Is weight overrated?

[NYC8224]

All we hear is weight weight weight. This guy needs to hit this weight to fight him or this guy can't hit the weight so he can't fight this guy, blah blah blah, etc.

Is weight overrated? Does extra pounds or less pounds really mess with a fighters natural skill and cause them to win or lose? Is it really a deciding factor or is it a bull**** excuse not to fight somebody? Seems like everything these days is weight. Brook is moving up so he automatically loses to most people, makes no sense. Canelo fights at certain weights, etc. What do you think?

[NYC8224]

Try to keep this at top, would like to hear some opinions

[-MAKAVELLI-]

weight is overrated


Rigo vs Loma


make it happen

[Heavyhands420]

If weight mattered that much greats like harry greb, sam langford, would not have been able to do so well. They were outweighed by a good amount in their fights. I think greb fought heavyweights when he was only 165. Weight matters to a degree and modern boxers probably adjusted to 7 pound difference weight classes but i think khan canelo and ggg brook are pretty fair fights given their relative skillsets. I would take crawford over any 154 pounder anyday

[Scipio2009]

All we hear is weight weight weight. This guy needs to hit this weight to fight him or this guy can't hit the weight so he can't fight this guy, blah blah blah, etc.

Is weight overrated? Does extra pounds or less pounds really mess with a fighters natural skill and cause them to win or lose? Is it really a deciding factor or is it a bull**** excuse not to fight somebody? Seems like everything these days is weight. Brook is moving up so he automatically loses to most people, makes no sense. Canelo fights at certain weights, etc. What do you think?

Weight matters, but it also doesn't matter.

The issue comes down to what a fighter's fitness is at before they put their bodies through any kind of weight cut.

Canelo Alvarez, primed and fit to fight, has settled into being 165-170lbs for his fights; Kell Brook, primed at fit to fight, is generally 155-160lbs.

If Kell Brook and Canelo Alvarez were to fight, Brook would be the clearly smaller man, physically, but Alvarez (who can still make the weight) would be more physically compromised at 154lbs than what Brook would be at 154lbs, or at 150lbs or at 147lbs (where Alvarez would be walking dead into the ring. The fact that you rather easily have a 15lbs difference between a fit Alvarez and a fit Brook inherently impacts the match, regardless of what you think about skills.

The fact that Kell Brook is simply moving up the 13lbs isn't the end all of why folks feel how they feel, the rub is that he's moving up the 13lbs to fight a career middleweight who'd been fighting at said weight for the last 13 years, pro or amateur (and don't let the weight fool you; Golovkin basically trains year-round, keeping hos weight in check to not have to torture his body any further during the actual camps. If Golovkin were like most other fighters, taking off time between fights, he'd be coming down from the 180s to fight).

[Champ Wilder]

weight is overrated


Rigo vs Loma


make it happen

Loma would school Rigo worse than Fury did to Klitschko

[NYC8224]

Weight matters, but it also doesn't matter.

The issue comes down to what a fighter's fitness is at before they put their bodies through any kind of weight cut.

Canelo Alvarez, primed and fit to fight, has settled into being 165-170lbs for his fights; Kell Brook, primed at fit to fight, is generally 155-160lbs.

If Kell Brook and Canelo Alvarez were to fight, Brook would be the clearly smaller man, physically, but Alvarez (who can still make the weight) would be more physically compromised at 154lbs than what Brook would be at 154lbs, or at 150lbs or at 147lbs (where Alvarez would be walking dead into the ring. The fact that you rather easily have a 15lbs difference between a fit Alvarez and a fit Brook inherently impacts the match, regardless of what you think about skills.

The fact that Kell Brook is simply moving up the 13lbs isn't the end all of why folks feel how they feel, the rub is that he's moving up the 13lbs to fight a career middleweight who'd been fighting at said weight for the last 13 years, pro or amateur (and don't let the weight fool you; Golovkin basically trains year-round, keeping hos weight in check to not have to torture his body any further during the actual camps. If Golovkin were like most other fighters, taking off time between fights, he'd be coming down from the 180s to fight).

Fair enough. This is how i felt about it

[Scipio2009]

If weight mattered that much greats like harry greb, sam langford, would not have been able to do so well. They were outweighed by a good amount in their fights. I think greb fought heavyweights when he was only 165. Weight matters to a degree and modern boxers probably adjusted to 7 pound difference weight classes but i think khan canelo and ggg brook are pretty fair fights given their relative skillsets. I would take crawford over any 154 pounder anyday

Harry Greb died 1926; even if Greb did fight for the heavyweight title, outside of Jess Willard (who was an anomaly at 6'6 240lbs), near all of the heavyweights around at that time were sub-200lbs anyway.

Compare that to today which, between the changes in the weigh-in rules, generally better nutrition, and the aggressive "additional fight" that is dieting, and the weight difference that Greb probably saw in fighting heavyweights in his day is likely about the same weight difference between generic welterweight fighting generic middleweight today.

Terrence Crawford is talented as all hell, but, today, he doesn't beat Lara, Andrade, or even the Charlo twins simply due to the differences in physicality.

[NEETzsche]

yeah, a little. AIBA only has 10 weight classes and it works perfectly fine

[boliodogs]

Each case is different. It depends on the details if weight is important. It certainly can be important and make the difference between winning and losing. If all things are equal a good big man beats a good small man. GGG is considered by most to be the best middleweight in the world so it's seems very unlikely that even a very good welterweight champion like Brook could beat him. It isn't impossible for Brook to win though. Welterweight champions have defeated middleweight champions in the past. A boxer going down to a weight that is too light for him can have a very bad effect on him. Dawson performed terribly when he dropped down to 168 to fight Ward. Dawson thought he would be strong at 168 but he was wrong and it cost him. Maybe Ward would have beat him at 175 but we will never know.