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I personally think people made too much of the Chisora fight.
There's a difference between going up in weight by stopping boiling down and putting on extra weight beyond your usual fighting weight. In the former, your abilities are as good or better because you're not draining yourself as much to make the weight. In the latter, you are carrying around extra weight that you aren't used to training and fighting with, with the inevitable result that your movement will be slowed and your gas tank will be greatly reduced.
We saw this recently with Fury v Wilder 2/3. Both guys put on extra weight and gassed out badly pretty early on, especially in 3. Also with Canelo, although obviously there were other factors that have affected his gas tank.
It takes at least a year to settle into extra weight. That's one of the main reason that the fighters, even special ones, who have jumped around the weight classes, have ended up performing terribly sooner or later. Any of you who are fighters and put on pandemic weight may have noticed that your movement and gas tank have really suffered from it. If you just take the weight off again, that's not as bad, but if you want to be able to perform with extra weight, particularly extra muscle with its extra oxygen demand, it takes specific endurance training to cope with the new demands, and that's going to take a year or two.
So I expected Usyk to fight flatter and more conservatively, and have less explosiveness and gas out in his first fights at heavyweight. I think his team did as well, which is why they didn't jump straight into the mandatory position, as he was allowed to as undisputed champion. The AJ fights showed he was ready to fight as a heavyweight, and unless age is taking a toll, I expect him to fight that well or better moving forward. There's very particular training that one needs to do if they want to maintain or improve performance after putting on extra muscle mass. Many boxers don't do that, and most boxers moving up aren't putting on extra weight, they're just not boiling off quite as much temporary water weight as usual.
If weight cutting were abolished, you'd see a lot more of this sort of thing as fighters adjusted to having to fight closer to their walking weight.
There's a difference between going up in weight by stopping boiling down and putting on extra weight beyond your usual fighting weight. In the former, your abilities are as good or better because you're not draining yourself as much to make the weight. In the latter, you are carrying around extra weight that you aren't used to training and fighting with, with the inevitable result that your movement will be slowed and your gas tank will be greatly reduced.
We saw this recently with Fury v Wilder 2/3. Both guys put on extra weight and gassed out badly pretty early on, especially in 3. Also with Canelo, although obviously there were other factors that have affected his gas tank.
It takes at least a year to settle into extra weight. That's one of the main reason that the fighters, even special ones, who have jumped around the weight classes, have ended up performing terribly sooner or later. Any of you who are fighters and put on pandemic weight may have noticed that your movement and gas tank have really suffered from it. If you just take the weight off again, that's not as bad, but if you want to be able to perform with extra weight, particularly extra muscle with its extra oxygen demand, it takes specific endurance training to cope with the new demands, and that's going to take a year or two.
So I expected Usyk to fight flatter and more conservatively, and have less explosiveness and gas out in his first fights at heavyweight. I think his team did as well, which is why they didn't jump straight into the mandatory position, as he was allowed to as undisputed champion. The AJ fights showed he was ready to fight as a heavyweight, and unless age is taking a toll, I expect him to fight that well or better moving forward. There's very particular training that one needs to do if they want to maintain or improve performance after putting on extra muscle mass. Many boxers don't do that, and most boxers moving up aren't putting on extra weight, they're just not boiling off quite as much temporary water weight as usual.
If weight cutting were abolished, you'd see a lot more of this sort of thing as fighters adjusted to having to fight closer to their walking weight.
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