OK this maybe totally wrong but it seems the dusty history books are filled with small but mighty guys beating the cr*p out of behemoths sometimes 20 times a week. Barbados Joe Walcott, Sam Langford, Mickey Walker, Harry Greb, Bob Fitzsimmons, even Jimmy Wilde, even though he never made it to heavyweight (as far as I know!) are fabled for KOing guys many times flabbier. Then after about 1920 this seemed more of a rarity and only now with the advantages of PEDs do we see a few more giant killers. Is this just the nature of history that the legends are remembered but there were no more giant killers in the 1900s than at any other time, or has it become harder to do due to heavier guys getting that much bigger? Or are the average decent larger guy simply better than the sailors, circus strongmen and truckers Langford blasted?
the talent pool for hw's is the main reason imo. look how average japanese height shot up once the kids had proper nutrition. the money available at hw was a real incentive for good guys to move up and that hasn't been a thing for 50+ years..
It still happens. Duran, Holyfield, Pacquiao and Usyk have all beaten world class boxers far bigger than them.
Perhaps smaller and more “likely” better skilled small guys beating or at least being competitive with significantly bigger guys is a natural phenomenon to a degree but such match ups are simply not seen as often in more modern times. Sure, in the more modern era, we’ve seen smaller fighters move up through several divisions with incrementally increased weight in tow and despite the extra weight, that is still a vouch for the smaller men. However, match ups involving notable size differences back in the day seemed to involve more smaller fighters staying in and round their most natural weight - though of course some carried more weight later in their careers as a natural consequence of ageing. Langford’s weight appears to have jumped up somewhat around the early to mid teens - I don’t know if that was deliberate weight gain to compete better with larger opposition or just Sam putting on a few extra pounds anyway. Usyk has done great at about 220 lbs against considerably heavier and dimensionally larger opposition. If he were to try come in any heavier, it could well upset the fine balance of P4P attributes relative to weight that he brings to the table.
Yeah but no 185 pound fighter (in the ring on fight night at 185) has recently KO'd a 220+ pound fighter. Hasn't happened in decades and Holyfield was over 200 pounds when he beat his giants.
No, that won't happen due to the nature of the current weight divisions. If one of the contestants is 220lbs+, it's a HW contest, so the other won't be under the modern 200lbs CW limit. Whilst rare, there are modern examples of fighters KO'ing bigger fighters with that same 35lbs+ weight disparity, though . Wilder has multiple such examples, including consecutive stoppage victories over fighters who were 138lbs (surely that's the biggest weight disparity in history where the smaller fighter won by stoppage) and 49lbs heavier respectively. Admittedly neither were world class.
A lot of good reasoning here. I think the biggest thing is just opportunity to do so though. Modern weight divisions don't allow the kind of weight disparity between fighters. If we look at early MMA (90s), there were few weight classes, and quite a few smaller guys were able to get wins and over much bigger men (Sakuraba, Yuki Kondo, Frank Shamrock, Frankie Edgar, BJ Penn all good examples of small guys with wins over bigger guys).
I actually feel like Wilder is perfectly suited for this. He's got the length of modern heavies, but the speed of a cruiserweight (which most guys his weight would fight at). I think he'd actually have done worse in boxing if he'd chosen to be a career cruiserweight. He'd lose out on a lot of his explosive advantage over guys at 200 pounds.