BoxRec

Can you knowledgeable posters let me know of bouts that had very large weight differences or natural size differences. So bouts like Jones-Ruiz, Haye-Valuev, or Kovalev-Canelo (as a hypothetical to illustrate what I mean).

Johnson-Ketchel had a chunky difference, although Haye-Valuev was big.

A few notable ones off of the top of my head:

Bob Fitzsimmons-Ed Dunkhorst
Jack Dempsey-Jess Willard
Tommy Loughran-Primo Carnera

Jack Dempsey against Jess Willard, Joe Louis battling some whopping weight deficit vs Primo Carnera, Abe Simon and Buddy Baer.

Nikolai Valuev had several fights in which he outweighed his opponent by 100+ lbs.
Same would be the case with Butterbean, if you want to consider him a real boxer.
The wight differance in Oleg Maskaev vs. Corey Sanders was also huge, 74 lbs.

Underrated lt. heavy from San Diego, JACKIE COGGINS, never cared what the other fellow weighed.

On 12/ 9/41- He weighed 183 lbs. in stopping "Blimp" Williams who came in at 270 lbs. at Fresno.

1/21/44 - Coggins weighing 182 lbs. fought a draw with "Big Ben" Moroz, 290 lbs. at San Diego.

most of jimmy wildes fights were vs fighters who would be 7/8 weight classes above him today

Johnson v Langford, ~30lb difference like the Ketchel fight (although Langford would end up a heavyweight, albeit a tiny one).

Not much by comparison to some of the freak-show heavyweight fights, admittedly.

stevedoc wrote:most of jimmy wildes fights were vs fighters who would be 7/8 weight classes above him today

Name some.

King Carlos wrote:

stevedoc wrote:most of jimmy wildes fights were vs fighters who would be 7/8 weight classes above him today

Name some.

jimmy wilde vs tom thomas ..wilde 94 pounds thomas 112 pounds .....18 pounds differnce or 20% of his body weight .

wilde vs dyer wilde 94 pounds dyer 116 pounds

On August 27, 1994, 274 lb. Kevin Rosier knocked out 194 lb. Jim Ellis over two rounds in Harrisburg. I believe Ellis actually scored a knockdown in the first.

On April 20, 1994 Ahmed Abdin stopped Carl Chancellor in 5 rounds - despite giving away 211 lbs (229-440).

Good one! That has to be some kind of record.

Took me a while to remember his name, but Les McNabb, a 1940s Australian heavyweight, usually had a huge weight advantage over his opponents.
http://boxrec.com/list_bouts.php?human_ ... &cat=boxer

intelguy wrote:Can you knowledgeable posters let me know of bouts that had very large weight differences or natural size differences. So bouts like Jones-Ruiz, Haye-Valuev, or Kovalev-Canelo (as a hypothetical to illustrate what I mean).

Every era seems to have bouts with large size disparities. It was more common in earlier eras than in recent years (last 30), but back in the bare knuckle era it was a regular occurence to see Lightweights battle Heavyweights. Then of course back then there were but Lightweight, Welterweight, Middleweight and Heavyweight in those days.

As far as height goes, in BKB eras the tallest/biggest man that I know of was Charles Freeman who was claimed to be an American champion (though he never boxed a day in his life) and was billed as 'The American Giant'. His skeleton stands in the Royal College of Suregons in London next to famed 'Irish Giant' Charles Byrne. Freeman was said to be 7'2" in height but his skeleton shows a height of 6'11". In those times, grown men averaged out to being 5'8" in height, seeing men in the 6'3"-6'5" range was incredibly rare, let alone a man of Freeman's height or better. It's no wonder, then, that he survived and held the British champion to a draw in their first match and won the return bout.

In the MQ eras, the tallest boxers were Gogea Mitu of Romania whose BoxRec record is incomplete, as well as Jim Cully and John Rankin--- all of whom were 7'4" in height. During the Marciano era, there was an African boxer named Ewart Pontgofier (sorry for the misspelling) who was 7'2" and had a pretty remarkable record considering he was an obvious pituitary case living on borrowed time. Other unusually tall men were Jose Santa and Ray Impelltierre who were both 6'8" and 6'9" respectively, and they were in the Primo Carnera/Joe Louis/Max Schmeling/Max Baer era of boxing.

In recent years, three decades or so, there has been some anomalies such as Mike 'The Giant' White who was 6'10" and held a win over Buster Douglas before losing to Michael Moorer. There was also 6'11" Jan Nortje a former K-1 fighter who had a pretty remarkable win streak in boxing. And, as someone else mentioned earlier, Carl 'The Eclipse' Chancellor who was well over 7' and 440 pounds, who may very well of been the largest boxer to ever compete.

In the last ten years or so, though, we are reguarly seeing heavyweight averaging out to 6'7" in height. The majority of men in the passed year or so who have fought for the title would have made historical giants Buddy Baer and Primo Carnera look average size men in comparison, when we have 6'9" Tyson Fury, 6'8" Mariusz Wach, 6'8" Robert Helenius, etc.