Lewis and Marciano hypocrisy

if Calzaghe can dominate the heavyweight division weighing 185lb or so in an earlier era, a big if, then I guess you would have to consider his chances taking on 220lb heavyweights whilst giving away 30lb. This is limited to the classic sized heavyweight division.

 

That’s fair enough if you don’t think Calzaghe was good enough in the first place.

 

No sane man would ever consider this. Unless, you know, there’s some other reason. A reason I won’t mention. But you know, it’s there.

 

If a 185lb Calzaghe is good enough to beat 190 pounders in an earlier era (and we don’t know that he was since he didn’t fight any) then he’s good enough to beat 220 pounders in that earlier era. It’s how it worked then.

 

Sure, but they were all small.
Marciano might be able to carry 215 pounds like Bert Cooper did, but I don't think Cooper was any better at 215 than he was at 200 or 190 actually.
Tyson was just more muscular and the muscle was explosive. Marciano might be able to bulk up to 220 solid pound, but in that case he'd just be a bodybuilder, not a boxer.

Marciano over, say 202 pounds or so, would probably be rather pointless. Even Frazier, who was possibly slightly bigger naturally, was best at 204 or so.

 

This is what people are not getting. No one is saying Rocky "couldn't" bulk up to 210+. The problem is he would be much slower and wouldn't be able to do what he was best at and throw a high volume of shots round after round and would basically just be a big bulky slugger who was even easier to hit than he already was.. He doesn't put on fast twitch explosive muscle the way Tyson did, they have totally different bodies.

 

If we allowed catchweight fights, between all fighters over 160lbs today, I will wager that we would get a few surprises.

 

And if we were still stuck with earlier training methods we wouldn’t see anymore good fighters heavier than 226lb than you had then.

with the advances you get the changes, without the advances you don’t get the changes,

 

Aha, I freakin knew it.
We're gonna need some more tin foil.

 

I always tell my wife that my size is directly and adversely affected by how she don't feed me well enough to the point of starvation but she says that is all in my mind, except for the adversity part.

 

Calzaghe’s walking around weight near the end of his career was indeed around 196-203. Earlier in his career Calzaghe’s walking around weight wasn’t this high. He made made 168 with ease when he was younger and also lighter, but as he got older his natural weight went up and he had an extremely hard time getting his weight down to 168 lbs.

For years, Joe Calzaghe has dreaded the final days leading up to the weigh-in before his title fights, eating like a sparrow and forgoing normal fluid intake to shift the final pounds in order to weigh in below the 12st limit for the super-middleweight division, where he has reigned supreme for more than a decade.

This week the 36-year-old Welshman admits he has been in the comfort zone, relatively speaking, as he has made final preparations to fight as a light-heavyweight (12st 7lb) for the first time against the American veteran Bernard Hopkins at the Thomas and Mack Center tomorrow.

Seven pounds may not sound like a great deal of weight to either carry or lose, but to a finely tuned athlete such as Calzaghe it means the difference between going to the ring as the gaunt, sunken-cheeked champion who unified the super-middleweight division by defeating the Dane Mikkel Kessler last November and the fuller-faced figure who will exude vitality when he steps on the scales at today's weigh-in.

In his 15 years as a professional, during which time he has won all his 44 fights, Calzaghe has always fought at 12st. But, as his body grew and matured, the battle to "make the weight" had started to become an all-consuming torture. Now he says he feels stronger and fitter, and that Hopkins, at 43, will be unable to live with the pace at which he fights.

"My natural weight is 14 to 14½ stone," Calzaghe said. "Getting down to between 12st 8lb and 12st 10lb was never a problem but the last few pounds hurt. When I started as a pro I was naturally lighter so it was no problem getting down to 12st, but it has got harder and harder.

"Against Kessler I got in the ring and felt so weak. After a weigh-in you drink and put on the pounds. But it's just fluid, not muscle, so you get in the ring and feel flat. Training to fight as a light-heavyweight has made all the difference. I have been within two or three pounds of the limit for days and I feel strong and full of energy."
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2008/apr/18/boxing.joecalzaghe