[Deleted by user.]

I admitted I was wrong thinking he was 160+.

You can keep dismissing 178 as a low end all you want, it doesn't change the fact he was a 26 year old grown man in his prime and win the title at that weight. Most of the listed weights we see of Corbett in the lare 180's are when he was past his prime and gained weight via aging.

Shall we look at the weights of other champions in the old days when they win the title? I won't even use champions who fought long past Louis retirement as that would skew the numbers.

Sullivan 198?
Fitzsimmons 167
Jefferies 206
Johnson 194
Willard 238
Dempsey 187
Tunney 189
Schmeling 188
Carnera 260
Sharkey 205
Braddock 194
Baer 209
Louis 197
Charles 186
Walcott 194
Rocky 184

-Fitzsimmons is literally the only champion who weighed less than Corbett's 178 when be won the title.
-even if you want to claim 185 was Corbett's average weight, he is still smaller than every single boxer listed here besides Rocky, Charles, and Fitzsimmons which does NOT help your case as Charles and Fitzsimmons were tiny guys with small frames moving up and Rocky was frequently teased for how small he was.
-there are 5 champions who won their titles in the 190+ range and 5 who won it over 200+. So that's 10 champions in the old school days who were anywhere from 10-20+ lbs heavier than Corbett when he won the title.

You are flat out wrong. Heavyweight champions and contenders Corbett's size were absolutely not the norm, especially once the light heavyweight division was created.

I stand by what I said. when Louis retired the first time it left a void making the division very weak and allowed for smaller guys to grab a title. This is very common throughout HW history. Byrd, Jones, Spinx, and Tunney won their belts when the division was very weak or going through a transitional phase. And ALL of them were bigger than Corbett when they win the title!

 

Can you not understand the concept that since the weights are inaccurate, outliers are likely due to inaccurate estimates? I already cited a next day report to his win over Sullivan gave his weight at 189Ib, which would be his career heaviest weight by boxrec.

189Ib would also put him at or above Dempsey, Tunney, Schmeling, Charles and Rocky, which are some of the best of that group. In other words the weight difference is within the margin of error.

Got to love the completely random criteria of weight in a title winning effort. Great example of made up bull**** criteria to justify the conclusion you want, when it's cherry picking the lowest weight estimate on boxrec.

 

I said from fights which we have numbers from and I underlined that the data isn't very reliable. Did you read my post or not?

You'd never call Rocky or Dempsey SMW. That's my point, Corbett wasn't big but he was well within reasonable spectrum of size for pre-1970s HW.

 

I'm cherry picking when I'm literally picking each fighter at his best when he won the ****ing title as a fully grown man in his mid-20's.

I'm cherry picking when I'm literally just telling you what's on boxrec, to which you responded it was guess work but a "report" is automatically the more accurate source. The one who seems to be cherry picking is you because you just admitted a lot of weigh ins are guess work and you conveniently pick the heavier option everytime you reply.

It's pretty damn obvious Corbett wasn't a very big guy if he could weigh 178 at 26 years of age without looking like skin and bones and was in good enough shape to fight over a dozen rounds and won the title. I would bet any amount of money if there was a guy Corbett's size beating up Joshua, Usyk, and Fury you'd be showering then with praise for winning despite being small.

I don't need to sift through anything to "get the results I want". 185 is what you claimed was his average weight and I ADDRESSED THAT TOO. 185 isn't particularly big either even back then, unless I'm mistaken and Sullivan, Jefferies, Johnson, Carnera, Willard, Baer, and Louis frequently weighed within the 185 ballpark. They didn't, so wtf are you even on about?!?

I addressed this too. The number of champions who weigh over 190+ or 200+ outnumber the champions who weighed 180+.

It's a FACT that Rocky, Tunney, and Dempsey were underdogs and were written off by some writers as being too small to succeed.

No it wouldn't put him above Dempsey or even Rocky since those two had multiple fights in their prime as champion where they weighed over 190. Corbett would still weigh less than them in average even if you want to cherry pick the highest weight for him!

Do you want to use revisionist history now? Do you seriously want me to pull up dozens of documentaries, articles, and books from that time period where the very champions you're referencing were considered underdogs for being smaller than some of the guys at HW? Go get Thanos time stones and then get back with me, I live in reality.

 

Yes, I can read. Did you read the part where I asked how we can be certain of his average if so many of his listed weights are just guesses? What makes one report superior to another? Does it depend on the agenda of the poster?

The Corbett who fought at 178 for the title could have easily fought at super middleweight today. I'm not back tracking from this claim.

I already listed the weights of the pre 70's champions. Corbett is a full 15-25 lbs smaller than the majority of them. That is not even up for debate. He was small even for champions back then and you should probably get over it.

 

We can't be certain, which is why you can't assume that Corbett weighed below 180 lbs. You can't be sure about 180+ lbs marks either, but we have a lot more reports of that higher weight than the other way around. You cherrypick one, the smallest value of all. I say that we should trust the number that is reported more often.

So could Dempsey and Rocky, but you never called them that way.

If we take the average of Corbett's listed weights, we get 183 lbs. Among the 16 fighters you mentioned, only 6 of them were 15+lbs bigger than that, so it's not the majority. Check out your math again.

 

Let rank all the heavyweight champions by size. I'll just go by their first listed weight on Boxrec when they are atleast 21 years old, since they are an adult at that point, and thus indicated their natural weight.

