Andre.

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Thanks, I have seen things about him before, maybe this very video.
I do not know how well documented things are about him.
There is some good evidence, but it was a looong time ago, & things like "his agent said"...Inspire no confidence.
Even the video says some things became exagerated-of course the anchor story, & some others, must be false. In actual weight.
STILL he may well have been the naturally strongest man who ever lived.
He may have been stronger than anyone without any PEDs-meaning with any training short of this.

What would be absolutely extraordinary is IF he could have been stronger than anyone despite both modern training, nutrition-& the huge advantage of artificially bulking up with many times the male hormones anyone could ever produce.
Who knows?

 

Yeah, it could be stories . And that guy who did the video just had the same information that’s online and his opinion is it might not be real because the weights lifted are quite a bit more than what strong men are doing today. The Guinness book of world records recognized his size and that he is tallest non pathological true giant In recorded history with the largest chest and shoulders ever.And there is a correlation between size and strength.

 

This is very reasonable!

 

yeah but understand that even if Angus was exceptionally strong, the legends make him improbably powerful-well beyond what anyone ever achieved with modern training AND PEDs is not at all plausible.

However if he had those listed proportions, or close to it, then it is certainly possible that just due to how much muscle he could attach he could have been the strongest man ever known-at least naturally.

About the population-take a longer view, it is plausible that a single man that size could have popped up through random chance in say the last 100 years-OR it could have happened in the last century.
And like say Steve Dalknowski/otherworldly throwing ability in an otherwise average me-very rarely.

As for your comment of those who are exceptionally tall, a variant of the statistical frequency argument I just made.
The reason the strongest men tend to cap out at 6'9" or so is that even being "just" 7' tall is so rare.
There are supposed to be @ 2800 men of at least 7' tall in the WORLD.
Do the rough math-over 8 billion people, almost half of them male, remove those under 18...
That is just a bit shy of

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!
While the tallest woman is barely over 7'...

When you get to OVER 7'3", you are starting to approach a % that is almost vanishingly rare.
Take ANY height, a very small % of people are naturally very strong.

EDIT: there is at most 1 man over 7'3" in the NBA-& since he has also been listed at 7'3" "only", & heights tend to be taken in sneakers in the league, even he may fall "short".
Biggest NBA hands ever, images here for fun.
That so many tall man are strong shows I think that just because height is correlated with bone structure, more massive men can put on more muscle.

However you have to account for them getting enough calories to maximize strength, harder when you are so large-but easy for many in the modern world.
Also you need to subtract or provide a handicap for pituitary giants-they still may be able to be really strong like Andre The Giant, but also may be limited-as he eventually was, although he could easily push parked cars around & relocate them just as a joke with friends-due to bone & joint problems.

I appreciate No Neck sending me that link to endeavor to research the probability of epigentics effecting height potential for multiple generations!
That is a Stand Up, no Ego thing.
And also secure since I occasionally tease him re: his extreme aversion to George Foreman!

 

Part of the issue is that average height doesn't actually show the difference in generations, it shows the average of all living generations. I couldn't find too good of a resource for young adult (20-22) Americans on a cursory search.

 

When I have looked in the past-you can check recent growth charts that top out at 18-the difference is negligible between this & about the last couple of generations.
Bojak is correct that most of the increase occurred before that, from early in the 20th century, roughly through the whole middle of that/the last century.