Does ability count even just a little bit?

Gonzalez is a perfect example of a highly skilled fighter getting beaten by a larger fighter who could take his shots and dish out his own. Calderon met a similar fate.

Size definitely matters when the gulf in talent isn't insurmountable and the larger fighter knows how to impose himself on the smaller. At the top level you rarely, if ever, get a fighter who's got to where he it by size alone (Valuev being the exception). Almost always the actual difference in skill level is a relatively small one. When the two fighters are of equal size that small difference can be all that is needed to win the fight. When you add a size advantage in the mix that slight difference can be negated and the fight swung the other way.

At heavyweight of course those size differences can be massive and overwhelming. And provided the bigger fighter isn't a total klutz it can be very hard to surmount such difficulties.

 

Give me talent of size any day. Give me Papa Jack, Dempsey, Tunney, Jeffries, Louis, Marciano, Liston, Ali, Frazier and Holmes and Langford over EVERY giant heavyweight in history. Lewis for instance, one~punched 2Xs! It the cliche, it's the size of the fight in the dog, not the size of the dog in the fight. Talent over size anyday.

 

Boxing is a sport of very high skill. Weight is much more important at lighter weights where five pounds can mean plenty. At heavyweight the sport has been heavily watered down with so many potential champions, 40-50 top ten challengers and the championship distance only 12 rounds. It's no longer very hard to be called champion and along with this skill level has become depressed. Fans no longer look for skill or understand it instead size, reach, muscularity are stressed. Let's return to making it very tough to be a hwt champion. Let's have ONE champion and ONE top ten challengers. Finally let's go back to a 15 round championship distance. We would then separate the men from the boys and perhaps return hwt boxing to a sport where the skills of great boxing are stressed.