Size Importance

I understand that you need to feel right about something.

I feel no need to add anything, as I said earlier. bye.

 

why add this then ?

do you see how easily you contradict yourself Herol?

that's why we laugh at you

talk about self destructing

 

Like who?, and Wlad haven't seen 230 since he was a teenager.

 

Oh, so you are joking :think Okay then.

 

I think that weight classes are a good guide, and probably the most fair way to match fighters, but it does give advantages to certain body types and is prone to certain types of abuses such as weight cutting.

I also think that a three inch reach and height advantage might be as good as a twenty pound weight advantage; so even if you weigh the same as another guy, if you are Tommy Hearns, Alexis Arguello, Sandy Saddler, Bob Foster, Bernard Hopkins, or Michael Spinks your arms are twice as long, and you are punching your opponent from out in the stands, then it ain't a fair fight either.

 

Yep, the heavyweight champion has historically held a size and weight advantage over the majority of his opponents. Wlad Klitschko is 6'6" with 81" of reach and usually weighs between 240 and 245 pounds. He often fights men who are 6'0"-6'2" tall and weigh 210-225 pounds. Is his success due more to a height and reach advantage or to a weight advantage though? Sometimes the 6'0" opponent outweighs him. Does that make them bigger, or just fatter?

I've seen so many people on this board argue that because on the night of the fight one fighter weighed more that he was the naturally bigger man. However it is clear that the taller one was often trying to keep his weight down, and the shorter guy was trying to get his weight artificially high. This sort of thing obviously leads to mismatches.

 

Not really... Holyfield, Tyson, Frazier, Holmes, Ali (70's), Charles, Marciano, Dempsey...all were pretty average sized relative to their eras and in some cases even small...

 

Tyson, Frazier, and Marciano are the obvious exceptions.

If you look at Ali's competition he was generally two or three inches taller with 10-20 pounds of weight advantage. You could count the number of guys who were bigger than him he fought on one hand Foreman, Bugner, Wepner, and Terrell. A couple of guys like Norton, Dunn, Young, Foster, Lewis, Mathis, and Williams were about the same size. But in roughly 50 out of 61 bouts he was usually the bigger man.

Same goes for Larry Holmes. He fought a lot of 6'1" guys like Mike Weaver. Not many were 6'5" like Gerry ****ey.

Marciano was smaller than his opponents but he was fighting old light heavyweights for the most part.

Jack Dempsey fought two or three guys with big size advantages against him (Fulton, Firpo, Willard) but for the most part he's fighting guys who are slightly smaller: Tunney, Sharkey, Carpentier, Gibbons, Brennan, Miske, etc.

Mostly, I'm thinking of dominant champions with long reigns like Jack Johnson, Ali, Holmes, Lewis, V. Klitschko, W. Klitschko.

 

There are fewer short guys who were small for their division in the p4p top 100 than there are guys who were tall and had long reaches for their division. That's just a fact. Boxing favors the man with longer height and reach, especially outside fighters.

However, the most notable examples of a short man dominating a taller division are Armstrong, Walker, Duran, Tyson, Langford, and Qawi. If you wanted to do an inch for inch top fighters list, those guys probably gave up more height and reach than anybody. Like you said, these guys are mostly known for being inside swarmers.

 

Ali and Holmes outsized the occassional bum but their most profilic opponents were of comparable size. Ali only really had a size advantage in the 60's. Even then he was of comparable size to Chuvalo, Liston, Williams or Terell.

His "size advantage" in the 70's wasn't an advantage. He was out of shape and chubby, his optimal weight was around 210-215, and most of his big wins are just in that range or bigger. Norton, Lyle, Foreman, Shavers, Mathis, Liston ...

Frazier, Bonavena etc. were smaller but not by much. Only Patterson was a great win which I'd describe as a case of a size advantage.

 

I meant in terms of height and reach mostly. Ali was outweighed, usually only by a pound or two, fifteen times in his career, meaning that three quarters of the time he was the heavier man, often ten or twenty pounds heavier.

In terms of reach and height though, Chuvalo was three inches shorter and had a much shorter wingspan. Ali was hitting him at will. Liston was two inches shorter, but had an amazing six inch reach advantage. Frazier is 5'11" with T-Rex arms. Bonavena is 5'10" five inches shorter with five inches less reach. Patterson gave away three inches of height to Ali, and seven inches of reach. Today, he'd be a light heavyweight or a super middleweight since he's got smaller measurements than Carl Froch.

Oh, and if we consider Ali bloated and fat at 230 with his best weight around 215, then why don't we consider his shorter opponents fat and out of shape when they weighed as much as the larger Ali? Bit of a double standard there. I think a shorter man can weigh as much as a taller man on fight night, but it usually just means he's fat.

 

great post!