Boxing’s Chaotic Weight Divisions: A Short History of How We Got to Where We Are

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2 weeks ago

November 15, 2020

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The World Boxing Council recently created a new weight division. It’s called Bridgerweight and it’s for boxers weighing not less than 201 or more than 224 pounds.

The news fomented a firestorm of criticism. There are already too many weight classes yelped the belligerents. Adding yet another compounded the insult.

WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman could have forestalled the backlash — nay, he could have actually inverted it – if he had simultaneously done away with a couple of the weight classes near the bottom end of the spectrum. That’s what the National Boxing Association did in 1921. Ah, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.

In the bare-knuckle days, there were basically only three weight classes: heavyweight, middleweight, and lightweight. However, the ceilings for the two lower weight classes were not standardized, opening the door to multiple title claimants.

This situation persisted as the sport entered the modern era. Before World War I, the weight limit for featherweights in the United States was generally conceded to be 122 whereas the norm in Great Britain was 126. Likewise, the Brits defined a lightweight as 135 pounds whereas the Yanks held tight to 133. Eventually, the British nomenclature prevailed.

The original three weight classes eventually increased to seven and then to eight with the introduction of the light heavyweight division in 1903. The architect was Lou Houseman, the sporting editor of the Chicago Inter Ocean newspaper. Houseman managed Jack Root who had outgrown the middleweight class. When he matched Root against Kid McCoy, he billed it for the light heavyweight title. Fight writers were receptive and Root, who dominated McCoy en route to winning a 10-round decision, would enter the history books as the first light heavyweight champion.

An important development in the standardization of weight classes was the 1920 Antwerp Summer Olympics. Twelve nations sent boxers to these games, eight more than in 1908 when 32 of the 42 entrants — and all but one of the medal winners – were British. (There was no boxing at the 1912 games in Stockholm as the sport was outlawed in Sweden and the 1916 Olympiad was cancelled because of the war in Europe, so the 1920 games marked the return of boxing after a 12-year absence.)

The bouts at the 1920 Games were contested in eight weight divisions, up from five weight classes in 1908.

Flyweight (112)

Bantamweight (118)

Featherweight (126)

Lightweight (135)

Welterweight (147)

Middleweight (160)

Light heavyweight (175)

Heavyweight (176+)

These became the eight standard divisions, but it didn’t take long for a regulatory body to add new categories. The Walker Law of 1920, which had the effect of making New York the center of the boxing universe, included a provision for five additional weight classes: junior flyweight (109 pounds), junior bantamweight (118), junior featherweight (122), junior lightweight (130), and junior welterweight (140).

The first of these “junior” classes to make an appearance was the junior lightweight class. On Nov. 18, 1921, Tex Rickard presented a diamond-studded belt to Johnny Dundee after Dundee, the so-called Scotch Wop, defeated George “KO” Chaney at Madison Square Garden. (Chaney was disqualified in the fifth round for repeated low blows.)

On January 19, 1922, at the inaugural National Boxing Association convention in New Orleans, the junior lightweight and junior welterweight divisions were retained, but New York’s three other junior divisions were scrapped.

The sport already had a junior lightweight champion, Johnny Dundee, but New York hadn’t yet authorized a fight for the junior welterweight title so the NBA (the forerunner of the World Boxing Association, the first of the international governing bodies) got to go first. They bestowed the 140-pound title on Pinkey Mitchell, the less prominent of two fighting brothers from Milwaukee.

Strange but true. Mitchell was accorded this honor by winning an election, out-polling 19 other candidates in a survey conducted by the Boxing Blade, a Minneapolis boxing weekly. The magazine claimed that its readers returned more than 700,000 ballots. (Balderdash; boxing was big in those days, but it wasn’t quite that big.)

In due time, the junior welterweight title passed into the hands of Tod Morgan, a slick southpaw from Seattle. On Dec. 20, 1929, Morgan defended his belt against Benny Bass at Madison Square Garden. Bass knocked him out in the second round.

Benny Bass was nicknamed the “Little Fish” and this fight had the distinct aroma of rotten fish.

In the lobby of the Garden as the preliminaries were going on, bookies were quoting 6/1 odds on the challenger, a price that made no sense considering the reputations of the two fighters. The New York State Athletic Commission, which was then chaired by future U.S. Postmaster General James A. Farley, reacted by abolishing the junior welterweight division and for good measure, expunging all the other “junior” divisions as well.

