Good fighters beaten in mismatches by higher weight class opponents

Tony Sibson vs Dennis Andries and Lotte Mwale.

 

Not a weight class difference but in terms of sheer weight Jack Dempsey vs. Jess Willard has to rank #1.

Jess Willard had just beaten a prime Jack Johnson for the HW World Champ title. He was 6'6, two hundred and fifty pounds!
Demsey 6'1 187 pounds, Willard was the favorite and we all know what happened!

Ring put it this way:
Willard was knocked down nine times.

By the third round, after having had his jaw broken in several places, his cheekbone crushed, two ribs cracked and four to six teeth knocked out, Willard simply had to give up. By then he was "nothing but a mass of gore."


Now that's got to to be the worst beating ever put on a man in the ring!

 

I was just going to mention Meldrick versus Terry Norris. Although Meldrick was never quite the same after the first Chavez fight, he still accomplished some things after that bout. He was able to move up to welterweight and beat a very good and underrated champion in Aaron Davis and going into that Norris bout, still held that title. But that Norris fight really hastened Meldrick's decline, as he would lose the title a couple months later to Ernesto Espana, someone Taylor would have beat handily just a couple years earlier.

 

Another bout that comes to mind was Marlon Starling moving up from welterweight to challenge Michael Nunn at Middleweight. I saw this bout live back in 1990. I know Starling in no way took a beating and actually held his own against Nunn in losing a decision, the one thing that struck me that night was the size difference between the two. Nunn totally dwarfed Starling in size, particulary height and reach. Starling could never get close enough to Nunn to do anything, and wasn't a big puncher at his natural weight to begin with so he couldn't really hurt Nunn either.

 

Starling couldn't miss Nunn with the right hand.

That was actually a pretty close fight imo.

 

I know Starling held his own ,but never did you get the feeling Nunn wasn't in control or that Starling could really do any damage to Nunn. The point I was trying to make was that the advantages in size for Nunn proved to be the difference in the fight IMO.

 

Jack Dempsey vs Jess Willard

That was a mismatch.

 

That was nowhere near a miss-match. Good, competitive fight. Margarito held his own against a much bigger Santos.

 

Well he han't just beaten Johnson ,the fight had taken place 4 YEARS BEFORE,and Jess hadn't had a fight in 3YEARS,and had gone from a 226 lbs raw boned slugger to a flabby 245 lb lump of suet.

 

Zarate struggled pretty heavy VS Gomez.

 

Harold Petty TKO 10 Hilario Zapata

 

Likewise Gomez struggled against Sanchez.

 

A mismatch? Many people had Margarito ahead at the time of the stoppage?

 

I meant more in the sense that Margirito was the much smaller man, which is unbelievable considering how huge he is.