Let's stop judging past heavies on the size of their opponents

A fighter can ONLY be judged on what he achieves in his own time. All head-to-heads are hypothetical, and yes, the size of heavyweights has changed dramatically through the ages.

The same people who will put down Marciano for being small and fighting other smallish heavies will turn around and attack Usyk, seemingly unaware that, if size is the standard, he has won more fights against quality giants than most other heavies in history, and he should be the gold standard against which others are judged.

 

I do agree with you to some extent but the world and sport just evolves with time.

Boxing becomes more popular than it was, taller children are born, more fighters from countries such the Soviet fight now when they couldn't back then, sports science and nutrition is otherworldly better these days. But, @catchwtboxing is spot on a boxer is only judged on what he actually achieves, also when creating a mythical match up - looking at it from a style-wise perspective is also crucial.

 

Accomplishment-wise, yeah, you judge by era and what challenges it presented. As far as h2h goes:

They are blown-up LHW until you have to actually land on that small, nimble, defensively sound target under the Queensberry rules. Then they become defensive wizards or offense-to-defense terminators like Frazier or Tyson. Sure, a lesser crop of them gets to the top due to the crucible of size disparity keeping a lot of them down, but once they do, you just know they've learned how to turn it into an advantage.

Those 6-6 heavyweights have been earning numerous L's recently as well. Much larger target, struggles with tempo in exchanges against a determined enough opponent, can be countered in an absolutely devastating manner over the top if he is being lazy with the long guard. Parker, Usyk, Kabayel, and to an extent Dubois (shorter than advertised) all benefit extremely by being closer to the Ali/Louis standard.

Lennox Lewis was the golden superheavyweight (and not that tall to begin with), but he developed into an extremely intelligent, chess-like fighter with control, vision, and superb repertoire of moves. Him kicking like a mule helped as well.

 

Fighters can only fight what is front of them. Legacy is way more important than the fictional H2H argument. Honestly at least 90 percent of people when judging H2H, will have some sort of favoritism bias. They will reason out in their mind why the fighter they like would win over a fighter they don’t like or don’t care about. Also if all fights ended as they appeared on paper the sport would never have a single upset. You just don’t know how fight will turn out.
Marciano fought everyone he was supposed to as champion. That’s all he could do. Pre title run was weak being a local on the New England scene and that’s where he can be critiqued as he doesn’t have a deep resume. But as champion he was great.

 

Nice one, Catch!!

 

It's largely done because most people overwhelmingly underate modern fighters in these hypotheicals but I agree in general with your point.

 

I agree that the ranking of the opponent is much more important than their size.

 

Here's the thing (obvious Marciano defense thread in disguise), people often already do judge fighters based on the standards of their time. If there weren't a lot of 6'4, 240 pounders in a fighters era, then you obviously can't blame them for not having many on their resume.

When it comes to h2h ability/skill, it's a valid point to suggest that a fighter of the past may struggle with one today if they sorely lack larger fighters on their resume. Size isn't everything, but it's a significant factor. I would say the same thing about Lewis in 2035 if the top 10 was filled with a bunch of skilled, 6'10 280 pound guys. It would be a valid question if Lewis could adjust to the size difference.

 

You can only beat who’s in-front of you and if you beat the best, then you deserve to be rated highly.
But I do think it’s fair to look at things like that in H2H matchups because if you didn’t look at the size of his opponents at all and only the fact they beat everyone around, we’d be picking Marciano to beat Liston based on that, but the fact of his style combined with the fact we didn’t see him against big men that could punch means it’s hard to know how he’d have dealt with that, but in terms of his legacy, he deserves to have a high ranking because he beat virtually everyone who was around.

 

Defending Marciano by comparing era standards misses the point. Great heavyweights should be judged by their ability to overcome size disadvantages - something Ali, Louis, Holmes, Holyfield, and Tyson all demonstrated throughout their careers.

When comparing fighters across eras, quality of opposition matters most. If Boxer A defeated heavyweights who would have beaten Boxer B's opponents, then Boxer A logically has the superior resume. While historical context provides perspective, direct comparisons between fighters must account for opponent quality.

The best heavyweights proved their greatness regardless of size disparities - any fighter who couldn't do the same deserves that criticism when evaluating their legacy regardless of if its their fault or not.

 

Marciano never actually faced elite big men which is the key issue. The fact that the "best" fighters in his era were 185-199 pounds only underscores how weak that period was for heavyweight boxing. It's doubtful Marciano would have maintained his undefeated record against the superior competition in either preceding or subsequent eras where bigger, more skilled heavyweights were more prominent.