Most talent laden division currently?

...

 

Well, see, this is where I think it becomes important to delineate a distinction. These superfluous "notables" (while I do not disagree in calling them such) are decidedly after the drop-off, you'd agree? If you think a name or two is missing from the elites I listed (or some of those present in my OP don't belong), that is one thing, but so we're clear on terms here, there are many good fighters in every division who are just the salt-of-the-earth gluing everything together, necessary kind of guys (as we've discussed ) who maybe aren't world beaters and yet participate in world title fights, occasionally win a few, but are capable also of losing to green prospects or motivated gatekeepers because styles make fights. The upper echelon of boxing's "rank and file", as it were. Mickey Roman is maybe the current standard bearer for this kind of fighter. There's a ton of them, and they deserve respect and serve a purpose & have a place in the sport - but they shouldn't be confused (even if they happen to hold a strap now and then) with the elites. For instance, Oswaldo Novoa was never truly elite. Neither is Caleb Truax. With all due respect, they aimed high, and seized the brass ring, and good on them for doing so, but you're not going to put either in any historical fantasy h2h match-ups. They're just not that good.

Every division had a very small concentration at the very top, of elites. That is, guys that either are on p4p lists, or could be if they strung together a few wins against the best of their peers in their weight range (maybe having to go up or down a division to find enough big names to play with). So in that sense, every weight class is "top-heavy", as they all have steep drop-offs between those elites and the rank-and-file (which encompasses the entire broad category from respectable WBO Intercontinental & European champs with like 32-5 records all the way down to actual tomato cans who are like 1-23 with eighteen of their defeats by KO1; in other words, the vast majority of boxers since the elite are just the very highest pinprick tip of the pyramid) - but some are top-heavier relative to others.

So, how do we determine the 'depth' of a weight class, if they all have drop-offs anyway?

Well, the first way is to gauge how many elites (and how many guys sniffing p4p honors, among those) are in each division before the drop-off - and that is the one mostly explored in the OP. A second but equally valid and important way, that I've been meaning to get to in follow-up, is evaluating that second tier (of the best of the R&F) and tracking availability of backfill - that is, who could replace the elites, in the event the current ones disappear for various reasons?

Why might elites disappear? Oh, well, my lads, that's just the nature of the beast. Panta Rei. Nothing ever lasts in boxing. You'll never see annual rankings in any publication (Ring, Boxrec, TBRB) look exactly the same in any one division from one year to another. NEVER. Something (or things) will change, invariably.

Guys retire. Guys start to slip, feel the weight of all their wars in both real fights and sparring and become shot overnight, begin experiencing difficulty making weight, have injuries or scar tissue accumulate to where it affects function, lose their drive or hunger or love of the game, knock up their wives or girlfriends and decide that's what their lives are going to be about now, get busted making gay porn, what have you. Guys try giving themselves a "fresh start" in a new division, or go chasing where they believe paydays await them, or they simply reach a certain age to come into their man-strength and find that it doesn't fit the confines of the little boy shell of what had been their comfortable body size until then.

Given all that flux, there's always going to be rotation at the very top. One minute, Bernard Hopkins is the #1 LHW and in everybody's top-10 p4p. Then you blink, a fight or two happens and he's barely on the "elite" list anymore, perhaps in danger of sliding off into the "rank-and-file" no-man's-land, and then you blink again to find he's retired. 175lbs is declared a wasteland, because erstwhile heirs presumptive Chad Dawson and Tavoris Cloud have also plummeted from grace more or less concurrently with Hopkins. Then all of a sudden, huzzah, light heavy is a top 4 glamour division in the sport again, completely from left field. (great super middles coming up, formerly green/obscure/unproven/poorly managed prospects developing and making good on their scouted promise, etc)

 

So, with all that in mind, let's review the findings in the OP.

