Just after some opinions on this. Seeing that the genetics to be a heavyweight boxer are not that common I.e. at least 6'3" and even rarer at the top end of big men, 6'6" and above. Does it stand to reason that the top level heavyweight fighters are not as high quality in pure boxing skills as their smaller counterparts as there is a smaller gene pool to choose from. There are not many guys you see in the boxing gym who could be big enough to fight as a heavyweight pro. I was just pondering this today and interested in opinions.
True, but I wasn't talking about speed, I was talking about skill. Because there are less heavyweight boxers, does that mean that the skill level is generally less?
Skill as in ability to cut off the ring, set up traps, footwork, reaction times, ability to read punches.
How common the size is depends on your location on the globe, as there's a reason you won't find many strawweights to super flyweights on the western European mainland for instance. But of course there's a penalty for being bigger, heavier and stronger, as you have to move that mass around, feed those muscles oxygen and move that limbs. Easier to move 120 as 240lbs, right?! A fly is hard to catch because he's that much faster, but if you finally do then *splat!*
To be a heavyweight boxer you need to weigh over 200 pounds. That's it. It's probably a larger pool than any other weight in the sport.
The average man is less than 200lbs, only 200lbs plus men I know are overweight. So I disagree that heavyweight has the larger pool of talent to pick from.
Like I said in a previous post, it depends on where you're from. Average in my country is 185lbs, and there are more than enough healthy and athletic men above 200lbs. You won't find many in most Asian countries though.
Of course you are right, talent pools get smaller as you go to the extremes of physique. Height and weight aren't on a simple Bell Curve but they're similar enough. There is no reason for larger boxers to be 'less co-ordinated' or have less innate gymnastic ability though as some have suggested. One may have all the gymnastic ability in the world mentally but physics will not allow you to do gymnastic maneuvers (rotations, flips etc) as quickly when you are tall/large so that is why you don't tend to see very tall/large gymnasts. Let's not pretend a 10 yr old is in their physical prime! They often make better gymnasts than people with a decade further practice though and that's nothing to do with 'ability'. Just raw physics. I would say that there is even less impetus for a large boxer to really hone their 'skills' as compared to the lower weights and that is that because a more damaging punch can be delivered when you are large, so each punch counts more. When sparring, very large (6ft+) guys can do fight-ending damage without having honed technique. (Ahem...Wilder...cough) Your jaw remains disproportionately weak compared to your body as you move up in weight also. I.e. A heavyweight may be able to transfer vastly more energy than a straw-weight with each punch but will not be able to take vastly more power to the temple or jaw before getting KO'd. There is a reason that the best p4p fighters have come from the most common/average weight classes, with a tilt towards lower weights, since lower/middle weights have many advantages: better gymnastic potential, bigger talent pools, less damaging sparring, 'small-man syndrome' etc etc To say that Joshua or Fury or Bowe or whoever was displaying less 'talent' or ability than elites at lower weights is a bit misguided though, since performing in an optimal way for a HW may look less appealing aesthetically than for lower weights.
While there are definitely regional differences I'm talking world wide. In many countries the average is well below 6' in height and below 200lbs. Just look on Boxrec to see how many active boxers there are in each weight division. There are 1218 active heavyweights There are 1441 active middleweights There are 1848 active light middleweights There are 1975 active welterweights There are 1987 active lightweights Pretty clear that there are fewer heavyweights and so there is a smaller talent pool to draw from.
But there are only 944 Bantamweights and 702 Super Flyweights while those are talentrich divisions. It's not the talentpool, it's more the physical build that makes the difference.
