Lennox Lewis vs Rocky Marciano

No, I recon It’s still the top end of real heavyweight. Those guys all boxed under 200lb at some point..Liston included.

Today fighters who can’t make 200 are SHWs in the Amateurs.

A real heavyweight probably could make 200lb in todays climate of weigh ins.

Anything more is a SHW.

 

So here's the problem old mate - Usyk.

He just whooped 2 x times a guy that was at worst, looking at him negatively (reasonable chance he'd beat Wilder), a top 3 heavyweight and has been that at minimum for years. A guy that's 6'6" and 240-250. There's probably only one guy in the division you'd favor over Usyk and he's comfortably bigger than Joshua again and already rated, by some, as an ATG.

So there's your guy that "could make 200lb in today's climate of weigh ins".......actually make that DID make 200. So there's your old school heavyweight.......and he's beating noted so called, in your eyes, SHW's!!!!!!!!

Yet here you are calling for this new imagined, fantasized about, SHW division.

In essence you are labelling guys like Holmes, Ali, Holyfield!, Liston and countless others too small to compete. Usyk has certainly thrown that on it's head.

I'm guessing it's more about Marciano to you and you bracket these other, immensely popular, but noticeably bigger guys than the Rock in with him (and Dempsey for that matter) in an effort to garner support for your view.

Marciano and Dempsey are small Heavies at any rate compared to Ali, Holmes, Liston and co. They are extremely small when compared to bigger men like Fury, Lewis, Wlad and co.

Usyk for many has proven guys around the size of those i mentioned can most certainly compete with huge Heavyweights.....but he hasn't proven the guys that much smaller again can.

 

A top three SHW.

This is a SHW not a heavyweight.

But there’s probably also a heavyweight in the cruiserweight class that could beat Usyk as well as a superheavyweight that could beat Usyk. The divisions just have the wrong names.

That’s correct. Heavyweights can beat super heavyweights. Not all the time. And that’s why there already is two divisions separating the two sizes. It’s just cruiserweight is the wrong name for what was historically heavyweight now that all Superheavyweight boxers from the amateur code have to compete as professionals in the wrong division.

It’s a real division in Amatuer boxing and most champions in professional boxing competed in that division since it was invented. We have the ridiculous situation where a SHW turns pro as a SHW and everyone thinks it’s ok to compare him to HW champions of the past before this was even possible

Yes but he’s one guy. And he was a heavyweight in the Olympics and would class as a heavyweight in the old days. Whereas A superheavyweight is not making heavyweight in the Olympics today. He can’t make that weight. Usyk has been competing as a heavyweight since 2008.

precisely. They do seem to be weight division smaller than the generation of champions that competed as SHW in the Olympics. But they are still heavyweight champions. They are not cruisers or light heavyweights by todays standards. They Are the heavyweights. Todays standards exists only because of Modern changes in science.

Marciano and Dempsey were heavyweights. And they do match well will bigger heavyweights, the ones who could make 200 today, but clearly they are seen as a division too small to be in the same division as the generation of champions who competed in the new SHW ranks as Amatuers. And that’s fine. Fighters should be separated by divisions. But You don’t change the old to fit with the new. The new thing starts afresh.

correct. Usyk has proven guys the size of Larry Holmes and Ali can beat SHW greats. Guys smaller than this, but still heavyweights, won’t get to prove this because they never fought in a time where they could carry extra functional weight. And that’s the problem with making comparison between the post sports science era and pre science era. You can’t level the field because you can’t know what the modern fighter looks like without the advances in science.

 

The cruiserweight division was formed around 1980 to allow small heavyweights, who many deemed at a disadvantage against the increasingly big heavyweights, to compete in their own separate division.

It's been done, it's dusted. They even increased it from 190 to 200 pounds to cater even better.

Dempsey and Marciano, by the weights they fought at, would be cruiserweights post 1980.

The division you yearn for is already there, it's called cruiserweight. The rest is semantics.

 

I told him that Rock would be a lhw he said he would be hw still no he wouldnt cause anybody can look at lennox and see he would always be a shw even in rock's time

 

And it was a gigantic mistake. They should have just kept as it was until the first generation of SHW amateur boxers turned pro…and given them the SHW division to turn pro into.

The result was Heavyweights with no heavyweight division to fight in.

And that was all the proof ever needed of what a diabolical blunder they had already made by doing it the wrong way around!

And since the creation of 200lb “cruiserweights”, real heavyweight champions like Mile Tyson would be cruiserweights after 2010. Is that what you want?

 

Both Dempsey and Rock would be light heavyweights, and could probably have made a lower weight class than that. For example, Chad Dawson would be a lot bigger than both Rock and Dempsey at 6'1" with a much more optimized physique for sport and probably weighing over 190 on fight day at a lower body fat percentage. When I say bigger than, I mean stature, musculature and body optimization for the sport of boxing.

