Catchweight Fights

[MANGLER]

Earlier thread today about banning super/junior divisions got me thinkin about catchweight fights. They're becoming a popular trend nowadays. Some people don't like em cuz they don't help produce any clarity regarding dominance in a weight class, therefore they don't do anything for a fighter's advancement toward the top of his division. At the same time, when fighters close in weight can't move all the way up or down to get certain opponents catchweights allow them to get some mutual middle ground that can treat fans to good fights they otherwise couldn't see. I don't got a problem with em since weight classes have limits. For example, since Taylor couldn't make middleweight no more Pavlik fought him at 166 which is above 160 but not above 168, which means it was a supermidleweight fight. It was a good one we woulda missed out on without the catchweight stipulation. Even though Taylor lost he fought well enough in that fight that he got a top 10 spot in the SMW rankings. Just wondering what everybody else thinks about the whole catchweight thing.

[luke_ski]

Catch weights aren't always beneficial to both fighters. Trinidad should not have been at 170 or anywhere near.

The era of set divisions is fading, the line is too blurry to see. Id two fighters are close to each other, they should fight and not worry about division rankings and alphabet soup BS.