(note: the following nomenclature is now, in case anybody missed this news, the STANDARDIZED FORM in the sport, ratified three years ago by the WBC, IBF and WBA. The lone outlying major org that hasn't adopted these names is the WBO, and since they are the redheaded stepchild of the four anyway, I don't think anyone is going to suggest their voice lends more credence in any given argument with the other three older bodies combined, so for all intents & purposes this is now and forevermore the official naming convention for each weight class. Take as long as you need to change your soiled undies and make the necessary adjustments, if this feels like a piano dropping on you. I know many of us were used to many alternate, interchangeable names for the divisions, but those are now considered antiquated. Read 'em & weep: http://boxrec.com/media/index.php/Weight_divisions)

1) Cruiserweight/14 stone, 4lbs/90.89kg/200lbs
2)

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/11 stone, 6 lbs/72.57kg/160lbs
3)

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/10½ stone/66.68kg/147lbs
4)

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/12½ stone/79.378kg/175lbs
5) Super flyweight/8 stone, 3lbs/52.16kg/115lbs
5)

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/9 stone/57.15kg/126lbs
6) Super bantamweight/8 stone, 10lbs/55.23kg/122lbs
6)

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/8 stone/50.8kg/112lbs
6) Super lightweight/10 stone/63.50kg/140lbs
7)

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/8 stone, 6 lbs/53.53kg/118lbs
7) Light flyweight/7 stone, 10lbs/48.99kg/108lbs
7)

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/>14 stone, 4lbs/>90.89kg/>200lbs
8) Super welterweight/11 stone/69.85kg/154lbs
8)

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/9 stone, 9lbs/61.26kg/135lbs
8) Super middleweight/12 stone/76.20kg/168lbs
9) Super featherweight/9 stone, 4lbs/58.97kg/130lbs
10) Minimumweight/7½ stone/47.68kg/105lbs

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" divisions, prior to subdivision with "super" and "light" modifiers, listed in

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)

Cruiser is the reigning king, but some have concerns with Usyk - as its linchpin and figurehead of its revolution from disrepute into the glamour class - soon to depart, and with at least one elite (Lebedev) and one notable-on-the-bubble (Diablo Wlod, in fact he just barely missed inclusion on the OP list) both nearing the ring & chronological age where you start to bandy the idea of retirement. Fret not, however. While he embarks upon his adventure in the unlimited category and perhaps sets Heavy afire (PERHAPS - as phenomenal as he is, remember how Adamek/Haye/Cunningham and countless others were supposed to invade HW from CW and, er, didn't exactly shake things up as expected?) we're still going to have Briedis, Gassiev, Dorticos, Huck and Głowacki holding it down at the apex forming a very good elite nucleus (with some round-robin potential for some excellent fights) - none of them even really on the back-half of their prime yet. Huck and Vlasov are the same ages chronologically as Briedis and Dorticos/Usyk/Głowacki respectively, but they've been around for EONS, so they're giant Question Marks. Their primes could abruptly end any day now...or they could stay relevant into the next decade. WHO KNOWS?!? That's part of the fun of boxing; theater of the unexpected (and largely unpredictable). Makabu falls in the same unknowable bin, as we can't say how much the attrition that comes with his style will shorten his time in the world class mix. Now, getting down to our real meat & potatoes: behind all of them, in terms of backfill, we have Andrew Tabiti, Luke Watkins, Constantin Bejenaru, Aleksei Papin, Yuri Kashinski, Fabio Turchi, Lawrence Okolie, Noel Gevor, Jai Opetaia, Luis Garcia, Patrick Ferguson - who might all go bust, or half of them (or more) could end up becoming consensus elites. TIME WILL TELL...but the mere fact that Cruiser has so much nascent aptitude in the pipeline, so many guys that (whatever flaws exist to be ironed out) you have to admit could eventually take up the baton from the likes of Usyk/Briedis/Gassiev, speaks to an optimistic prognosis for Cruiser, that its time among the preeminent divisions (if not the glamour class) isn't just some flash in the pan, temporary fluke. It could be really good for a number of years, actually. Might not, but where things stand at this juncture (and from what I've seen of the younger, developing talents), I'd be more surprised by the latter eventuality.

