Have extra weight classes been good for boxing and boxers?

Combined with the proliferation of world titles at each division:

A good thing for decent, but not great fighters, who would never be a champion in an 8 division with one champ era, as they get to call themselves world champion and earn purses commensurate with that.

Good for great fighters who move through the weights and can call themselves an X number weight division world champion.

Negative for great fighters, at least from the perspective of comparing them with great fighters from previous eras, who stay in 1 division, as its harder for them to get fights with the best boxers in the world around their weight.

Negative for fans as imo, the nett impact is to dilute the quality of fights and limit the cases of the very best facing each other.

I've grown up with inbetweener divisions, im used to them and dont feel strongly any should be abolished. The only non original 8 division that is definitely needed imo, from the perspective that it is the only division that without it, men of a certain side couldnt realistically be successful at world level today without it, is Cruiserweight.

 

Probably good for the fighters themselves. More opportunities for big money fights. Not good for fans, as it is one of the things contributing to great fights not being made.

As far as the sport, I think it would be fine with 10 and same day weigh in. Take the original 8, add cruiser, add bridger, heavy becomes 225+.

 

No.

 

they have been a Fraudulent Disaster, making it EASIER for Fighters to Fight DOWN in Weight miles off of their Natural real weight!!!

12 Weight Divisions is more than enough,

ending with SUPER - Heavyweight, the Only Division to also have a Height associated with it - 6'5 plus and Over 225lbs

 

So the best 2 HWs in the world today, Fury and Usyk, couldnt fight because Usyk doesnt meet your weight or height criteria? And that would be good for boxing?

 

SUPER Heavy IS SubPar and always has been, bar a handful of fighters...

NO!

Normal sized HW's 'could' fight a SUPER HW, but would need the Board Sanctioning to do it, just like in the past.

BUT - the SubPar Giants obviously can't go Down - because the HEIGHT & Weight disparity is too great and always in their favour,

so the division is basically 'left to itself' where they can hug and maul and flail away at each other all day long and the Real Talent would ALL Still be damn near their Natural weights, in ALL Divisions.

as it once was... in other words you would have a TRUE Heavyweight Division, the way it should be.

 

Yeah probably. It alleviated some of the physical advantages that some fighters had over others

 

It's been terrible for boxing. It watered down the sport so that even an average fighter - along with help from splitting the titles 4 ways - could be a titlist. Case in point, Luis Estaba had been knocking about since '66 or '67 and just never made the grade until jr. flyweight was created. He wins the vacant title from a ringer they sent in who never had a pro bout in his life and now, a guy that never even broke into the world flyweight rankings makes 11 or 12 defenses. That will tell you the talent level that was being fielded. Moreover, the OP mentioned Wilfredo Gomez would only make one defense. Not true. If there was no 122 lb. division, he would have fought for the true title - the featherweight title - much sooner. And I feel he would have won it and wouldn't be fighting the soft opposition he fought at 122. He may not have held it as long as he did at super bantam, but that would be because of stiffer opposition. Look, some people say, yeah, but it's giving fighters a chance to win a title. Hey, boxing is not an employment agency. It's not indebted to putting money in their pockets. It's a sport that rewards the very best and in turn, rewards the fans by giving them the very best. I would lose Straw, Jr. fly, super fly, super bantam, super middle and cruiser. And while I'm at it I would lose all the sanctioning bodies. I can assure you, a manageable amount of champions with clear and concise contenders would get the man on the street talking about boxing again. They would be able to follow the sport again. Something they haven't been able to do in decades.

 

I like bigger number of weight-classes personally. I think if You look at top 10 in every single one of them, You find great match-ups to be made for the "virtual" single title. It's the number of belts that is watering down the sport.
Let's be honest, with no Strawweight or no Cruiserweight, there would be people who are just born not the right size - thus at disadvantage. Of course You'd still have someone truly great able to make up for it with other qualities, but there would be many very good fighters who are either too small (even) for flyweight or too big for Light-Heavy and too small for modern Heavyweight. I don't think that's fair.

I think it made boxing more global too, more fighters of certain size were able to pursue the sport with realistic hope of getting to the top. I even like the idea of another division - be it bridgerweight - when it was introduced, I just don't like the way WBC set it up.
I'd prefer 175 - then bringing back old Cruiserweight (The Holy-weight, or even straight up Holyfield, why not?) of 190 and then another weight-class at 205/210.

