Why Are There No Good Heavyweight Inside Fighters Anymore?

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How come this is the case? :think

 

It's harder for men to fight inside the bigger they get and the smaller heavyweights of today are usually still fairly large men compared to yesterday, and who typically can't manage it all that well. Too much bulk, too much length. Not enough schooling. Disgraced as he is from his last outing, Tor Hamer is one of the better examples of a heavyweight inside fighter now. And he's one of the very few name heavyweights who fight inside. Hamer, Chisora, Mitchell...eh. It's not great. They're not bad as they're made out to be at all, in my opinion, but none of them have a specialness about them of any kind either. We need a special guy who fights inside to offset the abilities of these guys like Klitschko on the outside. Well, actually, Jennings seems to be oddly good inside, considering he's clearly a former taffy-puller. He might prove the best of the bunch for that. I like Jennings. He's excellently conditioned, seems to have an ability to learn and adapt, getting better as they've moved him along. And he's got balls too. Balls and abs together is always a plus. Meant non-sexually.

 

It is true enough.

The "fighters" as a type are dying out.

 

Well, a lot of the current top ten are physically tall men, and it simply doesn't behoove a tall man to fight on the inside for any considerable length of time. Go down to the shorties and it isn't so bad. Povetkin's a decent inside fighter, as is Chambers, though they go about their things in a very different way, Povetkin with combinations and Chambers with single counter shots. Chisora has alright infighting abilities, couple of the prospects too. You're right that there's nothing particularly special or refined there, but they're not totally clueless either.

 

I am hearing a lot of words like decent and alright here.

The bottom line is that there are no master fighters.

Perhaps this is because the trainers who spawned the previous batch are dying out.

Indeed if you has a young fighter of 5' 11'' with the talent of a young Mike Tyson, who would you hire to train him?

 

Look at the roster. There's nobody out there.
The champ is clueless on the inside, cant defend himself properly, fight on the backfoot or fight his way off the ropes. He cant even throw bodyshots , uppercuts or sidestep laterally.

Fury can fight and his is handy on the inside.
Chisora isn't bad and brought a good fight to Vitali on the inside , which is the reason Wlad ducked out against him.
When the unified champ wants no part of a guy like Chisora you know the division is in a shambles.

 

Most of the best boxers ( guys who can hit without risking being hit ) are large out-fighters who use their height, reach, jab, threat of power, and footwork to prevent inside fighting where the odds of engagement might be even. If by chance the smaller man gets inside, he can easily be clinched in most cases

The best inside fighters tend to be pressure fighters who aren't afraid of the incoming. Fighters can have a plan, but it often gets deterred once they are hit with power.

Povetkin can be a good in-fighter if he needs to be.

 

I already acknowledged that. But the type of environment that would allow a master infighter to emerge nowadays is no longer around. If you're a smaller fighter you're better off potshotting, or else be prepared to take a hailstorm of punches to get to your man. With the domination of the Klits, Wlad especially, infighting is simply not a very viable option. A fighter like Povetkin, who's probably the most well schooled infighter in the heavyweight division at the moment, has avoided Wlad like the plague. And for a very good reason. He knows he'd be completely shut down.

Maybe this'll change once the Klits retire, and big fighters go back to being run of the mill lumbering oafs, but at the moment a smaller fighter needs a rare combination of physical attributes to make infighting a useful skill to focus on, namely speed, power and toughness, as well as brute core strength to break out of clinches.

No doubt the types of trainers who specialised in these skills are no longer as common, but it's a cause and effect thing. If a skill is no longer as useful as it was, then it makes sense to concentrate on things that are.

Everything evolves, which doesn't mean that everything becomes better over time, but that it adapts to its environment. There are trainers today who are training their fighters to fight like the Klits, because they know that that's a proven formula for success. Thus far it hasn't resulted in anybody approaching that level, but give it a few years and who knows?

Your question works both ways. If a young Wlad-type fighter were to come along in Louis's era what trainers would be able to maximise the skills that would allow him to become more than just another Buddy Baer? Baer was an athletic big man who totally gave up his height to fight on the inside against smaller men. If he'd been taught to fight tall and maintain his distance he'd have been a much harder fighter to beat, I reckon.

 

Indeed, the retirement of John "The Quiet Man" Ruiz sure left the division in shambles.

 

Infighting is becoming a more viable option against the ageing Vitali, but against Wlad it's still a recipe for disaster. How are you effectively supposed to infight a giant man who clinches you every time you close distance and is never pulled up for it? Chambers is probably one of the most skilful infighters we have today, and he couldn't do a thing to Wlad despite having dismantled the giant Dimitrenko in his last fight using just those skills.

You need space to work, and modern referees don't allow you that. I wish they did, but it is what it is.

I don't deny that skills are being lost or not passed along, but it's simplistic to entirely blame that for the situation. Trainers are going to focus on things that improve their fighters' chances of success, and skills which don't pay off are gradually going to be phased out.

Things come and go. There's a much greater preponderance of large jabbing type heavies in the top twenty today than there were in Louis's day for instance.

True. Carnera was one of the few tall fighters who used his reach to his advantage. It was a shame he didn't have more to being with.

 

By the way, what's wrong with your quote function janitor? I always have to re-format your posts to stop them getting screwed up.

 

Exactly. They need to have a combination of speed, power and mental/physical toughness, like I said above. But how often does that combination come about? Tyson and Evander were the last to appear.

But it's not the only viable option. Chris Byrd made his career off outboxing substantially larger men with minimal fire power and an average chin. Chambers is capable of doing the same. They just can't do it against Wlad.

The smaller fighters who lasted the distance against Wlad stayed the hell away.

 

Well Tyson wasn't a good inside fighter, in fact he was very poor on the inside .