Keith Kizer: fighters who add more weight don't have an advantage

I'll answer, but You are in same position, with conflicting data/results and You should answer the same question. How do You explain that by far the biggest study We found, done on professional fighters, found meaningful relationship between Rapid Weight Gain and Weight differential and likelyhood of victory?
You can't just ignore it because it doesn't fit an agenda, You at least need to acknowledge it and give potential explanation.

For my part: If You remember, the article that You first brought up with the quote from Keith Kizer was concerning the timing of weigh-in.
In amateur boxing, it's still done the same way it was done in professional boxing before, fighters weigh in on the day of the fight (Unless something changed recently or there are some different local customs I'm not aware of).
It's not surprising that here, putting on extra weight in those circumstances isn't that beneficial. The less time You have to recover, the biggest price You have to pay for it and the more difficult it is to cut and put on a lot of weight and gain advantage from it (Which is why extreme weight-cutting was more rare in the times of same-day weigh in).
That's in addition to a fact that amateur boxing is less physical in general.

Thus, only relevant study I see is the one done with the IBF.
I see couple problems with it:
1) They did not check the weigh of fighters as They were entering the ring, by the sound of it. They just compared the weight from first to second weigh-in. Second IBF weigh-in is done on the morning of the fight (AFAIK). It still leaves a lot of time for fighters to put a weight on from that time to the time of the fight in the evening.
One example here would be Salido and Gamboa fight mentioned by Kizer in the article. Salido didn't make weight at the second weigh-in, which is why He was stripped - but by the time of the fight, both weighed in at 140 pounds according HBO.
This would count as loss for heavier fighter in the study - but it would be misleading in the context of what We're trying to really figure out.

2) On championship level the difference is probably not big on average (That's how I remember it from when Showtime and HBO would gave us the weights regulary).
The study could tell us that fighters who puts on 15-20 pounds do not have statistical advantage over fighters who put on 10-15 pounds from the weigh-in, which I think is very possible (Particulary if there's going to be a share of fighters who "killed themselves making weight", which then has to be outweighed by those who make it right and make it work, to only "break even" statistically).
What it doesn't tell us is how it would work if We'd compare fighters who cut and add back on 1-5 pounds with fighters who put on 15-20 pounds, which can be a 3 division difference.

There are still other problems with it. Isn't it the case that only elite fighters are trying to compete while at that big weight disadvantage? While lesser fighters often wouldn't even be sanctioned by commision to compete under those circumstances? That leads me to third point.

3) It's something which was brought up by other members already. Single factor analysis is basically always wrong. To see the impact of weight differential, We'd need to create some objective criteria which would allow us to account for all the other factors which are in play in determining the result of a boxing match.
Are We assuming that fighters who are cutting more and fighters who are cutting less are on average just as talented and skillful?
It's something that I'll not be able to prove and don't think there's a way to account for it in a study in general - but I believe fighters who cut more are usually the less talented ones, those who can't compete on skill and thus are trying to compete with more talented fighters by aiming for physical advantage that being the bigger man can provide.
Haney is a bit unusual in that regard, since weigh-cutting is usually associated rather with pressure fighters and sluggers.

If I'm right - and We get roughly 50/50 success rate between heavier and lighter fighters, it could mean that weight advantage is meaningful, just statistically balanced by the superior abilities of fighters who don't cut that much on average.

I'll also still dispute it's all about muscle. Mexicans and Thais are big weight cutters for example - and those are usually not very muscular fighters and weight training is still not very popular among them. Emannuel Navarrete, Brandon Rios, Chavez Jr, Srisaket etc. They are just naturally big guys who walk around 20-30 pounds above their "nominal" competition weight, cutting a lot of weight to squeeze themselves into lower division.

In any case, solid discussion. You certainly raised an interesting question and made me think about things I didn't consider. I just believe that You probably take your interpretation a bit too far and perhaps overlook some implications of what You're proposing.
If weight differential in the ring doesn't have any impact (Assuming fighters weigh in in the same range day before) - then every single fighter today should be able to move up at least one division and without putting on extra weight to fill into new weight class (As They usually do today. Like Crawford said "As I move up in weight, the weight moves up on me")... and be just as succesful as in their current division.
Is this possible? I guess, but fighters and trainers certainly don't believe it. There's a reason everyone cuts some weight and the 10 lbs+ seems to be a standard.. and the fighters who jump through weigh classes succesfully end up on top PFP lists.

... but hey, respectfully. It was interesting.