The ruling did not impact any of the NYSAC-certified title-holders other than Bass as the commission hadn’t yet authorized any title fights in the three lowest junior classes and the junior lightweight title was vacant, having been abandoned by Johnny Dundee who went to win the more prestigious featherweight belt.

So, now we were back to only “8’ weight classes in New York whose boxing commission exerted considerable sway on the national scene when Massachusetts and Pennsylvania became aligned with it.

The junior lightweight class became dormant during the early years of the Depression and wasn’t revived until 1949 when the NBA sanctioned a match between Sandy Saddler and Orlando Zulueta for the vacant belt. Saddler, who had lost the featherweight title in his second meeting with Willie Pep, outpointed Zulueta in a dull 10-round fight at Cleveland to claim the vacant title.

The NBA junior welterweight class went dormant in 1946 when Tippy Larkin abandoned the belt because he could no longer make the weight. It was revived in 1959. Carlos Ortiz began a new line of junior welterweight title-holders when he stopped Kenny Lane on cuts. By then the NBA had morphed into the World Boxing Association.

The New York commission refused to sanction the Ortiz-Lane match as a world title fight although the bout was held at Madison Square Garden, but eventually relented. It mattered greatly that Carlos Ortiz was a New Yorker. A Puerto Rican by birth, he resided in the Bronx. But by then it really made no difference whether New York recognized the junior welterweight division or not. In terms of national influence, the Empire State no longer had much clout.

Over the years, there has been pressure to raise the weight limits of the standard weight classes. This was considered preferable to cluttering up the landscape with more divisions.

In 1946, the NBA, at their annual convention, considered a motion to raise the limit of each weight class from 3-5 pounds. The flyweight division, for example, would go from 112 to 115; the middleweight division from 160 to 165. The motion was prodded by a Harvard study that showed that the school’s freshmen, on average, weighed 10 pounds more than their counterparts in 1892.

The motion never advanced to the voting stage, and this would be true again in 1953 after a government study revealed that the average American man of draft age was 10 pounds heavier than the average American soldier in World War I.

Prior to this, there was talk of raising the light heavyweight limit from 175 to 185 pounds. The impetus was Billy Conn’s feeble effort in his highly-anticipated rematch with Joe Louis. Conn came in at 182, twenty-five pounds less than the Brown Bomber. In theory, the match would not have been approved if the ceiling for light heavyweights had been set at 185 pounds.

Needless to say, none of these campaigns to raise the limits of the various weight classes succeeded. The weights of the eight classic divisions haven’t been disturbed in well over 100 years, notwithstanding the fact that people in most parts of the world and particularly in the Westernized world have, on average, become bigger, both taller and heavier.

Amateur boxing hasn’t been as hidebound. That’s a story for another day.

To be continued…….

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Arne K. Lang

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Tyson and Jones Box to an Unofficial Draw in a Predictable Stinker

Published

2 hours ago

November 28, 2020

Arne K. Lang

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The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, an American institution, went belly-up in 2017, but a different kind of circus played to an empty house at the Staples Center in Los Angeles tonight. The main attraction wasn’t Jumbo the elephant but Iron Mike Tyson in his first ring appearance in 15 years. In the opposite corner was Roy Jones Jr, who at age 51 was the younger man by three years.

Tyson vs. Jones was the main piece of a 4-hour boxing and music festival live-streamed in the U.S. on the TysononTriller.com app at a list price of $49.95. This was the first live event on “Triller” which allows people to create their own music videos and was designed as a rival to China-owned TikTok, one of the biggest recent success stories in the internet world.

The California State Athletic Commission, which sanctioned the match, insisted that Tyson vs. Jones would be an exhibition. They would fight 8 two-minute rounds with 12-ounce gloves and if there were a knockdown, the referee would not give a count and the bout would or would not continue at his discretion. The rounds would not be scored and no winner would be named.

Of course, the promoter chafed at these restraints and did his best to create the impression that this was a legitimate prizefight. Retired boxers Vinny Pazienza, Chad Dawson, and Christy Martin were lassoed to serve as judges, scoring the fight from a remote location, and the WBC commissioned an honorary belt to present to the winner.

The advance hype was enormous. A clickbait-obsessed media lapped it up including photoshop-enhanced images of Mike Tyson’s physique.