Issue is figuring out, once You have those weight-classes, how to make sure that someone who wants to be called a champion - has to compete with the very best in given weight-class.

 

The ‘in-between’ classes — the junior/super classes + cruiserweight — aren’t a problem. In fact, they’re a good thing … not every 130-pounder is cut out to compete at 135 nor able to shrink to featherweight and still be strong enough to be competitive. I think they’re all spaced out about right (with cruiser sliding to 200 from 190 being a key move).

The problems are these:

1) Too many championships. One per division is plenty. That makes champions have to take on tougher contenders (without jackleg mandatories against some guy from a favored nation by one of the ABCs or some guy with a manager with the right ‘connections’ — made by dropping a bag of cash into some sanctioning body bigwig’s lap) and makes the contenders fight each other to jockey for that shot at THE champ.

2) Day-before weigh-ins: These make a joke of all the weight classes apart from heavyweight. A guy who walks around at 215 or 220 shouldn’t be fighting at 175 … and only weigh what a light heavyweight weighs for about an hour or two on the day of the weigh-in after reducing before rehydrating to an unfair weight.

Fix those two things and boxing is about as right as it can be. There will always be shenanigans (and there are in other sports, too) and those can be policed but not eliminated. But the number of weight divisions isn’t where the problem is.

 

I was with you all the way until you said losing CW.

With the space of 2 x posts we have someone arguing for the creation of a 225llbs/6ft 5ins+ division and you arguing for the abolition of CW. Imo, it's fine as it is.

I think the question that should determine whether a weight division is required is - "is there a natural fighting weight/range of weights at which it's unlikely a boxer will be able to compete successfully at world level?"

Allowing c.15lbs for rehydration I say no division between 200 and HW is required. Usyk and Wilder have competed successfully at world level weighing around 215lbs. Povetkin and Andy Ruiz probably have natural fighting weights of <215lbs too.

It's a stretch to expect a guy with a natural fighting of c.195lbs, who cant dehydrate to LHW, to compete at world level at HW today, imo.

HW open class
CW 200lbs
LHW 175lbs

Is about right, imo.

Otherwise, excellent post.

 

Greg, I'm probably one of the few people around that actually believe that the creation of the cruiserweight division is what created the era of the fat, sloppy, lumbering heavyweight. It was like the caps were now removed and the engine could run wild. Like they just said, "Thank God, I don't have to work on my weight anymore." Ron Lyle at 217 back then was known as 'the Denver giant'. That was like the max of the heavies back in the 70s. Everyone was training to keep their weight in check and to retain their speed. When Archie Moore was set to fight Marciano he wasn't trying to come in heavy or even heavier than Rocky. He was quoted as saying he wanted to come in light. It was all about speed and stamina. Those are two facets that seem to be lost today. Now its all about one big swipe to take the opponent out. Which is fine, but what happens if it doesn't? I don't know how much weight-training and PEDs entered the sport since the creation of cruisers, but I will take the faster, sharper heavy any day over those suet-laden heavies we've seen over the last couple of decades. Case in point, it's been 50-100 years since they roamed the planet, but we're still talking about the Dempsey's, the Louis's, the Marciano's, the Quarry's and everyone knows who we're talking about. How long do you think anyone is going to remember Ruiz, Povetkin, White, Valuev, etc.? They'll even be forgotten by the die-hards. It's just my opinion, but once the caps came off by creating cruiserweight, the days of exciting heavyweights went out the window.

 

I think the best HW on the planet over the past 30 years almost always being 235lbs+ has more to do with (in no particular order) PEDs, reduction of fights to 12-rounds, men generally getting bigger and advancements in sports science, rather than in any way being connected to the creation of the CW division. I think Bowe, Lewis, the K bros and Fury would have still been the best HWs on the planet for most of the past 30-years had CW never been introduced.

I agree that boxers naturally the size of Ruiz, Povetkin, White and plenty others, feel they have to eat (and juice?) their weight up to compete at HW and agree that the quality of fights from a speed, skill, stamina and action perspective have suffered as a result.

Your argument for the abolishment of the CW division, as it has caused "fat" HWs, is a bit counterintuitive though. If boxers with, say, a natural fighting weight of 220lbs, are bulking up as they feel it's necessary to compete with the 240lbs+ behemoths, what do you think a boxer with world class skills and a natural fighting weight of around 195-210lbs, who can't quite boil down to LHW, would do in the absence of a CW division? Logically, there would be more "fat" or overweight fighters competing at HW without a CW division.