Why have LHW's had bad luck trying to capture the HW crown

Yes, but heavyweight is unlimited, whereas welterweight is a fixed amount under heavy.

 

They'd have to be an absolute freak to do it now.

Actually has Michael Moorer been mentioned yet?

 

that is Precisely Right and that 'thinking' and mentality carried right into the 40s & 50s, i.e most fighters were a Something or Other cum the next Division UP - i,e MW cum L-HW, or LW cum WW... but STATUE Wise, as you perfectly described HW was too much Disparity for MOST of the Medium sized men.

that is exactly how it was, as you have laid out here.

Today it is the Complete Opposite, with Big Men trying to fit into Medium size weights, because they've got months to do so, it's just wrong and an insult to the Sport really.

well spoken.

 

One hundred percent correct. Today it is Big men trying to fit into medium sized weights.

humans still come in three sizes plus the giants.

 

Floyd Patterson defeated Archie Moore on Nov 30 1956, by KO 5, to win Rocky Marciano's vacant title.

 

Thirteen pounds lighter , heavies maybe 40 lbs plus heavier that's a big ask.

 

and it's not just the weight, all too often it is Overall Size & Stature... HEIGHT, Reach and weight disparities...

Damn Near Everytime the BIG Boy will win it!

this is Why we NEED a S-HW Division. 6'4" plus and Over 230 or 40lbs.

 

There a far bigger gap in weight between light heavy and heavy and heavyweights can be as heavy as they want, look how huge Fury is compared to the current light heavies, he`d destroy them.

 

Yes it was vacant, but Floyd still did win the HW title against the LHW champ. Both guys could have made 175 too.

 

This was mooted after the Carnera v Schaaf fight but fizzled out . Baer 6 ft 2in 210lbs proved it wasn't necessary.Wilder with nothing other than a right hand ko'd plenty of bigger men. 220lbs is enough, if you are good enough imo

 

Have they though? Historically that doesn’t seem to be the case. A list of lighter men who moved up to win the hw crown or piece of it
Braddock
Charles
Walcott
Patterson
Spinks
RJJ
Byrd
Holyfield
We could get into Sullivan and Burns and Fitz but I’m not 100 percent of their weights.

 

I think what made it difficult historically was humans are small medium and large.

weight category’s just made three or four types of medium. They can put weight on but chris Byrd Is still just a medium sized man.

Micky Walker was still just a medium sized man.

In recent years Giants have been able to function as athletes.

so we now have four groups of men in boxing.

 

The simple answer is poor luck. For a fighter to achieve such a fight, there has to be a few factors working in his favour. They either need a poor champion, an old one, or a somehow compromised one; they also need to be dead set in their prime to have any real chance; have s style which relies on skill rather than a physically overwhelming arsenal and they need to have had the opportunities to actually get title shots at both weights.

It's very rare that a 'poor' champion is around long enough to start taking on challenges from the weight below, so that immediately makes it difficult to cherry pick a win against a flaky Leon Spinks type; not to mention for the majority of LHWs existence before Spinks, there was only one heavyweight title. Jones would've had far more trouble if he had to face a lineal champ for his belt, rather than a titleholder like Ruiz. Old/injured champions make up every single instance of LHWs winning the title - bar Jones - as Louis, Holmes and Dempsey were all well past their sell by date (although I'd argue still plenty good enough to be classed as great wins, especially I'd they were still top two/three in the world) and Holyfield had heart problems. Even Patterson's win over Moore, was against an old man. The key thing about these wins, is that they didn't try to overpower their opponents. They flummoxed them with boxing. Somebody like Foster, and to a lesser extent Moore, didn't. They still tried to dominate physically, and they couldn't do it against the beast's of the heavyweight division like Marciano, Frazier and Patterson. Even in the pre-cruiserweight days, the size advantage heavyweight had over a light-heavyweight was far bigger than a similar example at a lower weight.

You also have to think, of all the light heavyweight champions before Spinks, how many tried to win the heavyweight title? Loughran, Moore, Foster, Lewis, Carpentier, Adamek, Root? Who else? Not many off the top of my head.

A lot of the time, fighters picked which one they wanted to go after. Did they go after the heavyweight crown full time, or did they maintain their light-heavyweight title. Somebody like Johnson, chose the latter, while somebody like Loughran, chose the former.

It was tremendously unlucky for Gene he never won the LHW title; likewise for Charles. Spinks' achievement is very impressive, but there needs to be context behind it. There were LHWs before him who won the heavyweight title.

 

That's quite a small list if we compare to to say, lightweights who had success at welterweight.

 

Lightweights and welterweights are historically the same species.

All these weight classes are subspecies within the same three basic groups.

the jump from medium sized man to large sized man is usually too great unless the light heavyweight is a 190 pounder who can cheat the scales.