How many modern-type HWs did Ezzard Charles fight?

Ok so Usyk spent years fighting around 204-208 ring weight, slaps on around 15 pounds to fight much bigger guys and you now consider him a "trimmed HW (80s/90s)" ???? Joe Louis later career adds on a similar amoutn but he is - "Joe Louis (6'2 and 217 lbs) -> overweight"

Usyk beat the #2 heavyweight in the world quite impressively. But i see you describe that as "gunshy" Joshua. So beating "gunshy" doesn't count or is a lessened victory that doesn't impact your a̶g̶e̶n̶d̶a debate?

Spinks made light heavyweight all through most of his peak and chose to add weight. He was never weight drained. He was a natural light heavyweight and at his greatest there.

He quite scientifically trained to add on weight to compete at heavyweight. He was still very much a natural light heavyweight however - one who found he could willingly add on poundage and compete above his best weight. Spinks beat Holmes at a weight of under 200 pounds and had made 175 pounds 3 months and 2 weeks prior. Your summation of 201-212 is unsurprisingly skewed in favor of what you are trying to achieve. Of course this will again be denounced along the lines of what's a couple of pounds or other such statements.

Well the entire thread is rather inauthentic really

You've already boxrec'd the crap out of this so why would anyone play such a slanted game? Sadly none of this overly impacts why Charles is pitched in so many fantasy fights against your ever changing modern heavyweight criteria and it won't change a thing. The guy will only be dragged down so far via pure weight stats particularly when they are thrust forward without a lot of context.

You have half a point but most players in Classic already know the ins and outs of the nth degree of poundage and factor it in accordingly to their own personal opinion.

And there it is. Now Rocky has presumably been dragged down you are after Charles.

Claiming Charles wasn't an ATG destroys all credibility of course.

 

I think I'm misreading your argument. It sounds like you're saying that:

* People thought Michael Spinks would fail at heavyweight because he was too small.

* People thought Usyk would fail at heavyweight because he was too small.

* Therefore, fighters the size of Usyk or Spinks are at a disadvantage against modern sized heavyweights.


Is that right? I feel like I'm missing something.

 

Mm. I see your point actually it doesn't sound like a matter of IF Charles could win. It's the inconsistency found when folks approach Spinks and Usyk? A bias to old school guys. Sorry, haven't been following this thread 100%, catch me up if I'm wrong.

 

I mean, I hate to say it, but you really brought the suffering on yourself with the way you designed this thread.

Eh, people are going to have different opinions on things. I often disagree with myself from one day to the next. We're on a forum that argues constantly about imaginary fights between dead people. It comes with the territory, IMO.

How is it crazy to pick Schmeling over Charles, Walcott, Patterson, or Lyle? You don't consider Charles an ATG heavyweight, right? Why wouldn't Schmeling be able to beat him, then? Lyle, meanwhile, isn't much bigger than fighters from Schmeling's own time, was pre-steroids as far as we can tell, etc. Walcott was a 1940s Jimmy Young who got lucky.

On the later stuff -- I don't always agree with them, but no, I don't think it's crazy to believe these things. "Crazy" would mean that the people who believe it are delusional and have no good reasons for their beliefs.

Schmeling's ranking ultimately rests on giving Louis a beatdown. The forum believes that Louis would remain an elite heavyweight in 2022. You may disagree. However, you'll recall that when I created a Louis vs Klitschko poll broken down by boxing experience, the actual boxers were almost evenly split between Louis and Klitschko. That's despite a massive size disparity, 70+ years of development between the two, and easy availability of modern S&C and frankly PEDs in Klitschko's era. So something about Louis has people who know what they're talking about convinced that he outpunches a guy who, on paper, he has no business outpunching.

So. It takes all kinds.

Though I will say that I have serious difficulty even visualizing Schmeling and Ibeabuchi in the same ring together.

 

Yeah, this is a legit issue. But I'm not sure what it proves, other than that Classic fans can be inconsistent.

The problem is that Usyk and Spinks won. Forum opinion -- and before it, public opinion -- got their fight predictions wrong by putting too much emphasis on size.

Sure, the Charles crowd could bite the bullet and decide Charles probably sucks at heavyweight, just like Spinks. Or they can bite a different bullet and decide that maybe their intutions about weight are misleading, and Spinks doesn't suck as much as they thought. The second bullet at least has the virtue that the people who bet against Spinks and Usyk lost in the real world.

I don't claim to know the right answer.

 

So what you are claiming is that nobody much was picking Spinks and Usyk to have much success against the big boys because they didn't have the resume against bigger fighters. There were doubts.

Yet despite this both performed above expectations and won the title.

So your big picture and bottom line above tells us that people like Marciano and Charles, despite having thin resumes against so called modern heavyweights, could well surprise us and perform against the grain just like Usyk and Spinks did in beating bigger more favored opponents.

I can jive with that, great points, good thread. I will take that into account and not glaze guys like Marciano and Charles over quite as quickly as i have been against the modern heavyweights.

 

I used to be torn on these kind of issues, often flip flopping between opposing sides.

But the very second Joshua was unable to cut through Usyk like a knife through butter was the very second I stopped using weight as a fight defining advantage at HW.

I was on my way to this opinion when I realised that guys like Jarell Miller weren't undisputed champions. But the Usyk fight confirmed it.

I'll pick Charles over people I think he's better than, even if they have a weight advantage.