Can People Seriously Get The 'P4P' Meaning Right!

No it isn't. Not if the huge HW is incredibly skilled, to the point where if you shrunk him down with a mad scientist's shrink ray, he would still be as effective against top fighters of comparable weight.

 

Agree.

 

HW can be P4P.

Ali would have been P4P #1 in 66' 67'

 

What's all this 'shrinking down' stuff?

We'll ignore the fact that, if you shrunk Vitali Klitschko down to welterweight/height, he physically wouldn't be able to stand up because his brain couldn't cope.

What exactly are you imagining? Does the WW Vitali have the same speed in your mind as the HW one (ie very very slow at WW)? Does he have the same punching power (ie. by far the hardest hitting WW in history)?

 

You're taking it too literall- actually, just forget it. :-(

 

But a lot of people do seem to think that P4P involves imagining fighters reduced to the same size.

Fair enough if you didn't mean it literally, maybe someone that does can answer the question.

 

I think the most succinct way to put it is "Pound for pound = 'in proportion' (to size)..."

So if you are saying that Jermain Taylor is a better p4p fighter than Carlos Baldomir, it has nothing to do with whether Baldomir could jump up in weight class (or have Jermain drain down) and beat Taylor straight up. They are each judged relative to their own weight class. You are saying that in proportion to his size, stacked head-to-head against other middleweights, Taylor is the better fighter than Baldomir in proportion to his size, stacked head-to-head against other welterweights.

Of course the weight-jumping does confuse the issue a bit, particularly on the point of "at what weight do you judge the jumper?"; ie, when comparing Wlad Klitschko to Manny Pacquiao using the above formula for Taylor-Baldomir, we're obviously saying that in proportion to his size, stacked head-to-head against other heavyweights, Wlad is a ____ (better/worse...whatever your opinion) fighter than Manny Pacquiao in proportion to his size, stacked head-to-head against other ???????.

??????, IMO, should be the most recently campaigned in division. So the sentence would be completed with the word "welterweight".

If you think Wlad stacks up against other HWs better than Pac stacks up against other WWs, then Wlad is the better p4p fighter.

The figurative idea of "shrinking" the bigger man or "blowing up" the smaller is basically just a mind's-eye tool to help people on the learning curve who can't make the mental leap of separating straight-up head to head comparisons with size-proportionate analysis. Obviously the tool itself can cause confusion if taken literally, so maybe it's best to just leave it off the table.

 

Ability/weight = p4p

 

Yes, I agree with pretty much most of that.

I would add that we also make subjective judgements about the strength or weakness of each weight division. So, with reference to your example, I could think that Wlad is a more dominant heavyweight than Pacquiao is welterweight, but still rank Pac higher P4P because I judge the division to be much stronger.

The problem is, as you say at the end, people do take the 'make everyone the same size' thing seriously and you end up with "a welterweight Klitschko would get battered by everyone because he would be really slow and wouldn't have any of the physical advantages he relies on" being presented as an argument.

 

Haye is a two weight world champ.

Why wouldn't he fit your criteria?

 

An open weight class can't be judged in P4P terms like all the other weight classes, which is why people present similar arguments to that.

 

Yes you wrong (at least partially) the above guys indeed
were dominating to some point at multiple weight classes.

 

Sure it can. You just might need to have more considerations within the weight class than you would do in others (eg. you might have one heavyweight weighing 270lbs and another weighing 210lbs - they should be judged in a P4P sense and not just considered to be the same size).

 

You can't judge them accurately though.

You're supposed to take weight and size out of the equation. But if you have somebody like Wlad (so dependent on his jab, because of his height, reach and weight) and somebody like Vitali (defence is all based around leaning back out of range, because he's so tall), how can you then judge them P4P when their skillsets are based around being bigger than their opponents?