On the scales: 1st impressions count?

I've never paid any attention to it.
I remember seeing tapes of the Clay - Liston weigh in in 1964.
Clay acted like a crazy man.
He should have been institutionalized, and his career terminated.

 

If the fighters weight fluctuates and his performance suffers when he's overweight I pay attention.

It's more than the scales to be honest. You can tell when a guy has put in the work and is confident, and when has not put in the work, and lacks confidence.

So yes, it can alter my prediction.

To use a recent example, Fury look much better at 247, than 260.

 

I didn't know about Michael Dokes' drug problems at the time, but I'd assumed Gerrie Coetzee wouldn't be able to pull it off against Dokes. He's lost to Tate and Weaver in his previous attempts at a big prize, while Dokes' star was on the ascent. But when I saw the weights reported in the newspaper the morning of their fight and saw that Coetzee was lighter than he had been in years, I predicted a Coetzee victory.

 

If one of the fighters was obviously out of condition, it would change my prediction significantly.

 

I only really pay attention when a fighter, usually a HW, looks fat.

When fighters look drained at the weigh-in, I think it's a cause for concern, but it's unpredictable. There's been cases like this where they then perform fine in the ring. Miguel Cotto looked like a skeleton leading up to the Paulie Malignaggi fight, he even had that weak look a couple years later at 147 against Shane Mosley, but Mosley was probably his best win.

I did once change my pick after seeing the weigh-in for a Hopkins-Wright. Originally I was leaning towards Winky, who was coming up from 160 to 170. But then he looked rather flabby like he trained on donuts and fries, so I picked Hopkins.

As a kid, I remember Buster Douglas raising eyebrows by going from 231 from the Mike Tyson fight to 246 for the Evander Holyfield fight. What a disgraceful non-effort that was. I wasn't picking Kirk Johnson against Vitali Klitschko in the first place, but once I saw how fat Johnson was I knew he had no chance.

 

Sugar Ray Robinson took one look at Randy Turpin's muscular physique at their weigh in and said if the can fight even a little, he was going to have trouble.

 

:good he's an iconic sporting figure and reading about him makes me proud to be British and ashamed at the same time.
He always said he knew he could beat Robinson exactly the way he did and wasn't nostalgic about the fight.
Jack Solomons shafted him for sure.:twisted:

 

Why ashamed? !

 

Probably the way he got fleeced out of his ring earning in this country but that could apply to hundreds of fighters.
Over the years I've never heard a bad word said about him.

 

Yeah, that happens in every country an ex boxer with mental health issues fared well. I would like to think things are getting better (Frank Bruno ). Turpin is in that category that you wonder what could of been if he had better support.

 

Sadly, hard luck tales aren't uncommon in boxing are they.for every Jimmy McLarnin there are a thousand Ike Williams who end up pot less at best.