The Heavyweight boundaries?

[Crease]

I need help on a query, any and every assitance would be much appreciated...

If (by some miraculous intervention) clones Rocky Marciano of Jack Dempsey came about today, would they be competing in the Heavyweight Division?


Here are there respective frames::::

Jack Dempsey
6'1 - 13 stone 8 pounds.

Rocky Marciano
5'11 - 13 stone 6 pounds.


Now compare this to today's champions...

Chris Byrd
6'0 - 15 stone 5 pounds.

Lamon Brewster
6'1 - 16 stone.

Hasim Rahman
6'2 - 16 stone 5 pounds.


I'm wondering, in the 21st century, would these past legends be Light Heavyweights, Cruiserweights, or Supper Middleweights???

[Ezzard]

So much depends upon how you approach the question. there are a number of factors involved. Some of them are:

1) There are far more food supplements and muscle building drugs around today. Fighters seem more obsessed with power than endurance, with many looking to fight for a lot less of each round. In 12 round fights these guys wouldn't need to be as lean as they were for the faster paced 15 rounders they fought in. Dempsey and Rocky could take advantage of the same "benefits" as today's fighters.

2) People are generally bigger today than they were 50 or 100 years ago. If Dempsey's 6-1, 13 stone 8 represented the average 100 years ago (not saying it does I'm just making the figures up to illustrate the point) then if he were around today shouldn't we think of him as an average sized heavy (i.e. 6-3, 220 pounds). Rocky was small for his day so he'd still be smaller than average. I favour this kind of comparison becasue I'm not really interested in who had the best diet or who lived in a healthier period of history.

[dempseyfire]

It all comes down to conditioning. Rahman is no bigger then Sonny Liston but at 235 compared to 212 is a muscle bound slow robotic mess.

Dempsey was a bigger man then Byrd and Toney. He trained to go at a hard pace for 15 rounds, and did. Show me Kirk Johnson, K brothers, Rahman, Tua, McCline, Ruiz etc. going a hard pace for 6 rounds withot getting badly fatigued.

The fighters for the most part are not 'bigger' . . .they are heavier. Over 50 years the human population does not get noticeably bigger at all. If that were the case you'd think men were averaging 4 ft of height in the middle ages . . .

[evndrbsn]

It all comes down to conditioning. Rahman is no bigger then Sonny Liston but at 235 compared to 212 is a muscle bound slow robotic mess.

Dempsey was a bigger man then Byrd and Toney. He trained to go at a hard pace for 15 rounds, and did. Show me Kirk Johnson, K brothers, Rahman, Tua, McCline, Ruiz etc. going a hard pace for 6 rounds withot getting badly fatigued.

The fighters for the most part are not 'bigger' . . .they are heavier. Over 50 years the human population does not get noticeably bigger at all. If that were the case you'd think men were averaging 4 ft of height in the middle ages . . .

Tua was a bad example. Fat Tua, yes, but not prime Tua. Prime Tua was in the 220s and was a bad ass who could sustain a furious pace.

[dempseyfire]

A fighter is a heavyweight based on his skill. Sure, Mike Tyson was just under 200 pounds by his mid teens, but with his height, he might have been able to dehydrate down to the light heavyweight division. A number of light heavyweights walk around at over 200 pounds. I'm not saying he'd be terribly effective at light heavyweight, but even if Tyson could make 175, he was simply too good for the division. The best fighters find a way to fight at heavyweight, unless they're way down at lightweight or something.

There is no way Tyson could have made light HW. Slimmed down and with great conditioning he was a 214 lb Heavyweight. Look at his bone structure. He would have been famished at 175. Size doesn't equate to height. Tarver is 6'2 but in terms of bone mass is a much smaller man then Tyson.

[pound per pound]

It all comes down to conditioning. Rahman is no bigger then Sonny Liston but at 235 compared to 212 is a muscle bound slow robotic mess.

Dempsey was a bigger man then Byrd and Toney. He trained to go at a hard pace for 15 rounds, and did. Show me Kirk Johnson, K brothers, Rahman, Tua, McCline, Ruiz etc. going a hard pace for 6 rounds withot getting badly fatigued.

The fighters for the most part are not 'bigger' . . .they are heavier. Over 50 years the human population does not get noticeably bigger at all. If that were the case you'd think men were averaging 4 ft of height in the middle ages . . .

Bad example. Rahman is a big man. He looks like a football player and can carry 250 pounds on his frame without looking fat. Rahman's ideal weight is 225-230, which is a full 15 pounds heavier than Liston's ideal weight.

The average man has increased in height and weight. Over the years players have gotten bigger in just about every sport.

[dempseyfire]

It all comes down to conditioning. Rahman is no bigger then Sonny Liston but at 235 compared to 212 is a muscle bound slow robotic mess.

Dempsey was a bigger man then Byrd and Toney. He trained to go at a hard pace for 15 rounds, and did. Show me Kirk Johnson, K brothers, Rahman, Tua, McCline, Ruiz etc. going a hard pace for 6 rounds withot getting badly fatigued.

The fighters for the most part are not 'bigger' . . .they are heavier. Over 50 years the human population does not get noticeably bigger at all. If that were the case you'd think men were averaging 4 ft of height in the middle ages . . .

Bad example. Rahman is a big man. He looks like a football player and can carry 250 pounds on his frame without looking fat. Rahman's ideal weight is 225-230, which is a full 15 pounds heavier than Liston's ideal weight.

The average man has increased in height and weight. Over the years players have gotten bigger in just about every sport.

Show me a fight in which Rahman doesn't look badly fatigued by the 5th round . . .you won't find one b/c it doesn't exist. Rahman is dreadfully slow and looks like he's fighting in a jar of molasses in the late rounds. He's muscled up at 235 but not in FIGHTING condition. Liston could've grabbed some weights and been a beefy muscled 230 as well but he was in proper condition and at 212 could go a fast paced 12 rounds, as seen vs Eddie Machen, who would've tired Hasim out by the 4th and knocked him out soon thereafter.

Average man has not increased in overall size in 50 years. What you have is sports like basketball and football, which were fringe sports in the 1950s, becoming popular and getting more and more guys coming into the sport, and you'll see a natural upsruge in size when you have more people to pick from. Also, basketball players in the 1960s and 70s didn't do any off-season training like guys do today, ditto with football. Back in the 1960s, pro football was a part-time job for the wide majority of players.

[dempseyfire]

NCAA football was not a "fringe" sport in the 1950s. Pro football was just coming into its own, but football has been very popular in America for over 100 years.

I was referring to professional football, which didn't really become a major american sport until the late 1960s . . .

[Jaclem]

..i don't remember how to convert stones to pounds...but i do remember when i first heard how much a stone weighed it made me understand why that kidney stone i passed hurt so much.