Say for example one wanted to jump weight classes like cruiser to heavy like Holyfield. What is the difference between being a natural 200 pounder or natural 175 pounder vs a 190 pounder that body builded to 200 or a 155 pounder that bodybuilded to 175? Because at the end of the day the former 190 pounder is 200 and the former 155 pounder is 175? And this assumes that their body can still function the same with the added mass. So whats the difference between a natural 175 or 200 pounder and a built up one?
Frame size, plus how much weight you cut to make your current weight class. Marco Huck's a natural 210lber so he's essentially a legit heavyweight fighting at cruiserweight. God knows what Kudryashov's fight night weight is but he looks freaking huge. Adamek on the other hand is a legit 190lber who looked drained at LHW, looked comfortable at CW but utterly out of his depth at HW. He's the definition of a blown up heavyweight.
Not sure if this is the standard usage but I think of "blown up" fighters as those who could continue to fight at lower weight classes but who have chosen instead to keep more weight on to fight at higher weight classes. Oscar when he went up to 160, Floyd when he fought Oscar st 154, young Holyfield at heavyweight, Pacquiao and Duran at various points in their careers, etc. But often a person like Duran eventually goes from being a blownup lightweight to a full-fledged welterweight. I think a lot of people overuse the term to disparagingly refer to anyone who used to fight at a lower weight class, but some fighters legitimately outgrow their original weight classes.
That's true. You'll hear posters refer to Haye as a blown up cruiserweight all the time, yet a better definition would be that he was a boiled down heavyweight who fought a large part of his career at a lower weight than he would naturally fight at. He looked totally comfortable at HW. Huck is a similar case, only his style doesn't quite lend itself as well to heavyweight.
Haye's a great example. The man hasn't weighed less than 210 pounds in nearly 10 years and looks very fit in the 220s. He's a heavyweight, not a blown-up cruiserweight.
There's no direct evidence on this matter, because no one has ever conducted a study specifically designed to explore this question, but one can suggest some plausible mechanisms. To the extent that it's true that fighters "lose something" when they bulk up, (and lets grant in arguendo that it is) it's probably due not to the mere fact that that muscle is added, but that it's the *wrong kind* of muscle. Muscle is not a homogeneous material like wire; muscles are complex cellular structures, like different grains of wood. There's really no way to bulk up other than through some kind of heavy resistance training, and there's no way to guarantee -if there is any way at all - that this will coincide with the generation of muscle fiber that is optimal for boxing, so even if there is an absolute gain in (say) your punching power, there may be a *loss* relative to your weight. If there's one thing that's known about so-called sports science or "exercise physiology" - although in point of fact almost nothing of significance is firmly known - it's that the best way to train for a given physical task is to regularly perform a more intensive version of that task. There probably just isn't enough overlap between the tasks of lifting weights and throwing punches for the former to be a fully efficient way to train for the latter. Oh, and as others have rightly noted, you can't scale up your cardiovascular system. (You might develop hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, but that's definitely not something you should do intentionally.)
Canelo's another great example. I think it would be kind of silly to call him a "blown-up junior middleweight."
You can usually decide whether someone is natural or blown-up by looking at their muscle size. Anthony Joshua? Blown-up, would be under 215 if he didn't lift (he slimmed down for the last Ruiz fight, hope he continues to.) Roberto Duran? A great example of a fighter who naturally moved up. But, quite literally, a "natural ___ pounder" is someone who weighs that naturally (give or take some weight off their pre-training camp weight). A "blown up" or "bulked up ____ pounder" is someone who got bigger to be at the weight they were. Had they not gone through the measure to get bigger, for example through muscle building via weights or eating, they would be lighter. One's natural, the other has bulked up to get to that point.
