"The bigger the trees the harder they are to cut down"- Sonny Liston

I'm sure he could cut most of them down too.

 

"Big guys just get in their own way".

Harry Greb.

 

Size isnt everything. It counts for a lot but if you are smart and in shape and have a ref who doesnt allow the big guy to hold and lean on you then they are beatable. After all its a boxing match not a street fight. The Klitchko's are lucky the division is devoid of talent today (and even then neither is undefeated, Vitali losing specifically by fighting a little guy who made him tear his shoulder up punching at air).

 

May have some truth to it as a big tree takes more swings to chop down unless its rotten, seems like lots of these big heavyweights go down with one chop though. Liston himself was chopped down by a quarter strength cross and quit on his stool and Marciano one of the smaller heavyweight champs was never close to stopped.

 

Neither I nor Liston, nor probably most posters on this blog have been lumberjacks,

and anyway a tree doesn't move. A good boxer should.

So in a following post I will evaluate how Liston did among small to big guys.

 

Sonny Liston's opponents divided by weight
-------------------------------------------------------------
under 190 lbs.

Total fights---8

Won---7

lost---1

KO's---5

1 UD, 1 SD
----------------------------------------------------------------
190 to 200 lbs.

Total fights---21

Won---20

KO by---1

KO's----13

5 UD, 1 SD
----------------------------------------------------------------

201 to 210 lbs.

Total fights---16

Won---14

KO by---2

KO's---12

2 UD
-----------------------------------------------------------------
over 210 lbs.

Total fights----10

Won---10

KO's---9

1 UD
--------------------------------------------------------------

Under 190---winning % (87.5%)---KO % (62.5%)

190 to 200---winning % (95.2%)---KO % (62%)

201 to 210---winning % (87.5%)---KO % (75%)

over 210-----winning % (100%)---KO % (90%)


200 and under---winning % (92.8%)---KO % (62.1%)

over 200---------winning % (92.3%)---KO % (81%)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Total Record

fights-----54

wins------50---(92.6%)

losses----4

KO bys----3

KO's------39---(72.2%)

 

Comment--Liston's career doesn't back up the big guys are tougher argument.

The big but very fast Ali beat him twice, and I think no one will argue that big and fast isn't better than small and fast.

But, as with almost every old boxer I have done this sort of study with, small and fast proves harder to knock out than big and strong.

Any guy who hunted when he was young knows that it is a lot tougher to hit a moving target. Big fellows have less movement and generally less stamina. I don't know if they on average take a punch better, but clearly being easier to hit negates this advantage if there is one.

*someone will bring up that Marshall caught him when he was young and Martin when he was old. Fair enough, but lots of guys caught him when he was young or when he was old.

 

It's not just the heavyweights that would've done well.

The top Cruiserweights would've done well for themselves in most heavyweight eras historically, including the 70's, where they'd routinely be as big or bigger as most of the heavyweights. The reason more don't move up today is the inconvenient truth that size matters when the bigger men also have skill.

People have no problem talking up the Cruiserweight division, yet act as though Heavyweight is trash; this makes no logical sense. It's in the best financial interest to move up from a stacked division to a poor one that pays way more. We'd see more Cruiserweights making the jump up if the people involved believed that rhetoric.

However, when the best Cruisers do move up, they typically become world class heavyweights, if not champion material. It's not like they forget how to fight and they aren't small men themselves. Fighting mainly 200, 210 pounders and then fighting some full sized HW's for the money fights? That trend actually replicates the matchmaking of most old-school heavyweights going by weights and actual size.

Heavyweights through history fought what would mostly be modern cruiserweights (or, with today's weight ins, light heavyweights) with a sprinkling of modern heavyweights thrown in. It's a recent phenomenon for heavyweights to fight nothing but full-blown heavyweights for most or all of their career, yet they get punished in H2H matchups for it against people who had perhaps a quarter of their fights against full-sized heavyweights.

If people hate seeing Wlad walk through opponents now, imagine if his first 50 fights were against Cruiserweight sized guys and the bigger men didn't come along until Steward had him peaked.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avXsk9Q8Jjo