This Calz - Ottke chat got me thinking about weight classes per se. 68 is both reasonable and dubious as a weight class. After all, the turf between 68 and 75 ain't much at that size, and anyone who can train down to 68 (assumedly from the 180s and even higher a la Joe C) could be just as well at 170+. And (going off the WBC classes) it then makes no sense at all that the jump from 68 to 75 is a mere 7# when the jump from LH to cruiser is 200, so more than twice as much and leaving much too much No Man's Land for all the fighters whose optimal weight is in the Marciano and Dempsey range or those of the Holyfield-Qawi fights. Remember cruiser was originally 190, which made some sense, yet not entirely because that was the same 15# diff from middle to LH (and before a SM class was made). Then the powers that be tweaked cruiser (or, spare us, "Jr." heavyweight) in response to the heavies getting so huge so fast. Then along comes this (to me) ludicrous bridgerweight division, which is yet another response to huge heavies, but the Tyson Fury's are hardly the norm. A 224 weight limit? 220 (probably trained down from at least 235+) is big enough for anyone. Consider Holyfield was much closer to the current cruiser than bridger limit when at 208 he whipped 246 Douglas and 257 Foreman, and then boosted to 217 beat a 246 Bowe (I won't bore you with many other examples you already know like Frazier-Mathis and on and on). So bottom line the organizations have always been at a loss trying to configure sensible weight limits for the bigger guys. All well in the middle ranges but at the other end of the spectrum imo it again makes less sense i.e., straw weight-light fly-super fly. 3 divisions with 3 pound increments, and then the diff from super fly (115) to bantam (118) is less than the diff from light-fly to fly which is 4 pounds but they're smaller guys. Similarly, the dif from middleweight to SM is more than from SM to LH when commonsensically it should have to be less, right? if it was my call, eliminate straw-weight, drop light-fly to 107 and eliminate super fly. At the other end to further try and make sense of the relative number increments, bump supermiddle to 70 and LH to 83 and drop cruiser to 99. Then if you're 200# you're a heavyweight like it or not and as we know in the modern era any guy already THAT big in shape can easily and effectively bulk. Usyk the recent prime example and needless to say consider M Spinks and Roy Jones long ago and coming from much smaller weights and of course Toney the most comical example of growing through weight classes. Would be very interested to read other takes on weight classes (I'm not going to take the time to look at other organizations classes as I can't imagine any significant differences from the WBC).
