Greatest fighter per division who were relatively small for their division?

Welterweight may be Duran,he broke in the division, instantly beat an ex-champ and the consensus 2# greatest welterweight

 

Pernell Whitaker

 

Greb when dominating light heavy

 

In terms of best I'm not giving it too much thought, but fighters who were small at weight classes where they had great success.....

Wilde, Canto, Perez and Wolgast at fly.

Wilde fighting above fly. Harada at bantam (and feather for one fight).

Dejesus at lightweight.

Napoles at welter. Natural lightweight if ever there was one. Armstrong too.

Luis Rodriguez at middle. Pea at welter and light middle.

Mickey Walker above welter.

Loughran, Harold Johnson, Charles, Conn, Langford, Moore and Greb at heavy. Probably Byrd and Jimmy Ellis too.

Saldivar at feather in terms of stature. Pep possibly. Both comfortably made the weight their entire careers.

I tend to avoid the next day weigh lot, but Lomachenko is tiny for a modern lightweight. Bivol is only a small light heavy too, he looked little next to Beterbiev.

 

Mike Tyson, Dwight Quavi, Jake Matlala, Naseem Hamed, Saul Alvarez, Montel Griffin

 

HW - Marciano
LHW - Greb
MW - Ryan or Burley
WW - Napoles or Armstrong
LW - Canzernori
FW - Pep if you consider him small at the weight, Saldivar if not.
BW - Kid Williams
Fly - my top 3 were all small at the weight, Wilde, Canto and Perez

 

Pacquiao at WW and JMW. I mean he regularly weighed in at like 144-45 at WW and under 150 for JMW fights

Cotto was a very small MW in my opinion.

 

Canzi and Kid Williams are good shouts Greg, I didn't think of Williams tbh.

Davila at bantam/super bantam is another, probably Rudkin too and MacGowan. Walter wasn't a massive flyweight even, he did really well to be a world class bantam.

Guty Espadas was a small flyweight really, hindered all the more by having such an aggressive style.

Laguna was a small lightweight, he'd been a world class feather and bantam. Unlucky for him that his main rival at 135 was a horrible, huge framed behemoth with the build of a welterweight.

Hamed was a good shout too by whoever said it, he probably could have campaigned at bantam for the early stage of his world title run having won the Euro title.

 

The first two that come to mind are 5'2" welter Joe Walcott and 5'7" heavyweight Tommy Burns.

light-heavyweight champ Jack Dillon was pretty small for his division at 5'7".

So were featherweight title holders Benny Bass and Nick Ball, both around 5'2".

 

Currently, Nick Ball. Love watching him. He’s like a little mini brick shithouse.

 

Bivol is taller than Beterbiev. And their ring weights are similar I believe. Maybe a few lbs apart.

seems different just due to physique differences. Bivol looks like a guy who goes to a fancy climate controlled gym and watches his diet so that he can look good at the beach. Beterbiev looks like a guy who spends all day doing ass busting physical labor for a paycheck.

but in reality they’re about the same size.

 

I thought Bivol walked around in the low to mid 180s tbh, I'm not sure then. Didn't think he was draining down from 190 odd to 200lbs like Beterbiev but could be wrong I suppose. Id thought that there was talk of him being able to make super middle too.

 

Numbers are all well and good, but they shouldn't overtake the eye. Beterbiev is definitely a bigger man than Bivol. In the same way Donaire is clearly a bigger man than idk Casimero.

There was talk of him moving down prior to the Canelo fight, but obviously it got made at 175 so it probably wasn't seriously on the cards for either team Nelo or team Bivol.