Did Buster Douglas Kill the Heavyweight Division?

It's not on Pay Per View, it's on HBO.

 

Against Ali, a guy with a fragile psyche like Tyson's would have been beat before he ever got in the ring. Can you imagine the stuff Ali would say to him, mocking his voice, whatever. Oh yeah and then he'd beat the living hell out of Tyson in the ring.

I always thought Tyson-Frazier was an interesting matchup and I might give the edge to Tyson who was much faster than Frazier and punched with both hands where as Joe pretty much relied on his left hook.

As for Shavers, he sorely tested Ali over 15 rounds and floored Holmes with one of the hardest rights I've ever seen. I think he'd get to Tyson early.

 

Shaves and Tyson would definately be a decent fight to watch because they each possessed such RAW power.

Do you all think that the Contender and those types of shows helped boxing?

 

nafselon, you were talking about Hatton earlier...big fight coming up in the fall...Hatton vs Mayweather

http://sports.espn.go.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=2918039

 

Exactly....heavyweight boxing is dead in the States for obvious reasons, Americans don't want to watch Eastern Europeans dominate. Consistently the most exciting fights are at 160lbs and under.......the public will dish out the $50 to see fighters that actually fight. Unfortunately too many heavyweight fights are dull, far too much clutching and grabbing.

240lb. men, no matter how fit, don't have the stamina to consistently punch for 12 rounds....the fanbase tired of seeing giants repeat this: throw a combination, hug for 12 seconds, ref breaks it up, another quick flurry, grabs...clutches,...flurry....etc.

The incentive just isn't there....the loser's are making a few million.

 

If Buster Douglas didn't kill the heavyweight division, Evander Holyfield will:

http://sports.yahoo.com/box/news?slug=ap-holyfieldsquest&prov=ap&type=lgns

Holyfield's still serious about retiring as champ. The only thing serious about this is the drain bamage this guy has suffered.

 

Call it the next episode of "Mayweather's Sparring Sessions". Floyd will kick the shit out of Hatton.

 

I can definately see that. Ray Lewis would've made a devastating boxer. He's even got the unusually long arms/reach in addition to everything else.

 

It would be great if it could happen, but it won't. Even if we could wave a magic wand and go back to one champion in each weight class (and if you think there are too many weight classes, the ones at the bottom are the ones that should be eliminated, not the ones at the top) there would invariably be one promoter or manager whose fighters would be left on the outside looking in and there would be nothing to keep that promoter from forming his own sanctioning body. I believe that's how this whole mess got started.
For better or worse, the alphabet groups are here to stay. HBO and ESPN have had the philosophy of ignoring them, as if that would make them go away, but I've yet to hear of one sanctioning body going out of business as a result of that practice.

 

Really, boxing needs to restructure ALL of its weight classes upward a bit. The size of the average man in this world has been steadily getting larger and larger throughout this century, and boxing's weight classes haven't been sufficiently adjusted over the years to keep pace.

Consider that professional flyweights are expected to be under (I believe) 109 lbs. Outside of jockeys, how many 109 lb grown men do you know? That's no longer a division for small men, its a division for freakishly tiny men. And 200 lbs, which was once considered quite large, is now a fairly normal size for a full grown man, but a man that size who wants to be a boxer is forced to compete in the Heavyweight division against guys 50 lbs heavier than he is.

I think they just need to bump the minimum weight for ALL divisions up a few pounds instead of confusing matters by creating yet another new weight class. Otherwise there may one day be only two types of boxers--unusually small men who compete in all the lower weight classes, and everyone else who competes in the heavyweight division.

 

With the weigh-ins the day before the fight, most guys in the lighter weight classes are fighting at artificially light weights. Guys who fight at 118 or 122 or walking around at 140 ot 145 and guys are weighing 10-20 pounds more on fight night than they did when they weighed in.
Something needs to be done about that.