Looks like Tom Heeney at 203 lbs was the heaviest. This was Tunney's last fight. All the rest were well below 200....with a bunch of only suped-up Lt. Heavys. Tunney may have realized the Heavies of the future were going to be bigger than him....so he packed it in.
Too much is made of this to be honest. The 200lb mark was nothing more than a round number in Tunney and Jeffries era. It did not define any weight class, and nobody was obsesed with a contender being 199lbs or 201. There were few good contenders who consistently came in over the magic 200lb mark, and there is no evidence that either fighter made much effort to avoid fighting them. I think that Tunney did seriously consider pursuing a fight with Harry Wills. If that had been what he had to do to get in the ring with Dempsey, then he would have gone for it.
I never doubted he would. In Jeffries case, all but Ruhlin were small heavyweights, that's what was around at top level.
Jack Renault was a 200 lber. Ray Thompson usually weighed in that vicinity, Though i am not sure of his weights against Tunney, the reported 180lbs for one of them seems a little hard to believe. Tunney actually fought quite a few heavyweight fights. Certainly a lot more than the 6 that is commonly bandied about. It is unfair to compare weights to todays standards. Most fighters blow out in weight, because the dont train as hard and fight as often. They blow up, then get back to shape and we all know that it is hard work to get down to a light weight, once you blow up. Most of today's fighters start off at much, much lower weights and would stay there, if they fought as regularly as back then or if there was only a lt heavy limit which meant if you stayed there, you would come into title contentions and make more money. Tunney fought quite a lot of fighters who ended up in the 200 range and higher. And i dare say that some of these guys when they reached these weights were not as overweight as some of todays guys turn up to fight in. In saying this, to balance the ledger against those comparing with Jeffries reign, let us not forget that between this time, there were a lot of large white hopes going around like Ferguson, Morris, Willard etc. It is an interesting time, i think the search for big strong strong powermerchants had failed with the smaller guys being more successful and the emphasis came back on skill and punching instead of size at this time. One has to wonder whether the same thing will happen today. Hopefully when the klitchskos do lose it will be to a small heavyweight.
I dont think Tunney was worried about future heavyweights. He was interested in cashing that last big check and marrying his heiress bride and settling down to count his money and social climb. When he fought Heeney he looked better than he ever had. Based on that performance he likely thought he could have cleaned up dregs that were lurking around the HW division at the time like Sharkey, Stribling, Loughran, McTigue, Risko, Delaney, etc. (some whom he had already beaten or over whom he would have been a massive favorite, not to mention none were exactly giants). The only guy who was really outside of Tunney's size/comfort zone would have been Carnera and he was outside of every ones size AND still several years from a serious run at the title.
One bigger fighter that he has been acused of avoiding is George Godfrey. Not that the circumstances of Godreys career put him in much of a position to force the issue.
