What fighters greatness has is to some degree a result of their weight draining? Greatness doesn't even need to apply, really. Good fighters that would of suffered otherwise apply as well. Arturo Gatti was a great example of this. The most telling example of it might be his fight against Gabriel Ruelas. Gatti was in another weight class completely the fight before Ruelas and his entire career afterwards. I don't know if I've ever seen a fight where a fighters power was so worthless because of the larger fighters draining. Ruelas hit him flush again and again and the size difference that Gatti enjoyed because of his massive weight draining was apparent. Sad fight. Karma seemed to be in full effect when Gatti had the ever loving **** beaten out of him by another weight drainer in Carlos Manuel Baldomir, who unbelievably supposedly walks around as a light heavyweight or something very close to it.
I've heard the claim made that Oscar De La Hoya's greatness is mostly a result of being such a larger fighter than his opponents during the first half of his career or so, along with crooked decisions and other misc factors. Supposedly his "real weight" was up to 20 pounds more than he cut down to during those years. Like Jeff Fenech he was never in one weight division for long, and cut all the way down to 128 pounds when he slaughtered Jimmy Bredahl.
Hm, Monzon comes to my mind. In one fight he had to lose quite a few pounds right before the weigh-in to be at 160 but then they still had same day weigh-ins. So, imo every fighter who has the possibility to weigh in at least 24 hours before the fight and then redrains to a much higher weight at fightnight is basically cheating.
During James Toney's career as a middleweight he basically had to lose weight at every other weigh in during his time as a MW. Commentators constantly commented on this during his fights.
I don't know about a fighters greatness, but weight draining and a boxers health and risk of permanent damage is all down to this factor.. Years ago we were all aware what a fighter does and the risks by way of punch and head trauma damage as the major risk in the game.. But of more recent research the health risks are mostly down to draining a fighter and being unable to fight at optimum strength because of fast draining weight loss before a tough fight..neurologists have proven that dehydration and weight draining can result in much more brain damaging situations than just punch trauma itself.. The fluids around the brain become smaller when under weight and rapid water loss , and there fore the brain is far more suscepible to heavy bruising at a faster rate .. I wish it could be monitored better , but we still have these horrible instances that is our worse dread.. Look at the present Olympics for gods sake, 2 boxer before the games began had black outs or dizzy spells because of bad weight monitoring.. and had thier dreams crashed when they were sent home..
Modern Biggest Weight Drainers (in brackets the amount of weight they added after the weigh in) Delahoya (20) Morales (12-15) Pacquaio (15ish) Hatton (15) R Marquez (20 at 118) Margarito (15-20?) Cotto (10-20) Taylor? (huge) Pavlik? (huge) 10-15 has become the norm for top level fighters. The optimum to be both big at the weight and perform at your best is probably 10. The only fighter who doesn't weight drain is 1 Floyd Mayweather
And i applaud Floyd for being his natural self most of the time, He comes from a great boxing family and knows that carrying extra baggage can harm you at times.. When you mess around with weight .. up / down / up / down.. Its very un natural..............
