Bob Foster at SMW today- GOAT 49-0

It obviously goes without saying that amateur and professional weights can vary. My argument was that amateur weights give us better indicators of which boxers are comparable in size since amateurs are not given the opportunity to exploit the weigh-in procedure. This is why I compared Bivol, Kovalev and Foster who were all amateur middleweights-cum-light heavyweights at the same ages.

Beterbiev was an amateur up to the age of 26. It is therefore more difficult to compare his size to the other three because we don't have perfect information once fighters transition to the pros, especially in the case of Beterbiev. He could have grown at an unusual rate past a certain age, or other motivators could have caused him to move up (maybe a teammate showed more promise at 81kg, similar to the Nunn -Tate situation).

I, personally, have never seen Beterbiev's fight night weights displayed. If he's over 190 pounds in there, that would make him bigger than many, many light heavyweights who came before him. We know Bivol and Kovalev weighed 10 pounds below that on average. I believe Foster was around this latter area as well.

 

Still loses to 167 pound Fitzsimmons. But that is axiomatic, so I don't hold it against him.

 

A pound weighed much more in Fitzsimmons's day, though. Even when people weren't carrying deer around.

 

So? So did Badou Jack. Why wasn't he ever a light middleweight?