Is GGG a top 10 Middleweight of all time

I should add that by no means do i consider GGG top 10 resume wise.

 

I agree i don't really want go into this debate again, as you know in other thread, i went back and forth debating my point until i went blue in the face. But i don't really see much difference between Golovkin and Dariusz Michalczewski. Both men made alot of title defences against so-so opposition. Although Michalczewski had better single win of the two fighters with a win over Virgil Hill. But again in reality not much to choose between them.

Yet no one rates Michalczewski as a top 10 Light Heavyweight, despite Michalczewski making 23 title defences which was more than what Golovkin did at Middleweight.

So again i ask really what is the difference ? Why should Michalczewski not be in the top 10 Light Heavyweights ? if we are applying the same logic with Golovkin just based on statistics without the context of the strength of the opposition ?

For the record i don't rate Golovkin or Michalczewski as top 10 in their respected weightclasses, but do you see the point i'm trying to make ?

 

You make sound points, which you virtually do every time you post.

 

I thought that might have been what happened. You confuse the promotion for the weigh-in. There's no source saying Ketchel was 155 in the ring. The link you posted isn't a contemporary source but a write-up for an auction item.

 

I have no issue with your first two paragraphs. 10% on any weight class once a fighter has reached his ideal, peak weight is a huge leap, and certainly isn't the average. 10% on a light heavyweight is nearly 20 pounds- almost double Kovalev's typical gains. I know of only two instances where a boxer weighing 175 the day before scaled in excess of 190 pounds 24 hours later.

 

Dixon and Ryan certainly had quality wins and to contradict myself, NP Jack Dempsey is arguably a p4p ATG.

Foster has Tiger, a great boxer, but not a great LHW. I dont think Foster beat a top 50 LHW all time, yet as a long standing champ, unbeaten at the weight, with perhaps double digit wins over world class/ranked LHWs, hes no. 7 on my all time LHW rankings.

Good, fair post btw, I dont disagree with any of it.

 

In his autobiography Hatton wrote he was 156lbs in the ring.
Jacobs took a $6-figure fine by coming in 3lbs (?) more than the 10lbs rehydration clause vs Canelo on the MORNING of the fight. He'd have been almost 180lbs in the ring and was noticeably smaller than he was vs GGG.
I'm not certain to his exact reported weight, but Salido was way over 10% more vs Loma, who was just under at about 135lbs.
Groves was reported as 185lbs vs Froch.
McDonnell was reported at over 140lbs vs Innoue.
For their 154lbs fight Canelo was reported as 174lbs and Trout 173lbs.
Zurdo recently reported as 204lbs at LHW.

All the above just off the top of my head and are in excess of 10% weight increases.

I recall seeing a list of half a dozen or so plus recorded on the night weights for Kovalev. Admittedly he was listed as 182lbs vs Canelo, but the others were mostly between 189 and 191lbs. Admittedly that 14 to 16lbs weight gain isnt quite the 17lbs required to meet my 10% rough estimate.

Yeah, I'm comfortable a 10% average weight increase is roughly about right.

 

Where is there a source for the weigh in by a newspaper that I can read on the web, and not some number that says 170, which Ketchel does not remotely look like. Not at his height, and build. No way 170 is nearly a light heavyweight! I did not confuse anything. I posted the link because if has a lot of information on it . But you would have to read it.

Ketchel was weighed in at other fights, 155. For this promotion they want him bigger to meet Jack Johnson, which is reason why he had cowboy boots on and a coat. You don't see him stripped down in underwear for the weight in photos.

The reason is he was lighter than Tommy Burns and they wanted the make people think he had a chance. Ketchel weighed in before and after in other fights around this time line at 155, 158, and 160. His last fight with a recored weights in 1910 he was 156.

I am saying the 170 weight is fabrication and a promoter fudged the number for obvious reasons.

 

You are citing noted outliers and representing them as the average. That would be like using Pacquiao and Mayweather as proof that modern welterweights are small, or Loma at lightweight as proof of the same.

Hatton was 149 for Urango and Castillo, and 152 for Malinaggi and Pacquiao. These fights were during the last phase of his career when he would have been heavier. Even if you add the unreported 156 in his autobiography (what fight did he say this was for?), that would still put his average at 152.

Kovalev was 181 for Sillah, 183 for Agnew, 185, for Caparello, 188 for Hopkins, 189 for Pascal I, 184 for Mohammedi, 186 for Pascal II, and 185 for Alvarez I. The given range of 189-191 seems spurious.

Do you know who did consistently weigh in in the low 190's? Vassiliy Jirov.

Look up my past posts about this subject. I gave many, many fight night weights for light heavyweights. No one with the exception of Ramirez averaged over 190lbs.

 

You are switching divisions. Did Bob Foster win may ring magazine rated matches? Where do you rank him among the light heavyweights? This is a debate I have not seen here before and no one thinks DM is all time great, but plenty of poster think GGG is. Michalczewski isn't even in the boxing hall of fame! GGG will be a 1st ballot hall of fame and likely lead vote getter in his class! There are several differences here.

 

Ketchel would only be counted as an egregiously small middleweight if you indiscriminately included fights in his teens and early twenties, when he had not yet won the championship. Before he died, he had already weighed 170 pounds twice. Golovkin when he was in his prime (and well into his thirties) also weighed in around 170 pounds.

 

I read it. It's not a contemporary source and does not reference the fight in terms of the given weight. It says, in effect, that Ketchel was a middleweight who weighed 160lbs. In absence of a newspaper source, an open-sourced outlet like Boxrec, which undergoes constant proofreading and correction, is the next best thing. I also gave an unrelated short doc citing the same even though the burden of proof does not lie with me.

The promotion is the lead-up to the fight, not the fight itself.

You said it was an error on Boxrec. Now you have it as an exaggeration by the promoter. These are your interpretations based on your educated guesses.

 

As I said, the examples I cited were off the top of my head and I cant recall many others. Calzaghe cited nervous energy vs Eubank meaning he only rehydrated to 172lbs, compared to his 178-180lbs average, in his autobiography. Ive seen GGG at between 168lbs and 173lbs at MW. I didnt cite those 2 examples as they were less than 10% (not far off though) and so didnt support my argument, admittedly, but those are genuinely the only 2 i can remember that I didnt mention. So, no deliberate attempt to cite only a small proportion of outliers I could recall off the top of my head.

Clearly Pacquiao and Mayweather weren't adding 10% at WW, but they were hardly representative of average either.

Hatton was actually talking about the Collazo fight at WW when he cited being 160lbs (1.7lbs off 10% in a WW contest for a career LWW) in the ring as an excuse for his sluggish performance, compared to what he said he typically weighed at LWW, which he said was 156lbs.

I dont think either of us has enough data to definitively disprove the other. I'm comfortable 10% as a rough average is there or thereabout when absorbed across all weight divisions. I accept it's likely less at CW and slightly less at LHW, but I dont think 138.5lbs in the ring for a FW or 148.5lbs in the ring for a LW are above average in world title fights.

10% is a sensible rough guess, imo. If you feel 10% as a rough guess as an average is way out, across all weight divisions not just LHW), what's your guess?