Who's higher P4P: Ali or Duran?

You got a middleweight.

 

Factor in those poor guys south of the border -Mexicans and Puerto Ricans, et al. and you got smaller guys still. See?

 

I'll consider myself the referee here between both you guys.

"Ok no naughties with the heads, when I say break take a step back, when one of you gets knocked down go to the furthest neutral corner, and protect yourself at all times".

 

If you follow along with this line of reasoning, Sweet Pea, you'll see that I don't even need to "back up the statement" (that HWs have historically been the weakest division)... because you will.

 

You're not really suggesting that this means there were more of them?

 

Your statement backs up that the average man was generally suited better for the lower weights around 50-60 years ago. You could say that about football as well, that doesn't mean the best football players are average size.

Either way, I see where your argument lies, and it is a good point, I won't be foolish. My take is not that the Heavyweights were the most skilled(I pointed this out in my first response to you) but that historically, they are the greatest weight division in terms of how many great fighters they gave us, period.

Also, I'll offer a counter-argument to your point. While most people are in general suited to the lower weights(or at least were in that time period), that doesn't change the fact that my argument was this: There is no other SINGLE division with as many greats as the Heavyweights. I didn't say, the Heavyweights hold more greats than any other division combined. I say this because the Heavyweights are the only openweight division, whilst other weight classes usually have a range between 4 and 7 pounds difference. Therefore, there would be more greats in an openweight division than a division spanning 5 pounds.

Again, skill-wise, I agree that LW's are better, and some other classes, but aside from maybe the LW's, I don't think any other SINGLE division is as stacked as the Heavyweights, because of the points above.

 

You're both off your rockers.

If there's three men in a room, one 6'9", one 6'6", and one 6'3", the average is unquestionably at 6'6". Revelation; this does not mean there's three 6'6" men in the room. Do not be fooled! It is in fact, as was implied in Stonehands choice of words, their average height. This is how averages tend to work.

To use this as proof that boxers around that height were better by virtue of a bigger sample-pool is not even circumstantial, but non-sensical. I award you both no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

 

OK, a simple "wrong" woulda done just fine, but uh....

Anyways, exact averages also almost always end up being where the larger amount fall into. Such as, if the average of 500 people is 5'6, you will find more people that are 5'6 than any other height on most occasions, that is just fact. That is the way averages work.

Either way, I don't know why it applies to me, I simply acknowledged it, and continued with my point.

 

As it pertains to this discussion, I would actually argue the opposite -- that by virtue of heavyweight being an open weightclass it would benefit from a larger sample-pool than a specific weightclass, in this case lightweight, which is much narrower.

And forgive me for blowing up, but I encounter so many terrible arguments in the general forum (which I prefer since my interest lies in discussing current boxing) that I sometimes flee here, to classic, where people are generally more intelligent and less confrontational.

Didn't want my last haven to be sullied. >.>

Anyway, you were trying to reason with Stonehands, who'll soon retort ith three parts bluster, one part knowledge and some scattered factual data. Don't let me keep you!

 

What height are you Sweet Pea?. I'm 6' 0".


Hold on. If Duran stands at 5' 7" and Ali at 6' 3", then surely Ali must be a greater fighter and ranked higher P4P, nah? Bigger means better. Thats a general forum awnser.

 

Forget height. I'm talking about weight. If 1,000 men are boxers and of these 500 are MWs, 400 are LWs and 100 are HWs then it follows that you are going to have more good/talented MWs and less good/talented HWs.

The plain and simple fact is this: most men are not 6'4 and 235 pounds. The field is smaller. Where there are less soldiers, there are less great soldiers.

This is where Sweet Pea is wrong... his definition of "great" strikes me as tied into celebrity. The HWs were and will always be the glory division. Everyone wants to see big men go at it. "Where the HW division goes, there goes boxing" was an old adage. They get more press, but that doesn't mean that they are the best crop and I would argue that one of the reasons for that is that there are simply less HWs available to become great.

 

That was the original point I was making.

 

How provocative.

 

That's not true, for the reasons I mentioned, the Heavuweight division spans a lot further than any other single division, as the HW's weigh anything from 200 pounds on up. The Lightweights are a division that spans 5 pounds, therefore, despite the fact that people are(or were) generally smaller, the fact is that the HW division is simply much bigger in terms of the different sizes it is capable of holding, than any other division. A lot more variety, from a guy like Marciano to Valuev.

 

Most men don't specifially train down to the 130-135 pound range, either. That's a vry small net, and there are plenty of weightclasses in close proximity for the ones just an inch too big or small.

Also, the argument doesn't change when you make the subject weight instead of height. Same difference.

Lastly, it's a very questionable argument to begin with. The depth of a division comes by virtue of the fighters that populate it, not through pseudo-scientific ramblings that fail to prove or disprove anything at all.