How does Beterbiev do in the 1940s

How many defenses did Marciano have against someone exceeding 200 pounds?

 

Does it matter? The men he defeated were the best H2H fighters on the planet at the time he defeated them. Beterbiev's about two divisions off of that metric.

 

If we're talking prime for prime I don't agree with that. I'd say they're quite even. Both prodigious in these aspects.

I agree that Beterbiev has a better form and a better conventional technique, but I also think that Marciano's crouching, weaving style is better suited for facing bigger guys. I think that Beterbiev's defence is too static to fare well against big punching HWs. This is where I see Marciano's edge.

Well, the roles were pretty much reversed in terms of closeness to their primes. If this was the Beterbiev against Gozdyk facing a fading Bivol, I think the 12th would look quite different. The same if Marciano was Charles age (33/34) with his amount of fights, and Charles was in his prime.

The sizes of their best opponents have been pretty similar. The only one of Marciano's ranked opponents who weighed in over today's HW limit was 37-year old Louis.

Those are pretty much the same reasons for those who don't favour Marciano over these guys. But they're accused of recency bias.

I agree with the principle that today's era doesn't seem great for come forward fighters the size of Marciano and Beterbiev if they're not extremely quick and defensively great, which neither of them are/were, and even then there's still a lot of size to overcome.

What I don't understand is how that is a given for Beterbiev but silly recency bias when it comes to Marciano. For me, Marciano's weaving style is probably better suited for big guys but that's the edge I see for him.

EDIT: It should also be said, when comparing their stamina, that Beterbiev has to make weight which probably drains him a bit.

 

How so? I don't see anything of Beterbievs that shows him being superior in any of the aspects I named. Close, sure, but Marci edges every category I named imo, and proved it against a much higher level of opposition.

I don't know when Beterbievs prime was if it's not when he's undisputed champ and facing the best LHW in the world. However, I'm not stupid, so I'll agree that a fighter at 40 with a bag of injuries behind him isn't at his best; so I watched the last two rounds of Gvozdyk fight and checked the punch stats. Beterbiev threw 74 punches in the 9th, and 60 in the 10th.

I also checked out the 6th vs Moore, as it's the closest Marciano we have to being past his best. He threw 97 punches, landed 63 according to Lach's stats (https://www.boxingforum24.com/threads/the-punch-stats-of-marciano-vs-moore-round-6.638787/); including 42 punches in a 35 second period.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but there's basically no size difference between HW Moore & Marciano, and Moore at the point was probably the P4P #1 in the world.

It's recency bias because a light heavyweight, who has never beaten a heavyweight in a professional fight, is being favoured to beat a 6'6, hard punching, heavyweight contender from the 40s. The only reason this is happening is because Beterbiev is recent. Nobody's saying Qawi would beat Anthony Joshua.

 

Beterbiev doesn’t get hit that much because he has really good footwork and blocks as needed with his arms. That’s why he doesn’t rely on head movement as much as other fighters on his level.

 

Just because he's never fought a 6'6" power puncher doesn't mean he couldn't beat one.
Personally I believe he'd be competitive against many HWs of the day. Tunney and Dempsey were 190 pounders. You mention Baer but he was an outlier in size. And are we forgetting that Dempsey crushed a 240 pound man?

We'll see.

 

It doesn't he can't, but it doesn't mean he should be favoured to beat one.

 

How about competitive? As in , he doesn't get crushed in round 1.

 

Definitely. Without a shadow of a doubt imo.

 

Said nothing about superior, "quite even" were the words I used. They're both standouts in terms of power, strength and endurance for their size and era. They seem evenly matched in those regards to me.

Boxing is, as you of course know, not about throwing as many punches as your endurance allows you per round. To me Beterbiev's output didn't seem at all limited by his stamina, but Gvozdyk was a bit on his bike from memory so it was probably more about when he was in position to let go.

Beterbiev has a good but not exceptional punch output: about 60 per round over his last 10 fights. So by that metric his stamina isn't super special, but he almost always looks fresh and gets stronger as the rounds progress. I think it's he's quite selective with his punches and careful not to get countered.

But, yes, in tearms of punch output I believe Marciano has him beat..

Again: Marciano faced all of one contender who would be a HW today. 213 lbs, 37-year old Louis who had scored two stoppages out of eight comeback fights going into the Marciano fight.

Charles, Walcott, Moore were around the same size as Bivol, Gvozdyk, Smith etc. That that size was called HW back then doesn't make them bigger,

And Marciano did not face any 6'6, hard punching, heavyweight contender either.

Also, it's not like Beterbiev's KD of Usyk never happened just because it was in the amateurs. He did what none of the HWs today has done yet with a legal blow. Granted Usyk has put on mass since then, but on the other hand the KD happened with more padded glows.

 

Yes of course it matters. Because anyone below 200lbs these days fights in a different weight class. Hence your point is a stupid one.

 

Yes, all the sub 200lbs guys don't have to deal with the bigger guys, unlike all the smaller heavies in Marciano's era.
The guys Marciano dispatched could hold their own against any size, the same cannot be said about Beterbiev's division. If the borders are eliminated who knows how many of his contemporary contenders will even remain contenders.

 

He'd be competitive in any era and is comfortably one of the ten best fighters his size, in my books. Whether or not we imagine a Beterbiev not constrained to make weight, he is certainly big enough to challenge heavyweights of that era (many smaller fighters did). However, the prime Artur that actually existed did not exceed 190 lbs., and there is strong evidence that suggests that none of his opponents, including Joe Smith Jr., was as big as Walcott when Marciano faced him.

 

This just isn't true.