Heavyweight Size and Progress

"Read somewhere", huh? Where? Let me guess, from an internet blogger?

In reality, no, that's not the case at all. In reality, there is always something of a trade off between agility, coordination and speed the larger you get, whether from 5'6 to 5'10 or 5'10 to 6'2. It might have seemed that the 5'10-6'2 was the ideal size in past eras, because the average height of a man is a little under 5'10. So there was a huge number of of 5'10 men, allowing there to be enough unusually talented men who were 5'10 that they could compete with larger men. Similar, there are/were enough 6'2 men that the odds of them having sufficient athletic qualities to maximize their height was quite high. You get much taller than that, and the raw numbers are so low that the likelihood of having people with enough athletic qualities to maximize their height advantage is low.

Nowadays, the worlds population and the population open to boxing and other sports is much higher than ever before. There are enough raw numbers of 6'6 men out there that the ones with the necessary athletic qualities are finding their way to boxing.

Finally, to use your other logic, clearly prior eras had a real dearth of talent. After all, a guy who gets stopped by a bum like Henry Cooper(in the modern era, it would have been a tko) yet goes on to dominate his era would have no chance against today's giants.

 

Cause all three were the dominant HW's of their respective age, and the posterchildren for SHW's, imbecile.

 

Good post. That probably came from HW boxing blog. The guy there probably retired after Wlad finally lost :rofl but he compiled exhaustive, amazing stats.

And Marciano and Frazier had to have been shorter than their average opponent too, though. Frazier may have been heavier than his average opponent but not Marciano.

 

On this topic, it's interesting to note that the majority of HW champs throughout history have had a size advantage over their opponents, and only a small few have been smaller than average.

Dominant champs who were larger than the average contender of their era include:
Wlad
Vitali
Lewis
Bowe
Holmes
Foreman
Ali
Liston (average height but heavy and insane reach)
Louis
Johnson
Jeffries

Shorter/lighter than average contender champs include:
Tyson
Patterson
Marciano

Average sized (again, compared to era's contenders) champs include:
Holyfield
Frazier (shorter but heavier)
Tunney
Dempsey
Sullivan

Those are all the champs I'd currently rate as "dominant", and well over half of them were larger than the average contender of their era.

So, dominant champs who were smaller than average contender of their era make up under 16% of all dominant champs. Champs who were average for their era under 27%. Larger than average champs over 57%.

And since the average size of HW's has increased throughout the history of the division, and is probably hovering around 6'3, 225-230 now, I think it's highly unlikely we'll ever see another dominant champ under 6'0 215.

 

Looking at the above list, its also interesting to note that the large majority of the "average" and "smaller" dominant HW champs occurred in much earlier eras. In the last 55 years, only Frazier, Holyfield, and Tyson have been average or small, compared to 7 who have been larger. That's a proportion over 72% larger, much higher than the 57% overall average. It's indicative that strategies to maximize size's relevance have bee increased, and that it will probably only get harder for average or small HW's to become dominant champs.

 

Ali and Foreman had a big size advantage, Holmes a small one. Holmes is the closest to median of all the boxers I put in larger, but he was still slightly taller and heavier than average.

Ali was taller and heavier in his first reign than almost everyone but Terrell (who he was heavier than). In his second reign, he was taller and heavier than most. Foreman and Norton were about the same size, Dunn and The Bayonne Bleeder (horrible opponents, not even fringe contenders) were the only ones slightly bigger.

 

Only false choices if you're too stupid to understand the premise. If you think Lewis beats "almost everyone", but not because of the natural size and general progression of HW boxing, which you would have to believe if you exempt the K's from that belief, then vote "not at all", Tommy Burns beats the K's. I made that category specifically for imbeciles like you.

(Tommy Burns was a 5'7 170 lb hw in the early 1900's who was champ for about 2 years, making 11 defenses).