David Tua versus Jim Corbett

Not really. Chris Byrd was a 215-lb man when he fought Tua. He'd weighed more than 200 pounds for 7 years. Corbett, by contrast, spent his career between 178 and 188.

(and we should also keep in mind that Corbett's skills were rudimentary compared to Byrd's).

 

And he went on to fight at light heavyweight at the age of 37.

You don’t need to be big to beat Tua.

 

Killed himself to get back down to 175 and turned in the worst performance of his career. It was a terrible mistake. He was a shell of the fighter he was at 210-215.

 

To beat Tua, you need to be big enough to take a punch. And unless you're a strong superheavy, you need to be skilled & prolific enough of a jabber to disrupt his offense and control distance.

 

Yeah but if Corbett was required to be 200lb to fight for the heavyweight title, maybe he would. Seems like thats what Byrd was stretching himself to do.

You would think natural 200lb trim men don't fight at 169. Byrd ended his career at 174 and 194.

 

And he was talked about by some in that way because of the way he's looked on film so far.

 

Agree totally with the point about Byrd.

The pick shouldn't be based on size.

It should be based on whether or not you feel Corbett can keep Tua off him with speed and movement as Byrd did in his prime.

 

Maybe Corbett could bulk up to 200, maybe he couldn't. Seems irrelevant to the question of this thread though, no?

Plenty of heavyweights could have made themselves melt down to lower weight classes and they too would have likely had disastrous results.

 

You've just conceded the point we've been making. :thumbsup Fighters' physical attributes and styles, and how impressive they look in the ring matter immensely to any reasonable person trying to predict fights.

And I repeat my other point which is that beating "x ranked fighters" in a given era has tells us next to nothing about how a fighter would fare in a different era, especially in the heavyweight division and in a period of 100 years later.

 

Chris Byrd is 6'2" with a 74" reach and was 215 Lbs. vs. Tua.

Byrd was 169 Lbs. in his pro debut, 171Lbs. in his 2nd fight 3 1/2 months later. His 3rd fight was 10 months later and he weighed 193 Lbs. (that was HW in 1994). He was 200 Lbs. in his 4th fight and fought at 204 Lbs. or more over the next 13 years. His highest weight was 222 Lbs. He dropped down to LHW in 2008 and was stopped in the 9th round by S. George, he looked like he was starving to death. He was 194 Lbs. in his last fight (2009) and won by KO.

Tua was pretty much a head hunter when he fought Chris Byrd. The fight was somewhat close, Tua won 4 or 5 rounds (116-112 or 115-113). Byrd was fast, elusive, and durable to say the least.

 

idk the guy can move

https://streamable.com/414i

his reflexes are sharp, and thats bob fitzsimmosn across from him, who can end anyone with one punch.

 

This started a few posts up with a poster saying that Corbett was a middleweight, and too small for Tua. And Janitor brought up a good point which was that Byrd fought at similar weight. Those were in his early and late bouts, but Corbett wasn't forced to put on weight to fight for the main title of boxing.

 

I still don't follow. If the thread is about Tua v. Corbett are we supposed to imagine some kind of 200+ lb verison of Corbett or do we base our assessments on the version who actually lived and fought?

 

I don't need to break down the various massive differences between Tua and Fitzsimmons, do I?

If you take off the rose-colored lenses and actually compare Corbett's technique, skills, and style to Chris Byrd's you'll see that he comes up lacking. Hard to even compare the two though as Byrd's opponents were light years beyond Corbett's physically and technique wise. Corbett was brilliant for his limited era but the game evolved in leaps and bounds after he hung them up.