 

The biggest problem with your study is that it left out very important information about competition level and rankings which the other studies were very clear and upfront about. It didn't try to tell us if they were ranked or unranked or if the fights were sanctioned by an athletic commission or a known governing body. Once you get outside of the top level Boxing can be quite uncontrolled and lawless. It isn't explained if unranked fighters were largely being used just to pad records or if they even seriously trained for their fights. We don't know if they had hundreds of losses or how often fighters that did skewed the results all the way in one direction. The IBF study and the other studies only looked at ranked professionals or elite amateur boxers evenly matched competing at the championship level. It was very upfront about that. In another study researchers found no link between weight gain and fight outcomes in 324 MMA fighters which was a big part of your study. Assuming they used the same methodology for the MMA portion of their study as they did for the Boxing portion of their study we could expect to see more conflicting results like this one. What Kizer's informal study, the IBF study, and the other studies all have in common is that they all independently arrived to the same exact conclusion each time. They all ended up being very consistent about that.

[url]https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32663387/[/url]

From your study: Binary logistic regression was used to explore the relationships among bout outcome [...] between competitors on the day of their bout. So your own criticism can be applied to your own study. Also to your point about the relationship between talent level and weight cutting I would propose an even simpler explanation that many of the big weight cutters are fighters who are too lazy to train all the way down in weight so they train about halfway and just try to water cut the rest of it. This was essentially Marcos Maidana's explanation when asked why he weighed so much against Floyd Mayweather. Its why Ross Thompson came in so heavy against Fernando Vargas. In situations like that I wouldn't say I would describe it as an advantage. More like laziness than anything.

Except for Srisaket Rungvisai all of these boxers come into the ring pudgy and fleshy and you can see where the weight comes back and is stored. My criticism of that is that weight from fat and weight from muscle is very questionable in terms of how effective it actually is in a fight. Just having more muscle weight than another fighter doesn't mean that fighter is bigger in other aspects like frame or bone; they could just be bigger in that one aspect only which just so happens to weigh a lot. Yet its very questionable how much that one aspect will actually even help. The same thing can be said about fat weight. But Rungvisai I think is actually well muscled especially in the legs and thats where all his weight goes. Also the problem with fighters moving up is that, they can always weigh more, but their frames and their bones will never get any bigger. Its not just weight. The type of weight matters a lot. I will agree that there might be some individual cases where sometimes having more weight can be argued to affect the outcome case by case, but only if you agree that there is no universal rule that can be used as a predictor in general. I think in general its safe to expect a fairly even split after it all settles out.

 

Yes, your arguments on that front were solid. It is perhaps less significant - in practice - than I assumed.

I'll still argue that fighters from same-day era were statistically smaller - by any criteria you could chose - and matching them with fighters of today is not quite the same thing as what those studies looked at.
The numbers You hear some of those guys today walk around at are pretty ridiculous. Guys like Brook or Jermell Charlo moved up 2 divisions and They said They still had to cut some weight - and it's not like They were fat.

There is an organization in MMA called One FC. They introduced hydration test from urine during weigh-in, which limited fighters ability to cut water weight. As a result - that's what I read in any case - most of their champions had to move up one division.
I believe if We introduced same day weigh-in, same thing would happen in boxing (and in reverse scenario that actually happend, fighters within any division got bigger and bigger as the weigh-in got moved further away from the fight).
Which is why to me, matching Pryor with 140 pounders of today - not even necessary the biggest "weight bullies", but your average-conservative ones - would be moreso like fighting the Welterweights of his time, for him. Doesn't mean He couldn't beat them, but I think it should be treated as a match-up outside of his best division.. and against opponents with similar level of talent, it would be a factor.

Anyways, thanks again. You made some good points for sure. Sorry if I've been a bit of a dick with couple of my earlier replies.
Take care.

 

Alright I'll leave you to that opinion and I won't try to argue with you too much about it. As for Aaron Pryor I just checked the 140 pound top 10 Ring rankings and there isn't anybody on that list that I don't think Pryor couldn't beat. Even if you disagree, theres no way that Pryor can't win against at least 50% of them, which would be exactly the 50/50 split that Kizer argues for all along.

Just for fun lets consider how Pryor looks vs the biggest weight bully in the division.

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Josh Taylor said he felt like his "legs went away" after 4 or 5 rounds and that he had "zero energy" in his fight against Teofimo Lopez who is naturally the same size as Aaron Pryor. Before you check, this is what 5'8 Teofimo Lopez looks like standing next to 5'8 Floyd Mayweather.

[url]https://www.ringtv.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Teofimo-Lopez-and-Floyd-Mayweather-Jr.-Image-courtesy-of-Teofimo-Lopez.jpg[/url]

So its hard to picture a Teofimo Lopez sized Pryor also not badly beating a big weight bully like Taylor who has to absolutely kill himself to make weight just because Pryor's muscles don't weigh as much as Teofimo's muscles. Thats really the only difference. And I also don't think Teofimo would be able to beat Pryor just because his muscles weigh more. That might just slow and tire him out against Pryor more than anything.