Do you think the heavyweight division needs a weight limit?

The heavyweight division - is it too heavy?
Do you guys think that boxing's ultimate glamour division needs a weight limit, after two centuries? Those who agree could reason that today's heavys are too fat and slow to produce an entertaining fight, or that the heavier heavyweights lack fitness/athleticism, but those who don't reason that it could bring about scares of weight cutting or that it could create another era of heavyweights that don't fit in with the fighters of before.

 

No.

Two reasons...

Firstly, there's clearly an upper limit to the size a fighter can be and remain effective - huge guys who can move are rare, and huge guys who can't move often struggle with slightly less huge guys who can.
Usyk, as the best example, is far from the biggest heavyweight and yet more than capable of hanging with bigger and heavier guys - partly because he's exceptional, partly because there are compromises to being bigger than a particular size.


Secondly... The talent pool is often thin enough already - a super heavyweight category would be inherently lower quality if it excluded guys below a certain weight, and the heavyweight division left behind would lose some interesting larger (but not necessarily better) fighters.


The whole point of weight categories is to remove the potential for weight based advantages - at the point where they cease to exist, there is no need for further categories.


You can make better arguments for bridger than for superheavy - and I think we've all seen how pointless that category was by how little uptake there was.

 

No

You can have a 100lb advantage over an opponent and still be TKOd by a "smaller" guy. Look at Dubois v Miller for instance......

At HW the advantages are lesser than you think......

 

I picked maybe but then I changed to no because the UFC proved that HW having a limit doesn't do ****. The UFCA HW division is the worst it's been like ever and the limit is 265 there. So I dont a weight limit would solve anything you can be fat at 230 to 250.

 

Yeah at certain heights and weights it just makes more sense to play basketball

 

No, we need another weight class, maybe.
112
118
126
135
147
160
175
190
210

Maybe add 105 in there too because some of those guys really are that small.

 

As long as the laws of thermodynamics and physics hold true a great 220 pound man like Usyk should always be able to compete with a great 300/400 pound man. Fury for example although not quite that big still an outlier in the physical gifts he has for his size yet Usyk just edged it with his stamina and equally good skills. A 400 pound man will have even less output and ability to move. Goliath will always falter. Humans are limited by genetic evolution, we do get outliers but most top tier athletes are outliers.

When we get an era of 10 Furys in the division 270 pound freaks who can box and move then maybe the 220 pound phenoms will need their own division.

With all 250 pound+ talents in America almost all being pushed into NFL that era will never come.

 

Not a weight limit per se, but maybe guys like Ruiz Jr. should get fined for turning up morbidly obese to a fight

 

If there is/was an argument that body fat beyond a certain level gives an unfair advantage then it could be argued that a restriction on it isn't necessarily a bad thing?

Turning up in **** condition and fighting badly because of it is always going to be controversial, and not without consequences (usually) - one could say the same about Fury for Wilder 3 and Ngannou, he got away with it but got ridiculed...

 

No, as stated above.

 

I think a 250 weight limit would be a good idea.

Even the biggest heavyweights could trim down to 250 and be fit rather than obese.

Miller-Ibeh was disgusting to watch - they should have had fitter heavyweights on a PPV card.

 

No, but, they should be allowed to disqualify you with calipers, possibly.

 

It should have a limit on the size of man diddies. Over the limit and a bra should be worn. T

 

No, weight increases are increasing the overall maximum ability of the fighters in the ring, in my opinion. Heavyweight boxers are regularly getting heavier and heavier, to the point that a 230 pound 6'3 fighter is considered a massive outlier and pound for pound best in the world due to his size, when he would've been big 40 years ago. It'd be considered ludicrous for a LHW to move up and become #1 in the division today, something that used to happen occasionally. (Spinks, Patterson, Charles all in about 40 years, which is about the same period that no light heavyweight has gone up to become #1 in the division until today)


HW champs have consistently gotten bigger and bigger

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181 pounds 1885-1906

190 pounds 1908-1926 (excluding Jess Willards, a gigantic outlier at the time)

206 pounds 1964-1973

218 pounds 1978-1986

227 pounds 1987-1999 (the same weight as Usyk, although, for some reason, the list maker included IBO champs)

248 pounds

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It needs heavyweights fighting more than once a calendar year. More activity would be better for the division and may help bring down the weight of some of these guys who vacation 9 months out of the year.