would the likes of hearns and leonard ever fought at welterweight or would they have started at light middle in todays game?
How much greater would some of the fighters from the past of been had they benifitted from day before weigh ins?
in another thread, somebody said that shane mosley would never make lightweight in the old days. i thought they would be bigger in todays game
In the old days, Mosley probably couldn't make 135. Fighters have more time between the weigh-in and bout nowadays. A lot of fighters put on more weight due to the weigh-in procedures, or fight in divisions they couldn't under the old rules. Weight-cutting has always been part of the sport, but fighters have more time to rehydrate nowadays.
I think you would get mixed results. A few old timers actualy caried out similar feats of dehydration to modern fighters and simply acepted being dehydrated. Verry dangerous as we now know. Some fighters simply selected the weight at wich their performence was optimum and they would benefit much more from the modern system. If anything the old time system resulted in greater disparity between fighters in the same weight class. Robinson Lamotta was esentialy a junior middleweight fighting a super midleweight.
