Your Top-5 On This Subject...

[Goodnight, Irene]

...Most stacked divisions, in terms of all-time talents? Which weightclass has the toughest top-10 of all-time to compile.

I won't put them in order right off the bat, but I think I would say Lightweight, Welterweight, Middleweight, Featherweight & Light-Heavyweight are the deepest, IMO.

[Grimm]

I would most definitely put welterweight first. The rest can fall wherever

[Ambling Alp]

5 way tie between heavyweight, light heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight, and lightweight. Featherweight, bantamweight, and flyweight would be next.

[BoxBuzz]

There is information available that makes the case that the male human pound for pound is at it's greatest potential in terms of power, strength, speed, dexterity at the welterweight level. I think there is a large amount of anecdotal info that would support that idea. Especially in the world of boxing.

[Goodnight, Irene]

Lightweight, I submit, is the most stacked division bar fukking none.

[Goodnight, Irene]

5 way tie between heavyweight, light heavyweight, middleweight, welterweight, and lightweight. Featherweight, bantamweight, and flyweight would be next.

Youd seriously call Heavy on par with Light, Welter & Middle, Alp? & youd rank Feather below Heavy!?

[Ambling Alp]

Yes. Right now, of course not. However, in the history of the sport, all of the major weight classes have had periods where there was a lot good fighters and periods when they didn't.

In the lower weights there simply aren't that many fighters in a given weight class. A featherweight for example, can't weigh more than 126 pounds. If he weighs less than 118 he is going to be a bantamweight. The talent pool is going to be small to begin with. Since 1976 the featherweight division has only been for fighters above 122 and not above 126.

Make a list of your all-time top lightweights. If you are going to count every fighter who had one fight at lightweight in his career, sure it looks pretty deep. Fighters have always rountinely fought in 2,3, 4 or more weight classes.

However, if you only count fighters who fought a significant amount of their careers at lightweight, the list dwindles quite a bit. It's like that for all of the lower weight classes.

The All-Time #10 heavyweight is comparable to the #10 lightweight to light heavyweight. So is the #20, # 30 etc.

[SaadOffTheDeck]

I think Middleweight & Lightweight are the most difficult to rank. There are 4 or 5 guys that are acceptable answers for the GOAT. Light Heavyweight would be a close third followed by Welter & Feather.

Heavyweight is a very distant 5th in this one. Not even in the same ball park.

Edit: Light Heavy is in the top tier too. The top four there could all be in an all-time great Top 10. I'd have to use a pad and paper for a definitive answer.

[Ambling Alp]

There is something that I have always found interesting on this forum: The vast majority of topics are about heavyweights. I (and others) occasionally try to start one that has nothing to do with heavyweights and there is seldom much interest at all. There seldom is even 10 comments.

When someone starts a thread about almost any heavyweight there is heated discusssion for several days.
Jerry Quarry gets more attention than Joe Gans, Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Lou Ambers and Ike Williams combined.

However, when someone does a pound for pound list or something like that, all of sudden people dismiss out of hand the notion that on balance the heavyweights are as good.

[crusader]

There is something that I have always found interesting on this forum: The vast majority of topics are about heavyweights. I (and others) occasionally try to start one that has nothing to do with heavyweights and there is seldom much interest at all. There seldom is even 10 comments.

When someone starts a thread about almost any heavyweight there is heated discusssion for several days.
Jerry Quarry gets more attention than Joe Gans, Benny Leonard, Barney Ross, Lou Ambers and Ike Williams combined.

However, when someone does a pound for pound list or something like that, all of sudden people dismiss out of hand the notion that on balance the heavyweights are as good.

The quality of a division's top fighters is not necessarily correlated with the amount of discourse that is generated relative to that division. In other words, more talent doesn't equate to more attention, and vice-versa.

For example, everywhere on earth Mike Tyson is talked about far more than Harry Greb or SRR, but that doesn’t mean he was a better fighter than they were, and the contemporary HW scene is terrible, but it still attracts significantly more attention than many other divisions that are of a higher standard overall.

[Ambling Alp]

I pretty much agree with that.
It is just interesting that so many people just want to talk about almost exclusively about heavyweights and yet so many people dismiss them out of hand as comparable in the context of the history of the sport. Obviously some of the same p[eople talk about heavyweights almsot all of the time and still have this opinion.

[King Carlos]

Lightweight
Welterweight
Middleweight
Featherweight
Lt. Heavyweight
Bantamweight
Flyweight
Heavyweight

[elmersalsa]

...Most stacked divisions, in terms of all-time talents? Which weightclass has the toughest top-10 of all-time to compile.

I won't put them in order right off the bat, but I think I would say Lightweight, Welterweight, Middleweight, Featherweight & Light-Heavyweight are the deepest, IMO.

I got to say bantamweight, featherweight and light-heavyweight.

[King Carlos]

Lightweight, Welterweight, and Middleweight are the only reasonable top 3. After that it gets very tricky, but I'd agree with one of the above posters that Featherweight and Lt. Heavy would come next, in either order. Heavyweight is last.