Great fighters who became average when moved up in weight

I would say the G-Man, but that's in bad taste.

 

Meldrick Taylor never should have left 140. After the Chavez fight he said - like many fighters do - 'I can no longer make the weight'. It's a clean escape from a loss. He moved to 147 and may have won the title there, but it was an ordinary campaign and when he moved to 154 he was really found out. Back to 147 - KO'd by Espana - and then suddenly he can make 140 and pushes for and gets the rematch with Chavez. He should've regrouped, healed and got back in the mix at 140 instead of returning about 4 years later when he was well-chewed by that time.

 

arturo gatti... to a degree and adrien broner

 

Juan Carlos Gomez.
Timothy Bradley from light welter to welter to an extent. Shame him and Khan never got it on and he wasn't around long enough to fight Garcia, but could have cemented himself as a great at 140 with these two scalps

 

Wilfredo Gomez for me.

I can see how a fighter may lose something if he moves up 10 or 20 pounds.

Gomez was an unstoppable force at Super Bantamweight. He knocked out everyone he fought and was a dominant champ. When he moved up to Featherweight, he was ordinary. Which is shocking.

Destroyed by Sanchez. Stopped by Nelson and Layne. Squeaked past Lockridge by the narrowest of margins (one point).

How can FOUR POUNDS (going from 122 to 126) make that much of a difference?

The drop-off was shocking. It wasn't like Hearns, who destroyed guys in a few rounds at welter and had to go a little longer at middleweight 13 pounds north of where he had been. Gomez went from blowing out everyone he fought at 122 to not even being able to win fights at 126.

It never made any sense to me.

 

It's not really quite that easy or simple, I think..........

It's been mentioned here before and on other threads, but look at whom Gomez fought at 126. Two greats in the division's history, no? Kind of tough to look good against the likes of Nelson and Sanchez. The other entrant he completely dominated (Laporte). He also did win several non-title fights at or around 126 previous to that. So it really did have more to do with those he fought. Layne and Lockridge were at 130, so they don't really qualify here, and Gomez was just a shell for both of them.

There IS something to be said for how quickly his skills eroded I think, you have a real point there..........from what I understand, his partying (which was legendary) took away his legs even before he moved up. You can see it in later 122-pound efforts against Pintor for example, or Meza, where he just wades in and punches away. No longer does he move and box effectively or bother with angles, he's just going for the kill the whole way. Part of that may very well have been a sort of boredom or complacency setting in, with his domination at 122 being so complete and all, but I think most of it was that he just didn't have the legs any more, starting in about 1982.

 

Paz

 

Tim Bradley already is a great at 140. He pretty much cleaned out the division.

 

Indeed. Compare to what he did to all-time great Carlos Zarate at super-bantamweight and see what difference a few lbs made to him.

 

Miguel Cotto at Middleweight.

 

He did avoid a unification fight with Khan. I appreciate that bradley may have been thinking about bigger fish to fry, but he turned it down. I believe he said it was to risky at that stage of his career, chasing down a big payday with Pac. Fair play to Bradley for getting just that, as well as a second fight to boot, just a shame that fight never happened and that Khan let his guard down against Peterson.

Not that I'm a big Khan fan by the way, he's exciting to watch, don't really back many boxers from Britain these days though, but at the time I got the vibe that it was Bradley's team that made sure the fight didn't happen.

 

I like this thread topic a lot

Cant think of a great option, Mayorga isn't a great but he was in good shape at 147 and had very good power, when he moved up that vanished

 

Roberto Duran

Although he wasn't exactly average at middleweight he was no longer as great as he was at lightweight where he won about 69 out of 70 bouts ( his only loss was avenged twice). He was arguably the greatest lightweight of all time - then he moves up to welter beats the legend Sugar Ray Leonard and he is no longer the same force after 'no mass' and moving up to middleweight where he starts losing against virtually every world class middleweight

 

People are listing terrible examples. Duran, Moorer, Gomez- those guys were far from average.

Foster. Zarate.

 

oh lay off, lol, he just means that Moorer was a awesome at 175 and wasn't awesome at heavy :bbb