Is Boxing the only sport....

What data is this fact based on ?

Maybe that's peculiar to your locality. I think the average in the USA is probably still somewhere under 6 foot.

Tyson was a phenomenal athlete. It could equally be argued that his hand speed and accuracy and overall athleticism is hard to find in boxers of much lower body weight too.
There were fighters of his build or close to it in earlier eras (Sam McVey, for example), and we have no weigh or knowing how impressive they were in speed or agility, athleticism, compared to a guy that we see on TV footage.
It's wrong to reason "Oh, they cant have been like as great and as phenomenal as Tyson, so they must have been like slow flat-footed plodders", because that's just lazy stereotyping. There's a whole spectrum to consider, and we just dont know.

You are generalizing about "types" based on selected examples of unique individuals, some of whom we haven't really got the footage to know their style or attributes in any detail.

Heavyweights have gotten bigger, that's true. But the claim that 215 pounder boxers of 1900s were inherently less athletic, or agile or fast, or light on their feet than the same size boxer of 1970s is at best a theory, possibly just a prejudice.

 

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Maybe that's lazy stereotyping, but i don't see a Tyson when i look at the, admittedly shitty, footage available. And certainly his record doesn't come close to Tyson's.

Sorry, but i think you're reaching there.

If the subject was any other, then no one would have any objection with saying that Corbett and Tunney are the great predecessors of Ali and Holmes. And like i said, the leap in size is big.

Well, follow me here:

Heavyweights have gotten bigger, you admit that.
That means there has been an explosion of 210+lbs boxers. Given that men that weight (in shape) were relatively rare, you see an exponential increase in available talent at that weight. The consequence? We've not seen a 185lbs heavyweight champion who could hold the title for more than one defence over damn near fifty years; that's two entire generations. I mean, why have we never seen a Mexican heavyweight champion, despite a plethora of Mexican fighters in general? It's simply because they rarely scale over 170lbs. The ones that are 200lbs or more are to few in numbers to generate the talent needed to compete there, although there will always be random exceptions, like Ramos or Arreola.

 

Interesting.
But what research and method was the data collected ?

I'm not saying a McVey is a Tyson. But Tyson was a phenomenal athlete for his build, and I'm not convinced we'll see any others coming through in this modern era. Tyson's actually becoming a "yesterday" fighter with every passing year. I dont see how he's representative of any trend. My point was that if MCvey's no Tyson that doesn't mean he was just a slow plodding bruiser. There are thousands of degrees between.

Benny Leonard or Willie Pep can be the great predecessors of Ali and Holmes if you like.
I could say Jack Johnson and Harry Wills were early prototypes of Larry Holmes, and they were about the same size. It's almost meaningless to generalize like that.

Yes, but I'm only assuming so. I dont know for sure. But I assume the numbers of 210+ men taking part in heavyweight boxing contests is more now than in the days of Corbett and Tunney, for instance.

There should be more "available talent" of men of 210+ pounds, yes, if our assumptions are correct.

There has always been a perception that fighters who give away a lot of weight are badly outmatched. It's always been a concern for promoters and for the sport in general. The general public dont want to see a big guy kill a small guy. But when the fighters are good that rarely happens, and often the smaller guy can beat the bigger guy or at least give him a better fight than many of the other big guys can. Occasionally though, the big guy does destroys the small guy in a mismatch and maybe injures or kills him and it's blamed entirely on the size difference.

Boxers themselves share the perception, or at least many of them see an adavantage in putting on a bit of LEAN weight and strength, it certainly helps in the clinches and for some fighters help them in other areas too. But that's an individual thing. Some fighters dont actually perform better when they get bigger, some perform worse, and some are no better and no worse.

In recent years, the tendecy among heavyweights is to carry extra fat weight too. A big heavyweight can carry an extra 15 or 20 pounds of body fat and perhaps not even look bad. Some others are just shameless and look damn fat.

There's a cruiserweight division for what would have been "good smaller heavyweights" in the past, so that the best can be called "world champions" if they are only good enough to be "contenders" at heavyweight. Anyone of them who thinks he's good enough to be heavyweight champion or would rather be a heavyweight contender than a cruiserweight will weigh in over the cruiser limit, and they need to because sanctioning bodies and promoters dont want to match a 193 pound guy against a 226 pound guy (the weights for Jones v. Ruiz a few months before the cruiser limit was raised from 190 to 200 !).
But nowadays, with 24 to 48 hours before weigh-ins, we have some cruisers fighting at a genuine 215+ going against genuine 185-190 pounders. If weight mismatches was the reason for the cruiser division it seems it's still in the same state.

Anyway, we wont see any 185 pound heavyweight champions for all the above reasons. And we dont need to see them.
That doesn't preclude the possibility that any certain times there may be an active sub-200 fighter (and you can take that all the way down to super-middleweights) who is capable of beating the heavyweight champion. And it definitely doesn't preclude the possibility that 185 pound heavyweights of the past (for example. ones who beat bigger men) would be competitive with bigger men who happen to fight in later eras.

Well, Arreola's just a fat guy.

 

Pol Pot ?

 

Have a look, page 11:

http://www.econ.upf.edu/docs/seminars/baten.pdf

I was only talking heavyweights, because they show the increase in size.

