Who beat bigger opponents - Gene Tunney or Jim Jeffries ?

Jeffries, I would say. Tunney fought most of his career as a lightheavy. How many opponents were over 190. Dempsey, Risko, Spalla, Heeney and possibly Renault. At 203 Heeney might be about 3 lbs heavier than anyone Jeffries defeated, but Jeff beat Ruhlin, Jackson, Goddard, Corbett, and Everett, all in the 190 to 200 lb class, with Ruhlin at 200 being the heaviest. Jack Johnson, at 208, was the biggest man either fought. Other than Fitz and Choynski, most of Jeff's opponents were over 180.

 

Why is everyone so caught up on size? In the era's these guys fought, they didn't care about size as much. That's because being too big could be a detriment. Often, the lighter boxer had more speed, had better stamina, could throw more consistently and would beat the bigger fighters. Smaller fighters had enough power to take out the bigger ones.

Most of these so called champs today would get KO'd if they had to go 20 rounds, had to take a punch from a 5-ounce glove, couldn't wear body protectors up to their bellys, had to actually fight out of clinches and protect themselves on breaks instead of referees interfering all the time, and had to fight more because the referee or judge would not give them a round if they didn't fight.

 

Good points, but not 'everyone' is caught up on size.

I think it most interesting that size becomes far more important in fantasy matchups, in which it is often the decisive factor in giving a modern fighter the edge over an old-timer, than it ever is in "within history" actual matchups, where the biggest men have failed with rather monotonous regularity.

 

From the mid to late 60's, when men grew bigger, sub 200 pounders have lost to their bigger counterparts with rather monotonous regularity.

 

So lets say starting with Sonny Liston to today, what is the ideal size for a heavyweight?

 

It depends on their style.

If you gave me a blank sheet of paper to design a boxer, a swarmer and a boxer puncher I would come up with verry different body types.

 

I agree with janitor. There is no "ideal" size, but each design has a boxing style that works best for them. However, there are always fighters that go against the grain, yet still are very effective. Dempsey at 6'1", especially considering 6'2" was considered a giant in his time, appears to be too tall for a swarming style, but he did it and was very effective with it.

 

The shorter, sub 210 pounds, boxer types without a lot of power are pretty much out of the game today.

 

Except when they don't. If Chris Byrd begins his career at 169 in 1993 and ends it in 2008 at 174, how is he a 215 lber? The supplements make it a different issue. Certainly Spinks, Toney, Jones, and Byrd, all of whom fought at lightheavy when well into their 20's, did very well against superheavyweights and Spinks, Jones, and Byrd were champions.

By the way, why move up? Jones is probably going to make more fighting Calzaghe than he could fighting Klitschko. Except for Tyson, and perhaps Holyfield, the big box office draws in the post-Ali era have been smaller men, Leonard, Hagler, Hearns, Duran, De La Hoya, Jones, Calzaghe, etc.

 

How much of that is because they can make easy money in lower weight classes?

If you had a situation where Joe Calzaghe or Antonio Tarver couldnt make big money in the lower weight clases then we could see some interesting results.

 

Why says Byrd could've taken those big shots at 175 or 190? I won't take the recent fight as a barometer obviously, but i think bulking up helps a great deal in not being thrown around the ring and taking punches.

Toney's record against ranked heavyweights is 1-1-1-1, nothing to write home about. Spinks beat an old Holmes, should've lost the rematch when Larry was better trained, then got annihilated in 90 second by Tyson. A great accomplishement considering he came from 175, but again, not exactly consistent succes against the bigger guys. Jones just had one fight and everyone picked him to get KO'd by Lewis.

That's because no one is going to pay to witness an execution. In general, certainly the paydays at heavyweight are a lot more than at LHW or CW.

Are you sure about that? I believe Tyson-Lewis was the biggest money maker and Tyson-Holyfield for that.

And yeah, of course the smaller weightclasses would take it on depth.

It's matching up money makers from 10 weight classes vs 1 weight class! Hardly a fair comparison, but if you look at the individual fights, on average heavyweights make a lot more.

 

I don't think the difference in averages is significant at all ,what might need to be remembered is Jeffries was up to 30lbs heavier than Tunney so he had a definite advantage over the sub 200 pounders,whereas Tunney never scaled over 192 and that only once in his last fight.