Throughout history. Maybe HWs are just too big and slow to effectively use slick southpaw tactics. Or maybe a stiff jab is even more important in the HW division. And a southpaw may struggle to get a rythmic and hard jab off vs a conventional fighter since the conventional can simply raise his left glove. The only southpaw HW champ happened to both be right handed and a former LHW
That's not true. The average top 500 CEO is 6'2+ but even if it was true HWs only started getting really large in the 80s but the southpaw drought in the HWs has been going on seemingly forever. I don't even like southpaws I'm just wondering
The problem back then is trainers didn't want their guys to spar with Southpaws. So if you wanted to work for sparring or paydays in big fights, natural lefties often had to switch to orthodox. These days they are pretty common at heavyweight. Since 1990, we've seen a few good southpaw heavies. Wlad beat a few of them.
Most heavies have big right hands which are kryptonite to lefties if thrown with good timing as a lead. This leads me to believe most trainers will either convert a southpaw or shoo them away from the sport if they cant cut to light heavy/cruiser.
That's a good question and something not discussed enough I suppose the prejudice towards lefties is a possibility also people do not naturally box as orthodox it is taught every natural righty trying to learn to box always seem to think southpaw was natural to them until trained to stand and fight orthodox.....I hit harder with my left hook than my straight right and standing lefty I hit harder with the straight left and hooked harder with right....I suppose it would depend on a fighters first trainer and if he even knows how to train a lefty or is he a righty only guy. I would think it is aheavyweight thing more than any weight class
They were converted to orthodox for most of the division's history. Some trainers would flip natural lefties under the pretense of saying orthodox was the superior stance, but that was really a copout. It was a vicious cycle due to economics: it was simply bad business being a good southpaw. The ones that eventually stayed southpaw and were any good were usually avoided due to lack of quality available sparring. And, it wasnt easy finding trainers to optimize the stance since most worked with orthodox fighters all the time. So, it actually had a negative impact on your quality of life, and that of your trainer, promoter, and manager, to stay lefty.
Before the 90's there were very few. Mildenberger and Dunn were the only world class ones I can think of. Also many of the old time trainers, if they got a kid who was a lefty, trained him to fight right handed, and also as it's been stated many fighters stayed away from southpaws. Gerry Cooney is actually left handed but always fought orthodox. He did have one of the best left hooks of all time and was actually very versatile with his left hand, mixing in jabs and uppercuts along with that great left hook. Just my 2 cents