Who were the best 270+ pound fighters of all time?

He reminds me a bit of Virchis.

I wonder how well he'll make the transition, though. I like his aggression, don't get me wrong, but it looks a bit asif he's spending energy asif it's a 3 round K1 fight. With his size, that's a concern. You can't tell much about his defence from this one, but like you say, he does have great ring presence. A bit comebacking Foreman-like if you will.

Of course, he knew his opponent wasn't all that, so maybe he went all-out for that reason. At any rate, i'm looking forward to see him progress and step up in class when he's ready.

 

Any mention of Buster Mathis or son yet?

 

True. I've actually followed boxing long enough to remember the days when Danny could move his feet faster than a tortoise. That was at about 250 lbs; if he'd been 220-230 lbs in his prime, he'd have been a definite top 5 heavyweight and maybe even a champion.

 

That being said, Williams could have had Ali's speed, Foreman's power and Tyson's ferocity and his demons would have still messed it up for him!

 

Interesting. Worth keeping an eye on, at least; a lot will depend on whether he has the Valuev-like dedication to keep his stamina at a functional level. It takes a lot of determination to have a good workrate at that kind of weight.

Absolutely. While I admire anyone able to throw that many punches at that weight, he is totally dependant on fighting poor quality opponents. Almost any pro-boxer can put up a good workrate in a 3 round fight with a glass-jawed fat opponent who did nothing.

 

He'd always been inconsistent, certainly. He's the classic example of a boxer who can be brilliant one fight and totally useless the next, like a lot of British boxers with natural talent who scored big upsets. Remember Kirkland Laing and Lloyd Honeyghan? They could fight like ATGs one fight and amateur teenagers the next.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7p8TNUmKSiM

 

I genuinely felt embarrassed watching that. How can grown up adults attend that, commentate on it and not walk out immediatly?

 

Good question. None of the participants are alive today, so perhaps they died of embarrassment after doing this.

 

I think Larry Holmes is probably around 270 pounds now. Maybe he can make a comeback fight and show us all how effective he can be at that weight.

 

Bill talks highly of one of Holme's relatives or some such who's 50 something pounds overweight but still casually deals with guys in sparring. :bbb

 

That would be Larry's "little" brother Mark.

 

I didn't know wrestling had turned into that abortion of a fake "sport" in 1977 already, though.

 

They threw fewer punches in that boxing match than in their regular "wrestling" matches.

The odd thing is, at a certain level, the late 1970s and early 1980s were the peak of "realism" in British wrestling. Yes, there was Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks doing overweight imitations of US wrestling, but there was also the like of Davey Boy Smith which practiced a style that was at least vaguely believable.

I have some relatives who were involved in the sport during the period and they say that, in many cases, at lot of the painful stuff (stomping on people's hands until they bled, for instance) was real. Then again, "juicing hardstyle" as they called deliberately bleeding, has been common in wrestling for some time.

Personally, I'm not half crazy enough to wrestle, even though I imagine if one had the pain tolerance of a mother of 15 and the neck of a crocodile it could be quite fun.