The talking point that will dominate the build-up to this Saturday’s meeting between former undisputed 140-and-147-pound champion Terence Crawford and reigning super-middleweight kingpin Canelo Alvarez is, of course, the issue of weight.
While Alvarez began his career at welterweight and camped out in the junior middleweight division between 2010 and 2016 before bouncing up to middleweight and super-middleweight, with an occasional flirtation with the light-heavyweights, Crawford was a titlist at lightweight before dominating both the junior welterweight and welterweight divisions. He has turned out just once at 154 pounds, and is now making the two-division leap to challenge Canelo at 168.
Crawford backers argue that the Nebraskan’s skills and Canelo’s apparent late-stage decline will combine to outweigh the Mexican’s seeming advantages in weight and power. Conversely, Canelo supporters counter that Bud’s fans are underestimating Alvarez’s talent and that the American’s relative struggles during his one outing at 154 pounds suggest he will labor at the higher weight.
Historical precedent doesn't offer much guidance, as there are relatively few examples of fighters jumping up two or more weight divisions directly into a championship fight. When, for example, lightweight champs Roberto Duran and Shane Mosley upended welterweight kings Ray Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya respectively, they had several outings at the higher weight first.
Such examples that do exist are mostly more recent affairs, simply because there are more weight divisions now than before. When middleweight Ray Robinson took on light-heavyweight Joey Maxim, he only moved up one weight class at the time, but it was the functional equivalent of jumping two divisions today. But whereas today, it is inconceivable that someone could move directly from middleweight to a heavyweight title fight, when the likes of Bob Fitzsimmons and Sam Langford were fighting, the two divisions were right next to each other, light-heavyweight not being added until 1909. Nonetheless, both men are included for comparison’s sake.
It may not provide any insight into Crawford’s chances on Saturday, but here is a chronological list of some of history’s more notable weight-jumpers and how they fared.
Bob Fitzsimmons: Trailblazing success
“Ruby Rob” won the middleweight championship in January 1891 by knocking down “Nonpareil” Jack Dempsey at least 13 times and knocking him out in the 13th round. He made his final defense in September 1894 and then elected to fight as a heavyweight. In February 1896 he fought Peter Maher for what was billed as the heavyweight championship of the world, which he won, but did not gain universal recognition as champ until knocking out James J. Corbett the following year.
Fitzsimmons doesn't exactly fit into the criteria established above: he had a couple of quick fights at heavyweight before facing off against Maher. And while middleweight to heavyweight is an immense leap now, at the time the latter was anything above the middleweight limit. Fitzsimmons weighed in at 155 ½ pounds for his final middleweight title defense and just 10 pounds more for his contest with Maher. Still, he deserves recognition as an early exponent of jumping up in weight.
Sam Langford: Mixed results
Similar caveats apply with Langford as with Fitzsimmons, in that heavyweight and middleweight were just one division apart. Record-keeping wasn't what it is, either; it's unclear exactly how many bouts Langford had, nor is his weight clearly established for all the fights that are recorded. But we do know that Langford fought from lightweight to heavyweight.
In 1903, Langford outpointed the great lightweight world champion Joe Gans in a non-title bout; the following year, he drew with welterweight champion Barbados Joe Walcott in a fight most observers felt he clearly won; and in April 1906 he lost a decision to Jack Johnson, then the colored heavyweight champion - a title Langford would claim multiple times.
Langford's own weight didn't always vary a great deal - he weighed 140 against Gans, 142 versus Walcott, and just 156 against Johnson, but whereas Gans tipped the scales at 135, Johnson outweighed him by 29 pounds.
Henry Armstrong: Unprecedented and unmatched success
After winning the featherweight world title in October 1937, Armstrong fought mostly at lightweight before jumping up to welterweight to take Barney Ross’ crown before immediately moving back to lightweight and outpointing champion Lou Ambers to win his third world title at three weights in less than a year and become the only person ever to hold titles in three weight classes at once. He actually weighed in lighter for the welterweight fight with Ross than for his lightweight win over Ambers. (133 ½ vs 134.)
Billy Conn: Valiant losing effort
Conn, a Hall-of-Fame light-heavyweight, was not the only smaller man to challenge heavyweight champion Joe Louis - John Henry Lewis and Tommy Farr had preceded him - but he came the closest to adding the heavyweight crown. After outboxing the champ for the majority of 12 completed rounds, Conn became overly emboldened, sought to stand and trade, and was knocked out in the 13th.
Ray Robinson: Success and sunstroke
The great Sugar Ray boasted a record of 121-1-2 when the defending welterweight champion dominated arch-rival Jake La Motta, the only man to have beaten him at that point, to become the middleweight champion in 1951. He had, however, fought a few times at middleweight and what we today call junior middleweight before doing so.
It was a different story the following year when, just two months after defending the middleweight crown against Rocky Graziano, he jumped up to light-heavyweight to face Joey Maxim. Robinson weighed just 157 ½ pounds, while champion Maxim weighed in at 173; even so, the Sugar Man had the best of the bout until the extreme heat sapped the energy from both him and referee Ruby Goldstein. Goldstein was replaced in the 10th round and Robinson stayed on his stool after the 13th.
Michael Spinks: Historic success
No light-heavyweight champion had ever successfully made the leap from light-heavyweight to heavyweight champion until Spinks. On June 6, 1985, Spinks defended his light-heavyweight championship against Jim McDonald; three and a half months later, he scored a unanimous decision win over Larry Holmes to become heavyweight champ.