No one has seen film of a prime Wills, but i don't think he compares to Holmes nor does Johnson. He only does in the sense that he was very skilled for that time, but Johnson was very much a physical fighter who wrestled his opponents as much or more than he threw punches.

That's because people KNOW a good big guy beats a good small guy. They don't like to see a big guy outmatch a smaller one, but they love nothing more than seeing the small guy win (the underdog story), so these kind of matches make sense from a promotional point of view, anyway.

Not really, all lightheavyweights of today weigh around 185-190lbs by fight night; the classic heavyweights, if you will. The cruisers weigh around 210-215lbs, which is about Ali's size. That's why i don't understand why people say Haye is "too small" for Wlad.

Sorry, but i fail to see what the exact reason is you gave. I saw a large, general description, but you didn't refute my arguments as the cause of the increase in size and why we're not seeing 185lbs champions anymore. It has **** all to do with sanctioning bodies; they'll comply easily, when they can promote a big fight. Catchweight bouts are about as common as normal matches these days, in big fights. It's not like Jones had a problem with it.

 

Skill is mot an objective, measurable quantity like height is. On top of that, it's relative to the ruleset of the day. Johnson would rank at the top, but it's well possible that he'd be befuddled by a "modern" opponent who knows how to throw a jab or box off the backfoot, and vice versa.

 

This graph is interesting.

If it is correct, then Jess Willard would be over 7ft today?

Fitz would probably about 6"2 or 3?

I wonder how big (height and weight Jeffries would come to?) Might still enjoy a decent size advantage over most of his main opponents today?

In relation to the plotting of skills, I think that it would be relevant to the country. Australia for example must have definitely dropped markedly. USA must have dropped massively in the last 10 years. Russia and Soviet countries would have certainly increased massively recently. British levels, particularly Irish must have dropped since older days. I think it would be a bit of a mess actually.

 

It doesn't work like that, nutrition and living standards have increased massively on average. Willard/Jeffires may have had adequate diet to reach their maximal height potential anyway, it can't be guessed like that but they may well have been taller/bigger

 

Obviously it's impossible to say how a person with Willard's genes would develop today, but it is fair to say that the 6'6" boxers of his day, are 7 foot today. I think there are quite a few similarities between him and Valuev.

Indeed, Jeffries would be the equivalent of a 6'6 245lbs Wlad Klitschko or Lennox Lewis: a superheavyweight in his day with top end athleticism to go with it.

As for Fitz.... let's not forget he was little more than a middleweight back then, al be it a tall one. He might compare to a guy like Mikkel Kessler, who is 6'0-6'1 180lbs.

 

I see several cruiserweights weighing in at 189 - 195 still, and some even lighter, when the limit is now 200 pounds.
So, they cant be 210+ pounds on fight night, it would make no sense to make 200 by a clear 5 or 10 pounds.
Therefore, they must be genuinely well within the limit. And, yes, the guys coming in at about 199 pounds may be manipulating their weight to get there, and they are genuine 215 pounders.

I agree.
It depends what they mean though.
It's like saying Gene Tunney is too small for Muhammad Ali.

I'm not trying to refute your arguments. I have no firm beliefs on the matter. I dont automatically go along with your theory, which is some type of "evolution of the heavyweight species", but I dont reject it or seek to refute it. It has a lot of merit and is no doubt at the very least partially correct.

I dont find some of the basis of the argument (eg. Corbett and Tunney beome Ali and Holmes, that there were no BIG ATHLETIC boxers - who are so typical nowadays - in times gone by, that we can generalize about "types" of boxers and say they are like this and not like that, ones we cant see on film) convincing or solid at all. That's all. I think there should be some doubts, because it's NOT a scientific discovery nor a rigourous scientific theory.
And I think it's perhaps a minor point to the discussion of why or if the abilities of the best boxers have progressed at all since 1940.

Roy Jones weighed in at HEAVYWEIGHT. He was 193 pounds, when the cruiser limit was 190.
What do you mean by "catchweight" ?
Most of these big fights being called "catchweight" just means the fight is being made at a weight other than a universally recognized weight division, so a middleweight and a super-middle might agree to make it at 164 or 165 instead of 160 or 168.
That's normal for as long as I've been watching the sport, it's just publicized now because "world champions" and big-namers are choosing these types of "super-fight" rather than normal alphabet championships matches, sometimes with or without a title at stake.

It's not the same as a 190 pounder saying he wants to challenge a 240 pound heavyweight without putting on weight, or without stipulating the other guy must reduce. Or a 135 pounder stepping on the scales to fight a 158 pounder.
Boxing is full of stories of promoters being anxious about perceived size match-ups and of boxers putting weights in their shoes or weighing in with clothes on or stuff in their pockets.

It's a matter of fact that welters used to fight light-heavyweights and middleweights would battle heavyweights, good fighters against good fighters.
Nowadays TV, sanctioning bodies and promoters wouldn't touch that, no matter how many people love an underdog story.

 

golf is another sport where this can be said. the old timers had shitty equipment. jack nicklaus hitting a 300 yard drive with steel shafts and a old ball is more impressive than the 370 yard drives with oversized heads, graphite shafts and aerodynamic balls.

 

I don't think smoking had anything to do with it :huh