Size In Boxing II: Don't Judge All By Weight Class

This is a cardinal sin that even professional boxing journalists commit; they commonly use the current weight class in which a fighter competes to judge size advantages and disadvantages in a fight between a fighter in a higher weight class and a fighter moving up in weight. This is only a valid criteria if the fighter moving up in weight is naturally a member of a lower weight class and the fighter he faces is naturally a member of the higher weight class.

Let me give one immediate example from history: Emile Griffith was a natural junior middleweight by today's standards. He was a very big man at welterweight and his combination of size and strength made him a dangerous puncher even though he lacked the proverbial 'KO punch.' He had a forty percent KO percentage as a welterweight and, had he not killed Benny Paret in their rubber match, that number very well might have been higher. He almost certainly would have scored more knockouts if he had not developed a habit of fighting like a pressure fighter until he had a guy helpless, and then backing off and fighting like a defensive boxer. When he moved up to middleweight, he was a small middleweight and his punching power clearly suffered. His former biggest weapon, his size and strength, were no longer as dominant as they had been against smaller men. He evolved into more and more of a technical boxer and fought less and less like a pressure fighter, by necessity. Hypothetically speaking, he may have been a dominant fighter in today's junior middleweight division. He wouldn't be continually facing bigger man, as he did as a middleweight. He wouldn't be sweating to make weight at the expense of power and stamina as he did as a welterweight. Had there been a 153 lb weight class from 1962-1966, who knows? Emile Griffith might even have been a KO artist.

A perfect example in the form of a fight is De La Hoya-Mayweather. Before the fight, experts talked about De La Hoya being the bigger man. He may have been, but not by as much as the experts claimed. De La Hoya and Mayweather both started their careers at 130 lbs. De La Hoya is likely a natural welterweight, while it's harder to call Mayweather. He is either a natural 140 pounder, or a natural lightweight. At 153 lbs, then, (despite De La Hoya having fought above 147 more frequently) they were both fighting above their natural fighting weight. If we say that De La Hoya is a natural welterweight and that Mayweather is a natural 140 pounder, then De La Hoya's size advantage is relatively small and no where near enough to overcome Mayweather's prime talents when De La Hoya's age is considered. The size advantage becomes bigger if Mayweather is a natural lightweight, but Mayweather is still a one of a kind talent. If we say both men are natural 130 pounders (the weight where they both started their careers and won their first titles) then there was no real 'size' difference at all except in the form of De La Hoya's height. Personally, I lean toward saying that De La Hoya is a natural welter, Mayweather a natural junior welter, and De La Hoya old and faded while Mayweather is a rare talent still in his prime. So De La Hoya's size advantage, such a repeated dogma by many professional boxing writers, was not significant (in the sense that until relatively recently natural 140 pounders all fought as welters anyway) and certainly not significant enough to outweigh, if you will pardon the pun, Mayweather's significant talents.

If any of this appears at odds with my previous writing, it's not. It's merely a repetition of the statement that it is a man's natural weight class that most affects size differences between himself and his opponent and not the weight at which they happen to be fighting. Experience in the weight class at which they are fighting can make a difference if both men are naturally smaller than the weight class in which they are fighting. It certainly made a clear (if small) difference in Mayweather-Hatton, a fight between two natural 140 pounders. Hatton's greater preparation in moving up certainly prevented him from looking as terrible as he did against Luis Collazo. However, I think it's important to remember that the nature of Mayweather's talents and style makes him less reliant on his size in a fight, while Hatton's style is based on power and strength and can only suffer above his best weight.

Size in boxing is objective, not relative. A body is naturally meant to be one size and regardless of the weight lost or packed on, a body will always be fundamentally the same size. A bigger man moving up a division because he can no longer make weight may very well be the bigger man than a smaller man who moved up in weight a few years before. If he is, then he has the size advantage regardless of being the one moving up today.

Sometimes, common sense really is sensible and not at all common.