1. Primo Carnera 266.75
   
2. Jess Willard 240
   
3. John L Sullivan 212
4. Jack Sharkey 197
5. Joe Louis 196
   
6. James J Jeffries 195
7. Rocky Marciano 192
   
8. Max Baer 191
   
9. James J Corbett 185
10. Jack Dempsey 185
11. Floyd Patterson 183
    
12. Jersey Joe Walcott 180
    
13. Max Schmeling 175.25
    
14. Gene Tunney 175
    
15. Jack Johnson 168
16. Ezzard Charles 163.5
    
17. James J Braddock 163
    
18. Marvin Hart 160
19. Tommy Burns 156
    
20. Bob Fitzsimmons 148

Wow, So Corbett, along with Dempsey are actually exactly in the middle, meaning his weight was exactly normal for a champion up until Floyd Patterson!

What an amazing discovery. I'm sure @Glass City Cobra will retract all his comments.

I mean its just the straight facts from boxrec.

 

A complicated question, because they are underrated by different people, at different points in history, and for completely different reasons.

We might be entering the first period in history, where Corbett is more underrated than Carnera.

Corbett's currency has tanked over the past fifteen years, like no other that I can think of!

 

Well you gave me a ballpark average of 185 and I accepted that and responded to it, so please cut it out with the cherry picking accusations lol. That's a fairly small number even for back then.

Except we know for a fact Rocky and Dempsey did lots of roadwork and it took discipline for them to get down to 185.

You would have to plug in the average weights of all those champions too, not just the given weight when they won the title. You and I both know fighters like Louis, Johnson, etc have multiple weights over 200 in their primes and that would skew the numbers.

 

So you're going to back peddle after accusing me of chery picking and plucked a random age of 21 instead of picking 26 when Corbett won the title? Intellectual dishonesty at its finest. Most guys are still growing at 21 and before you accuse me of back peddling, I even mentioned that in this very thread when I pointed out Patterson grew larger after winning the title having multiple bouts weighing 190+.

I mean, it's just straight facts that Tunney, Fitzsimmons, Charles, Burns, made their pro debuts in lower divisions before moving up to HW. So whose being dishonest? Trying to skew the numbers???

You're moving heaven and earth to avoid admitting Corbett wasn't very big. Certainly not in today's era, and apparently not even back then!

 

*facepalm*

 

We also know that Corbett was very into fitness work, he likely cut down his weight like all HWs in that era did. I don't understand why you assume that Corbett was untrained 180 lbs.

Alright then, taking only prime years and only boxrec source:

1883-85 Sullivan: 210 lbs
1889-97 Corbett: 182 lbs
1894-92 Fitzsimmons: 167 lbs
1898-04 Jeffries: 216 lbs
1903-06 Hart: 186 lbs
1906-10 Burns: 176 lbs
1906-14 Johnson: 201 lbs
1913-16 Willard: 234 lbs
1918-23 Dempsey: 190 lbs
1924-28 Tunney: 181 lbs
1926-32 Sharkey: 192 lbs
1929-37 Schmeling: 189 lbs
1930-34 Carnera: ~265 lbs
1932-35 Baer: 205 lbs
1933-38 Braddock: 184 lbs
1935-42 Louis: ~202 lbs

Don't have to do anyone else for now, but among 16 lineal champions, only 7 of them had +15 lbs advantage over Corbett on average. If we add Charles, Walcott, Rocky and Patterson to that you'll get only 8 out of 20 - definitely not a majority.

 

Who said Corbett was very big? Certainly not me, or anyone else in this thread.

 

No one did. But you two kept insisting he was somehow average size for an old school HW champion.

Well if you can prove he actually cut a decent amount of weight I'll concede this. Rocky and Dempsey sweating off lbs is well documented. Especially Rocky who ballooned up quickly whenever he relaxed to enjoy his favorite Italian foods and could sometimes walk around at like 205. Tag any Rocky fan and they'll agree. Dempsey spent many of his early years hungry and lacking nutrition. Once he had a steady diet and matured as a young man he was often in the 190 range and still needed to cut to get to that sometimes.

7 out of 16 is nearly half.

My main point wasn't even about a specific number of lbs. Hence why I said "anywhere from 15-25+ lbs heavier". The point was that he stands out as one of the lightest champions even for the older era if you look at average weights. According to the math you provided, the only ones close to Corbett's average weight are Hart, Tunney, and Braddock. Tunney was a light heavyweight who moved up, we've been over this about 4x now. Fitz moved up from a lower weight and had a tiny frame for that era, which I also mentioned several times.

Fitzsimmons, Tunney, and the tiny 5'7 Burns are the only ones out of 16 old school lineal HW champs who weigh less than Corbett on average. Which means Corbett WASN'T average in size for that era, he was the 4th lowest out of the 16 champions you listed. The fact 2 tiny guys moving up in weight and the short Burns are the only ones lighter than him should tell you everything!

 

I said he wasn't small relative to average HW, it doesn't mean he was average sized. He wasn't small next to Dempsey or Marciano, even if he was a few lbs lighter.

Nearly half isn't majority. That's my point.

But that's why I took the lower end of your estimate and still it wasn't the majority. If I take 25 lbs, very few would actually count.

I didn't calculate them due to lack of time, but Charles and Floyd would be up there as well. Marciano wouldn't be too far either. Besides, I wouldn't say that 7 or 8 lbs advantage is far from "close", 8 lbs is nothing.

Again, don't have the time to do that now but Charles would also be lower and Patterson is at least close. That gives us 5th or 6th out of 20 HW champions.

I never said that Corbett was big or anything. I just mean his size wasn't outlier and it wasn't. He was on the smaller end of the spectrum, but he wasn't close to the smallest ones. That's it, I didn't want to show you that he was bigger or that he was exactly average. If you take him in the 1930s or 1950s, it wouldn't be shocking for spectators to watch him at HW.