Chris Eubank Sr: So close
On April 19, 1998, former middleweight and super middleweight titlist Chris Eubank stepped into the ring against compatriot and WBO cruiserweight titlist Carl Thompson. Eubank’s only defeats as a professional had been to Steve Collins and, in his most recent outing, to the rapidly rising Joe Calzaghe. Thompson wasn't in their league, but he was a solid pro - and, importantly, a natural cruiserweight.
The 31-year-old Eubank was starting to feel the effects of 50 pro fights, many against some of the best in the world; but he was the one who scored the only knockdown of the fight, in the fourth round. It wouldn't be quite enough, however, as Thompson won a unanimous, but narrow, decision.
Roy Jones Jr: Success
By 2003, there were seemingly no worlds left for Jones to conquer. He had won his first title belt, at middleweight, 10 years earlier; became super-middleweight champion in 1994; and since November 1996 had reigned (with one brief DQ-induced blip) over the light heavyweights.
In May 2003, he officially weighed in at 193 lbs for his challenge of heavyweight titlist John Ruiz, who weighed 226 lbs. He dominated Ruiz, winning a comfortable unanimous decision, becoming the first light-heavyweight champion to win a heavyweight title since Spinks, and the first former middleweight to do so since Fitzsimmons.
Had Jones retired then and there, he might now be regarded as the greatest of all time.
Bernard Hopkins: Success, and yet another new chapter
It’s a promise lost to the mists of time, but Hopkins once insisted he would retire before he turned 41, by way of fulfilling a promise to his mother. But that would have meant retiring on the back of two controversial losses to Jermain Taylor that broke his streak of successful middleweight title defenses to a halt at 20.
So he proclaimed that he would have one more outing, two divisions to the north at light-heavyweight. On June 10, 2006, he comprehensively outpointed division champ Antonio Tarver to add a world title in a second division.
Spoiler alert: he did not retire after this fight.
Manny Pacquiao: Repeated Success
Pacquiao began his career down at junior flyweight and flyweight, but after failing to make weight for his WBC flyweight title defense against Medgoen Singsurat and, drained, being knocked out in three, he jumped up to 122 pounds and won the WBC International belt in December 1999. In 2001, he upset super bantamweight champ Lehlo Ledwaba and a star was born.
In 2008, he made another jump in weight; having just moved up from 130 to 135 pounds to defeat David Diaz and win a belt at lightweight, he leaped to welterweight to face Oscar De La Hoya, who was coming down from junior middleweight. The weight loss destroyed De La Hoya, who entered the ring drained of energy and unable to withstand the Filipino’s buzzsaw assault.
Juan Manuel Marquez: Fell short before bouncing back
Three fights after falling short against arch-rival Pacquiao at 130 pounds in their second fight, and eight months after taking the WBO lightweight belt from Juan Diaz, Marquez stepped up to welterweight to take on Floyd Mayweather, who was making his ring return after an almost two-year absence.
The weight didn't suit him, however, and he looked flabby as Mayweather scored a comfortable unanimous decision win in September 2009. Marquez would later return to the weight and bring his rivalry with Pacquiao to an abrupt conclusion.
Adrien Broner: Success before the fall
Having struggled at times to make the lightweight limit, and after blowing past it when defending his lightweight belt against Vicente Escobedo, Broner presumably needed little encouragement to jump past 140 pounds all the way to welterweight, where Paulie Malignaggi was waiting with his WBA belt. In June 2013, he faced Malignaggi at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and just about escaped with the Magic Man’s title, scoring a split decision win.
Broner would stay at welterweight for his next outing, a mugging by Marcos Maidana that would precipitate Broner’s slow, and then rapid, decline.
Kell Brook: Too brave for his own good
When promoter Tom Loeffler struggled to find an opponent for middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, IBF welterweight title holder Kell Brook stepped up to the plate. For the first couple of rounds of his June 2016 challenge of the Kazakh wrecking ball, Brook had success, beating Golovkin to the punch and taking a lead on the scorecards. But then Golovkin found his groove, breaking Brook’s orbital bone and forcing a corner stoppage in round 5.
Amanda Serrano: Challengers at every weight
Few fighters in history have moved up and down in weight with such regularity and apparent ease as Puerto Rico’s Serrano. In January 2019, she won a vacant belt at 115 pounds, before beating Heather Hardy for a featherweight title two months later. In August 2021, she unified the featherweight belts against Yamileth Mercado and then, after a non-title bout against Miriam Gutierrez, challenged Katie Taylor for her undisputed lightweight championship at Madison Square Garden in April 2022. Despite rocking Taylor early, she fell short on the scorecards and dropped back down to featherweight before challenging Taylor again.
Mikey Garcia: A step too far
By March 2019 Garcia had won titles at featherweight, junior lightweight, and lightweight, rolling to a record of 39-0. That month, having most recently defended his lightweight belts against Robert Easter Jr., he challenged Errol Spence for his welterweight title. It proved a step too far, as Spence won every single round on all three scorecards.
Jermell Charlo: An uninspiring effort
For months in 2023, the talk was of Canelo Alvarez defending his super-middleweight crown against inactive middleweight titlist Jermall Charlo. But when Jermall felt unable to compete, twin brother and junior middleweight titlist Jermell stepped in instead. It was not a success: Alvarez won ten or eleven rounds on all three scorecards. Charlo hasn't been seen in the ring since. Crawford will be planning a far more impressive showing on Saturday.
