are short boxers wasting time with this sport? (long read)

[915angel]

tyson was a small heavyweight,,, ur sayin pacquiao is wastin his time (hes #2 p4p IMO) your sayin the new kids with decent talent are wastin their time like bradley,,, or gamboa,,, there alot of short great fighters!!


never underestimate a short guy

[NatashaNatasha]

It's a tough question regarding the heavyweights. Because you have to factor in weight+height when judging 'size'.

Example:
Ernie Terrell was 6'6.. Ike Ibeabuchi was 6'2. Ike would have man handled Terrell due to the fact Ike fights at 245 pounds of solid muscles, combined with his very good skill set. The reason Lewis and Wlad are so scary when it comes to size is because they are able to fight at an elite level being 6'5/6'6 AND weighting at 243+ Pounds..

It all depends though because if you are a 6'3+ heavyweight.. you can compete in any era as long as you got the skill set.

[B-Bomber]

It is a trend for HW, a trend I don't particularly like to be honest.

I don't know about the US, but in central Europe the Klitsckho trend is indeed out of hand. In most gyms they won't even consider to seriously train a relatively small guy to fight at HW.

It's somewhat a similar phenomena to the post Ali era, when everybody tried to fight like Ali. Nowadays most people think that the only way to be succesful at HW is fighting like Wladimir.

As for having a reach and height advantage, I don't think it's something new in the sport, maybe it's now more common to see very tall fighters in the hw division, but by far not new.

The Jess Willard and Primo Carnera's always existed. If something changed is referees' attitude towards clinching, inside fighting and fouls. I am also pretty sure that fans back in the day would have thrown all sorts of rotten vegetables into the ring if somebody used clinching as often as many 'outside fighters' do nowadays .