Gennady Golovkin versus D!ck Tiger

Horrible fight for Golovkin. I just don't think anyone that comes to Tiger can beat him, I wouldn't pick any middleweight of that style to beat him. Even the fighter I perceive Greb to be, I think Tiger would beat him.

I'm actually of the opinion right now that the elite MWs with elite chins would all beat him.

The handful of guys with world class skill who could literally hold his shots, guys like Tiger, I think he beats him pretty clean. Tiger had monstrous durability and broke guys down horribly his own self even if he didn't have Golovkin's power. Horrible UD12 I think.

 

**** Tiger was a huge middleweight, and it's hard to think of anyone who would have benefited more from a super-middleweight division than him.

He crammed himself into the division, and anyone who thinks he was coming to the ring weighing anything less than 165 doesn't know anything about anything.

 

He absolutely would not ever have been a welterweight.

There just wasn't any more to cut from him. "The past" throws up fighters who trained down to the edge, and like Marciano, Tiger was one of them. You might have got him down to welterweight when he was young, you wouldn't have got him down to it as a mature male without killing him: sorry - you're wrong.

A small modern middleweight versus a massive old-school middleweight is a good match.

I understand the general point you think you are making, but with Tiger it just doesn't fit. Sorry.

 

Same day weigh ins mean a fighter has 10-14 hours to re-hydrate.

Next day weigh ins allow 20-30.

Tiger was a big mw for his era. At least once he had to take of four pounds on the day of the fight. He just didn't have a middleweights body, naturally. Yes, he sometimes came in under - but he didn't get as low as Hopkins did in his forties, and I know nobody is trying to say that Hopkins is a welterweight.

Most water-weight is gained in the first 8-10 hours after the weigh in as a fighter eats and drinks his way up to a more natural weight (though most fighters won't make it all the way).

This "same day weigh in" fetish you have is not reasonable. Yes, the really BIG fighters today gain huge amounts, but Golovkin isn't a really big middle. He gets to somewhere between 165 and 170.

On the other hand, really BIG fighters in 1960 gained a LOT of water weight after dehydrating themsleves to make the scales.

Why wouldn't they?

Tiger would. His natural fighting weight seems to have been between 165 and 186lbs. My guess is there would be 1 or 2 pounds between them in the ring.

And if you're right? Tiger was competitive past prime at 175lbs and weighed 168lbs repeatedly for fights there. He could happily bulk up for a confrontation with Golovkin.

 

I think if you arrive in a thread on the Classic forum and announce that anyone who disagrees with you has a "serious case of dementia" you should expect an argument, frankly.

I think that you, and others, totally neglect that fighters trained down viciously in the past because the alternative (in this instance) wasn't 168 - it was 175lbs. You didn't have to fight a slightly bigger guy. You had to fight Bob Foster.


I also think that you need to understand that same day weigh ins don't preclude weight gain. People always act like this. There are two spells where guys put that weight back on, and the big one is in eating and drinking after the weigh in. Both same day and next day weigh in fighters have that.

I could be convinced, possibly, that with very strenuous cutting, but it's clearly not going to be much:

http://i9.tinypic.com/6gugad4.jpg

Maybe he could make the modern 154 limit with modern diuretics but not without hurting himself. I think Golovkin probably could too, with Mayweather on the hook for example. I think it would hurt him too.


But we can agree to disagree, sure.