Now, compare with the 115lb class, which has reached peak hype in the last year or so, with HBO finally paying the lower depths of the scale long-overdue attention (mostly riding the coattails of Chocolatito's shine reaching critical mass, with him becoming too much of a boxing hipsters' open secret for the casuals and mainstream boxing media to ignore anymore) with the well-received "SuperFly" card. Naoya Inoue might be well on his way to becoming p4p #2 behind Lomachenko. Wangek is up there as well, not quite nipping on Inoue's heels, some comfortable distance between them, but still, up there, closer than most elite boxers across the weight spectrum to belonging universally on p4p lists, if near the bottom (and Cuadras & Estrada in turn not all that far behind Wangek). Chocolatito himself was, fairly recently, declared by most publications to be the #1 p4p, successor to Mayweather (and many knowledgeable sports writers contested that he was in fact the p4p king for some time even before Mayweather stepped away). That's all well and fine. BUT. We have no idea what Chocolatito has left. If he takes one more L, that is three in a row. I love the man, have been a fan of him since long before ANY of you...but, from what I know of him, just reading between the lines...if he takes a third consecutive L, that's gonna do it. That will extinguish his competitive spirit. He will pick up his ball and go home. Inoue? You think he's staying put at 115lb? Ha. It has been over three years since he arrived there, freshly into his twenties. He will be invading bantamweight (either by choice/for legacy to become a champ in a 3rd division, or by inability to make super fly anymore) if not this year then early 2019 at the latest, book it. Not too long from now, we are looking at the newly remodeled super fly, even top-heavier, with its linchpin Wangek pushing into his mid-thirties and winding down, and with the pair of Mexicans forced to rematch, and then rubber-match, and then look around in dismay at the lack of remaining competition available besides just each other. There isn't much on the horizon to be optimistic about, in terms of RED-HOT prospects (in the entire fly range, even including minimum, to account for smaller guys moving up) where you can fast-forward a year or two and say we're going to still have a lot of depth up top, even say half as much as now. Super fly is a passing fad. Don't blink.

 

Soon it will be academic, but technically as of now Garcia has fought last at 140 and Crawford is still officially yet to make his climb up to welter. Horn could blow a knee the week before the fight, and Crawford might end up deciding to boil down to 140 again for a giant payday vs. Mikey rather than wait around for another opportunity to materialize up at welter. Until it happens in the ring, it hasn't become "real". Scheduled means nothing.

Same reason I'm not preemptively including Usyk among the heavies despite it being common knowledge that after the WBSS he's going up, win lose or draw.

 

Well it wouldn't make sense for Mikey to be challenging Lipinets coming into the division cold. You rarely see a fighter (even a world champ the next weight class down) go up to challenge for a title without so much as one prelude fight to announce themselves in the division first.

(although I suppose you could argue that Mikey jad already done that when he fought Elio Rojas at 140lb, then backtracked down to lightweight for Zlaticanin and then "returned" to light welter after settling that quick bit of business...so he could have conceivably skipped the Broner fight before Lipinets, but it certainly helped boost his momentum. 2-0 at the weight is better than 1-0, after all, and Broner is a much bigger name than Rojas.. )

 

Qawi, Jirov, Adamek, Haye, Mormeck..you're pretty comfortable putting the WBSS finalists head and shoulders above their lot?

Not saying I'm not, just would have to give it some thought. It doesn't jump out at me as supremely obvious that Usyk and Gassiev have really distanced themselves from those past cruiser greats all THAT much, where they stand alone w/ Holyfield. We might be too "close to it" right now to say objectively, might need to marinade a while.

 

True but I don't want to see Cruiser fade into obscurity again. I'd rather see a few elites matriculated up to heavy, gradually, one by one, but with enough left in their place to keep 200lbs hip and exciting for long enough to become established in an entire generation of fans' minds as being a "legitimate" and replenishable pool of talent.