The old adage - A good big man always beats a good little man..

As a Jones fan I'm not so sure on that, I mean he could have but Sanders had allot of the tools Tarver had but hit harder. I don't think Jones ducked him as such, I think he was offered the same money to face a smaller Tarver and went for that fight instead

 

Duran- Barkley
Whittaker-Vasquez
Leonard- Lalonde
Burley-Moore

 

The most appropriate old adage is styles make fights.

 

Holyfield-Bowe I is a good example of this - both being in tremendous shape at the time - maybe you can say Holyfield went in with the wrong tactics but the reason he came unstuck was Bowe's greater size and strength on a night when all other things comsidered they were pretty well evenly matched - and both in my opinion were great fighters on this night IMO (sad that Bowe could never really be great again) - like you say though with a lot of other big vs little fights there seem to be a lot of other factors at work too - such as with Holmes-Spinks you have to consider Holmes was coming to the end, with Jones-Ruiz Jones was a great little man and Ruiz was a pretty average big man (fighters of Ruiz's comparative ability down at super middle didn't belong in the ring with Jones), can't really think of a lot of 'good big un vs good little un' fights where they were both on a par ability wise/age wise/condition wise/performance wise actually come to think of it but Holyfield-Bowe I must be one of the best examples and look what happened there so yeah I think this old adage is one that carries a big weight advantage over many others.