Moving through weight classes is overrated

Most weight jumps are natural.

Hopkins, Calzaghe, Crawford, Mayweather, Andre Ward... these were natural weight jumps.

But some weight jumps are impressive, where the fighter is clearly the smaller guy beating on a naturally heavier opponent.

Roy Jones Jr was clearly the smaller man beating a bigger man in Ruiz for a version of the heavyweight title. Even though Ruiz wasn't the best heavyweight champ out there, still impressive.

Usyk is another "smaller" guy, who not only dominated the bigger men at heavy but has looked almost unbeatable while doing it.

Let's see Crawford compete at Super Middleweight.

Andre Ward talked big saying he will fight at heavy. But probably changed his mind after the first Kovalev fight. Had he competed at Heavyweight, that could have been impressive also.

If Canelo beat a prime Kovalev, that would have been an impressive weight jump.

 

It is overrated by some and under by others. It's a fine metric tbh, just as good as any other record based metric.

They're all that way. Rather than paying any attention at all to how much weight any boxer has moved with a punch people argue power in terms of KOs on records. Like as if every KO artist must use raw power to achieve them.

People like multi weight classes much more than size disparity. Pac gets brags and called a GOAT for weight classes but absolutely 0 of the smaller men who dominated their weight class and did well all the way up to HW gets the same treatment despite having covered more size disparity.

It's just a record thing bro, some people really love record stats, others have the ability to form opinions. I'm kidding, some people like their own farts a bit much and others depend on the objectivity of stats. It's fine.

 

In some ways it is, in this modern era, but the percentage of body weight at these lower classes might be getting underappreciated here, as much as I don't want all these weight classes.

 

Another something something lets all praise Usyk because he's Ukrainian thread? Wow, that's like really original, job well done.

 

If the P4P champions were also the lineal champions of those categories; that would not be overrated.

 

I think it really depends on who you beat

For some Fighters jumping up weight classes and accumulating belts is gimmicky And for others they go up and clean out divisions Or at the very least Beat the best and maybe the next best

 

Depends on how you move thru them.........................

Adrien Broner's movement through weightclasses was most assuredly overrated. The way James Toney or Hearns or Roy did, those were not overrated feats.

 

Yeah it is overrated at least in terms of overcoming size differences. With the weight differences 6 or 7 pounds most guys below 175 can fight in 3-4 weight classes. The tweener divisions feel like a "P4P division" or "small P4P/large P4P" divisions where fighters in the P4P rankings are moving to fight each other. Manny won belts in 8 divisions and he moved 40 pounds. De La Hoya won belts in 6 and moved 30. Mayweather won 5 and moved 24.

Winning in more divisions probably does mean a fighter beat lots of the best champions. But they don't represent real differences in sizes. Thats why fighters are moving so much.

The best way to look at multi division champions is the highest level they reached. For example Roy Jones got to HW. Canelo got to 175. Manny and Floyd got to 154. Thats what really matters.

 

Bigger the weight, less are the skills, speed, stamina and footwork. There are expections of course, but mostly it's like that.



which is more impressive ? Inoue beating Navarrete or Bud beating Canelo ?