Dempsey as a modern fighter-

Demspey might qualify as "ripped and shredded", I don't know, but I do know he looks absolute nothing like a fighter at the edge for a weigh in. Here are some examples:

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Two elite athletes who turned in world class combat performances after their weigh in.

Here is Dempsey:

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And yes, I know about the back pic! The reason it's the favourite of the "Dempsey couldn't make light-heavyweight" argument is that it's the only picture there is that stands support of his having cut water which he might actually have done, incidently.

Either way, modern weight-making would take that body and remove pounds, and pounds and pounds. How Dempsey responded to refuelling would determine when he got off the weight making and onto to the steroids so he could make 200 (where he would fight at around 215lbs).

 

Which 6'1 250lb heavy from nowadays would you point to in support of this?

 

Here's young Dempsey:

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Looks basically the same.

Tbf, this isn't him at the weigh in and he might have gained in between the weigh in and the fight, but everybody who knows anything about it knows that he wasn't undertaking a modern cut. That's absolutely obvious to all.

And it's not just the cut, it's the refuel. The refuel is where combat sports science has really doubled-down. Mikey Garcia describes being unable to make a fist - literally unable to put a boxing glove on - due to weakness the night before a weigh in at 126lbs and then absolutely thrashing the other professional sportsman in the ring 30 hours later.

It's apples and oranges. Jack Dempsey would be a light-heavyweight in his prime today. It would be easy - not hard, easy.

 

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What I said applies to Jack Dempsey in the second picture. Huge swathes of weight to cut from that fighter - not hard to get THAT man down to 175, easy.

 

A cut, generally, is 7% of body weight, 6.5 to 7.5, that's if you're actually cutting - the way it has a specific meaning, not just "cutting weight". The actual prescribed modern cut. That's seven percent of a fighter who is "ready".

So Dempsey does it with ease around the time of the Willard fight. Assuming he couldn't drop another pound without embarking upon his cut, which I'm absolutely certain is untrue, but pretending that's the case, Dempsey still doesn't need the whole cut. He doesn't have to cut hard to make the poundage. He can cut easy.

Once he's over 190 he would start to really struggle, and he'd need a 8% cut to do it. That, of course, presumes he couldn't get lower as a starting point than against Tunney:

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Which, of course, he could.

Maybe he'd be in that minority of weight-cutters who it really didn't disagree with, that's possible, and he might, for some other strange reason, decide that 200lbs is the weight division for him, there's no way to know. Fighters always have choices.

But essentially progress means that the vast majority of fighters would be many (at the lower weights) and one or two (at the higher weights) classes lower. The best reason for this is that if they don't cut, they end up fighting much larger men naturally, men who have cut down from the weights above.

And remember, the big steps forwards are NOT in weight cutting - cutting is still done with aerobic exercise, sweat suits, gaffer tape, steam, water and food denial - what is different is the amount of time between the weigh in and fight, and the refuelling processes which is so just crazy good now.