Excellent Or Very Good Fighters That Were Duds At Certain Weights

He "beat" Luis Collazo, but he looked horrible and damn near lost that fight. Collazo hurt him pretty bad too.

Original question:
Winky Wright at 160. And some of if is just simply that he was too old to be moving up in weight, but yeah he looked nothing like he did at JMW. He looked good only against Tito and Quartey (both natural WW's). The MW's that were huge he looked pretty precarious against (although he still was unlucky to not have gotten the nod over JT).

 

Collazo had a history of doing that to high profile opponents, though - he fought Berto even-up as well & flattened Victor Ortiz in 2.

 

This is the best answer. We're seeing a selection of picks where fighters are simply moving beyond their optimum weight.

Toney had numerous outstanding displays at middle (Nunn, McCallum 1 and 2), Super middle (Barkley, Williams, Littles) but then munched at Light heavy, losing to Thadzi (I think) and Griffin.

So you think, fair dos, he can't go over 168lbs and be effective. Then he has that cruiser and heavyweight career - Jirov, Peter - that utterly cement his legacy. He was a very effective 190lbs fighter.

Never once did it at 175lbs. Great answer DP.

 

That was when things in his personal life were falling apart...descending into drug abuse and spent time in jail for hitting his mother.

The fight itself was just a dumb move too far up in a weight where an out of sorts and fleshy looking Zapata (he'd been out of the ring about eight or nine months since losing his title in the Chang rematch) tries to immediately take on a decent contender at a weight where he doesn't have the attributes to do well at at all. It's not a horrible beating or anything, he just does a Benitez vs Hamsho (though petty was not nearly as brutally dirty) and gets pinned and muscled about into the ropes and corners until Petty gets through enough to make the ref wave it off. After it he goes back down to Flyweight.

 

Yeah, one of the best choices as far as it being a weight that the fighter should have been good at. Back then it seemed set in stone that Toney had lost too much dedication for the sport to come back from the Jones weightmaking fiasco. It was a long time he spent drifting along before his late career revival, far more than usually is the case with that sort of thing.

 

Oscar looked like crap at 160 against both Sturm and Bhop. At 154, he still had superior hand speed and power but six pounds north he looked sluggish in both of those fights and was absolutely beaten by Sturm.

 

Duràn moved to super middleweight and while he went competitive with some good opponents,most of the time he's the definition of a super-gatekeeper.

 

He was all over the place after beating Leonard in Montreal. In the four kings documentary, he said he ballooned up over 200 pounds after that fight and he clearly battled the scales and his own vices for the rest if his career. For as great as Duran was, he could have been so much better. Same with James Toney. Those two guys beat themselves more than their opponents did.

 

Zarate & Chandler were both excellent BW champs, but failed to distinguish themselves even 4 lbs north.