The attitude is different now. With day-prior weigh ins, both men (187 Dempsey, 188 Rock) could easily touch scale at 175. They would be very small for cruiserweight, and on the smaller side of light heavyweight. That's why Usyk as an example of a "smaller man" competing among giants doesn't work--he's a 6'3" 220 lb man ripped. He would have been a large heavyweight in mid-20th century terms.

Rock and Dempsey were not as lean nor as muscular nor as tall. With modern diet practices, both men could be in shape, eating routinely and fully water-saturated at ~180 pounds. A standard professional cut is greater than 10% of body weight, so a standard cut of 10% puts them around 162 lbs. These men are likely middleweights by modern standards (prob SMW/LHW for the taller Dempsey).

Anecdotally, off-season (but still in shape by normal standards) fighters at 154lb occasionally touch the 180s or higher. Carl Froch, SMW Jean Pascal, etc. would be a lot bigger than Rock. This isn't to judge potential success but just add perspective to the conversation. People are positing that Rock, a man who would be dwarfed by Jean Pascal could beat up Lennox Lewis. That's the conversation.

Exploring potential success of Dempsey/Rock against more advanced and much larger fighters is fun, but I can't convince myself they would win more times than not. I think Rock vs. Bernard Hopkins would be an interesting fight and a lot more competitive/appropriate than this one, if that seems ridiculous, then I guess I'm ridiculous. Hopkins would have been a fantastic LHW-HW inbetweener (like Ezzard) in the 1930s-50s. I can see Rocky clipping him. But the idea of Hopkins vs. Lennox sounds preposterous as I write it.

That being said, just because you can make cruiserweight doesn't make you a cruiserweight. Tyson, for example, existed among cruiserweights and was still optimized for HW. Furthermore, the SHW/HW distinction is moot because it only exists in amateur boxing. In professional boxing, heavyweight has always been without limit. That's a big part of what makes heavyweight history so interesting. If you want to talk amateur boxing, that's a different story entirely.

 

Heresy.

The alleged "cruiserweight" division is just a collective name for a series of catchweight fights occurring since the 1980s that fell between 190 and 200 pounds.

 

one hundred percent.

I feel bad that the cruisers until now didn’t get the prestige of being called “heavyweight” champs. Especially during the reign of the Klitchsko brorhers where the heavyweight championships was largely contested by men who all fought as SHW in the amateurs.

 

I should add that I don't think that a "superheavyweight" class is legitimate, either.

Original eight weightclasses. Same day weigh-ins. Accept no substitutes.

 

you mean modern sports science that was previously unavailable. And this is the problem with making comparison between the post sports science era and pre science era. You can’t level the field because you can’t know what the modern fighter looks like without the advances in science.

absolute nonsense.

Absolute nonsense.

until the Amateurs changed all of that. This meant a new weight class needed somewhere new to go when they turned professional

They got it right. Pro boxing, because it is a business, got it so tragically wrong.

 

I go along with that too. If it means it preserves a closer playing field.

 

Rocky is 5'9" and weighed 188 lbs full of food and water and was not that diced-up physically--he was in good shape no doubt, but boxing standards have changed. You think 6'1" Chad Dawson who is ripped to the bone weighing 175lb while completely water and food depleted is smaller than that? He rehydrates and eats back up to well into the 190s. Same with Pascal, same with Froch. These guys are 5'11"-6'1" and are bigger objectively than many heavyweights prior to the redefinition that happened throughout the mid century. I find it to be willfully ignorant to think a 5'9" man, smaller than modern LHWs could beat up Lennox Lewis.

btw: Pro boxing is awesome. That's why we're here. I don't think the average patron of this forum has watched more than 10 amateur bouts, and that's OK. It has different rules. It's like futsal to football.

 

no he wasn’t.

that’s the problem with making comparison between the post sports science era and pre science era. You can’t level the field because you can’t know what the modern fighter looks like without the advances in science.

firstly Marciano was not a 5’9” man. I find it willfully ignorant to insist on that. Secondly isn’t it as equally “willfully ignorant” not to consider how much Lewis owes to advances in science and the benefit of developing in the SHW division as an amateur? Neither the science nor the division the science created were available before.

 

I'm not interested in hypotheticals or discussions arguing the semantics of cruiser vs superheavy. This has been done to death and everyone with more than 2 functioning brain cells knows that if you take Rocky and Lewis as is, Lewis would win pretty easily. An aggressive 5'10 185 guy with short arms isn't beating an elite 230+ guy with tremendous power and good ring IQ in a million years outside of a fluke punchers chance. This would be like an elephant vs a cape buffalo.