As in, too big for one weight class, too small for the one they ended up fighting in. I think Jaime Garza is a good shout out. As a growing 18 and 19 year old he made bantam several times, but very quickly grew into a super banatamweight. After losing his 0 in a first round KO he would move up again to featherweight... where his nearly 40 straight KO's in a row at 118 and 122 dried up and his power no longer seemed to be a fight changing. Ruben Olivares had the same problem. He didn't grow out of bantam as quickly as someone like Garza but grew out of it all the same, straight to featherweight where his power was still potent but he started to be outgunned in physical size and strength. Some footage of a 38-0 Garza that I dug up. This content is protected
Even though they obviously weren't too big for an original division, Ricardo Lopez, Chang Jung Koo and Ivan Calderon are obvious candidates in that they didn't fit any of the original 8 weight divisions, but had substantial success in other weight divisions. Gilberto Roman and Jiro Wantanbe were presumably too big to comfortably make Fly and probably wouldn't have had the success at BW that they did at Super Fly. Wilfred Gomez has arguably the greatest record at any "inbetween" weight in history. Whilst he won a world title all the way up at SFW, he was never the force in any other divisions, that he had been at SBW. Could Pryor and Tsyzu have made LW? Because they surely wouldn't have been the force at WW, that they had been at LWW. Calzaghe won a title at LHW and would have made a fine LHW, imo, but he wouldn't have been as formidable as he was at SMW.
Butterbean: Hovered between heavyweight and overweight. Much harder to do with the modern junior divisions, but lots of guys probably had world championship potential during the Original Eight era but were too big for one class and not quite big enough to compete at the highest levels in the next one up. If there had been a super middleweight division in his day, Jake LaMotta may have ruled it for a long time.
sandy saddler was best at 130 imo, but that wasn't an important division in his day. same for mclarnin at 140. maybe he never actually fought at that weight but he was right between lw and ww. modern divisions - george groves might have had a better career if there was a 164 division.
and a good few hundred more, because when you think that most of their fights were made at a "Catchweight", it could be loosely concluded that they did sort of have the in between weights.
Not only would there have been fighters with world title potential in an inbetweener division, who didn't in any of the original 8, but some ATGs could have been even more formidable in one of the inbetweener divisons. Lloyd Marshall would have made an awesome SMW, when on it and not "doing a deal". Charley Burley would have been a formidable LMW in the 2nd half of his career, by the point he had probably outgrown WW, rather than competing at MW because he couldn't get fights at WW, as he did for much of his earlier career. Willie Pep looks small, even for a FW, to me. Can you imagine how awesome a peak Pep would have been at SBW had he been capable of making it? Perhaps most unbeatable of all, given he beat ATG BWs and a contender at FW, is Jimmy Wilde at Minimumweight, a limit he was almost always under.
Chavez Jr. It seemed like a miracle that he was getting to 160, but he turned out to be mediocre at 168 and higher. Zab Judah never seemed like a true modern 147. Canelo during the “Canelo weight” era between 154 and 160. Okolie
Anthony Yarde in recent times feels like this, too big for 175 and dies during the weight cut, too small for 200
The craziest thing about the term catchweight is that it originally meant ‘you come in at whatever weight you want, and I’ll come in at whatever weight I want, and if that means we’re technically in different divisions, who gives a damn? Let’s fight!’ Now it means ‘let’s negotiate an arbitrary number that we both agree to come in at, which ideally weakens the naturally bigger guy but makes the smaller guy come up from his normal weight class.’ Basically the meaning has reversed 180 degrees from its intent.
Leon Spinks. Small for a heavyweight, but going down to cruiserweight took too much out of him. Maybe day before weigh in could have saved him. That and staying away from nose candy.
190lbs was a great weight, perfect for the 175lbers to engage with a nice place for small heavyweights to cut there teeth and develop there skills against potentially naturally smaller opponents. Pretty much what Evander did… now 200lbs is just the 210-220 weight class lol.
Paulie Ayala, ring magazine champ at 122, moved up to the big boys at featherweight and lost both times to Erik Morales and mab Marco Antonio Barrera, they easily sent him back down. Those 2 were fw kings , you can't mess with the big boys!