Why Haven't There Been Black South African HW's?

Yeah, Nigeria is definitely the country to look to if you want a big, strong African.

 

What about Ghana? They seem to have the best boxing infrastructure in that area, tho I can't remember much coming from there since Clottey... I guess Adama... and don't remember a real heavy from there.

 

a lot of the game is mental & attitude and just like WHITE Americans think they physically inferior to blacks the White South Africans felt they were superior to Blacks...the minority race (white) have dominated Africa at Heavyweight and the minority race Black in America dominated Heavyweight Boxing basically after INGO who was European and Coetzee (who was South African) ...until the opened the door's to the Eastern Europeans who have been dominant since, not to mention Lennox Lewis who was Jamaican-Canadian-British

 

Do you know what Sub-Saharan means? That's basically the origin of all black people.

South African blacks are maybe shorter, we've seen black world champions from SA just no HWs

 

Ghanians are typically shorter than Nigerians.

 

Pretty much. Poor nutrition which is still an issue to many black South Africans, means there are less people who even make it to 200lbs. Of course the racism of the past led to black boxers as a whole being at a disadvantage.

But there is a bit of hope. If you look at migrants from say India; the Hindu's in particular were very small, but the kids who have lived in a Developed World Country from birth are from my observations, generally, noticeably bigger than their parents, and that is just one generation down...

 

Incorrect... not even that close... Ghanian males are about 3" taller on average.

http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/height-chart.shtml

 

I actually didn't know that. Thanks for the correction.

They are definitely shorter and more slight of frame on the whole than their white counterparts. I'm not tall (5'9") and I generally am at least between one and three inches taller than most black guys here. Those that are taller than me are usually more slightly built though.

I concur with TBooze that malnutrition and poor living standards probably have contributed quite heavily to this difference. It will be interesting to see if this changes at all with the emergent (but still proportionately tiny) black middle class arising from the ashes of Apartheid.
Sadly, it's likely that those who develop into strong, strapping lads will take up Rugby rather than boxing, but we'll see.

 

Very interesting chart. So the Nigerians as a whole are shorter than their SA counterparts as well? Interesting that they can produce some outstanding strong black contenders yet SA can't.
Then again, they have about three times the population, so have a better chance of producing outsized athletic talent I guess.

 

Those stats aren't necessarily accurate and they're only averages. I'm talking on the basis of what I've seen with a decent amount of interaction with Nigerians/Ghanians. I've come across many very large framed tall Nigerians, with most the Ghanians being average or below average. It does depend on tribe and nutrition, the tribe is more about ethnicity than the country of origin.