In the second round, Tyson landed a double left hook and that was the only indelible moment in the match. By the third round, both looked and sounded tired and by the sixth round Jones was thoroughly gassed out and took to clinching to make it to the final bell.

For the record, the scores were 79-73 for Tyson (Martin), 80-76 for Jones (Pazienza), and 76-76 (Dawson). On the internet, the clear consensus was that Tyson had the best of it.

Mike Tyson, 50-6, 2 NC (44 KOs) last fought in June of 2005 when he was stopped by third-rater Kevin McBride. Roy Jones (66-9, 47 KOs) was active as recently as 2018 and won his last four, but against hand-picked opponents including a boxer making his pro debut. His last fight of significance came in 2011 when he was brutally KOed by Dennis Lebedev in Moscow.

Jones, who weighed 210 ½ tonight, weighed 157 when he made his pro debut in 1989. In his prime, he was pound-for-pound the best fighter in the world, but that was back in the previous century.

Both fighters were reportedly guaranteed $1 million with Tyson’s take potentially reaching $10 million if certain financial targets were met.

Other Bouts

YouTube sensation Jake Paul, who we reluctantly concede has more than a modicum of talent in the fisticuffing department, knocked out Nate Robinson in the second round and it was a clean knockout with Robinson knocked out cold. The 36-year-old Robinson, the former NBA point guard who was a three-time slam dunk champion during his 11-year NBA career, is a well-rounded athlete, good enough to start as a cornerback in football during his freshman year at the University of Washington, but his athleticism didn’t translate to the squared circle as he looked like a common bar brawler.

Former two-division belt-holder Badou Jack (22-3-4), who said he appeared on the card as a favor to his friend Mike Tyson, was a clear-cut winner over hard-trying but out-classed Blake McKernan in an 8-round cruiserweight match.

At age 37, Jack’s career is winding down. He tipped the scales at 188 ¾, 14 pounds more than in his previous engagement vs. Jean Pascal. McKernan, a natural cruiserweight from Sacramento, was undefeated coming in (13-0), but was over his in over his head against Jack, a former Olympian and veteran of seven world title fights.

In a good action fight, Worcester, Massachusetts lightweight Jamaine Ortiz, a carpenter by trade, improved to 14-0 (8) with a seventh-round stoppage of Sulaiman Segawa (13-3-1), a Maryland-based Ugandan.

In the first bout on the program, Fort Worth featherweight Edward Vazquez improved to 9-0 (1) with an 8-round split decision over Jamaine Ortiz stablemate Irvin Gonzalez (14-3).

Heavyweight Juiseppe “Joe” Cusumano improved to 19-3 (17) with a sixth-round stoppage of late sub Gregory Corbin (15-4). It was the fourth straight loss for the 40-year-old Corbin who came in at a beefy 291 ¾ pounds.

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Fast Results from London: Joe Joyce Stops Daniel Dubois in the 10th

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8 hours ago

November 28, 2020

Arne K. Lang

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The historic Church House which sits in the shadow of Westminster Abbey was the site of tonight’s clash in London between unbeaten heavyweights Daniel Dubois and Joe Joyce. The bout lacked the gloss of a world title fight, but didn’t need it. The oft-postponed match, originally slated for the 02 Arena in London on April 11 with promoter Frank Warren anticipating a sellout, was fairly hyped as the most anticipated fight since Fury-Wilder II which was the last big fight before the coronavirus clampdown.

Dubois, 15-0 with 14 KOs heading in, was a consensus 7/2 favorite in man-to-man betting, He was younger, faster and punched harder, but ultimately it would be his “O” that had to go. Joe Joyce, an inch taller at six-foot-six and 15 pounds heavier at 259, emerged victorious with a 10^th-round stoppage in what was a good back-and-forth fight with a divided opinion as to who had the edge through the completed rounds.

Joyce really didn’t do much but throw a jab, but he landed that jab consistently and it was a hard, thudding jab that caused Dubois’s left eye to start swelling during the mid-rounds of the fight. The damaged eye eventually shut and when Joyce reached it with another hard jab in the 10^th, Dubois surrendered by taking a knee. The presumption was that he had suffered a broken orbital bone.

The 35-year-old Joyce, nicknamed Juggernaut, is of Scotch-Irish and Nigerian descent. He lost by split decision to Tony Yoka in the semifinals of the 2016 Olympics and had to settle for a silver medal. Prior to turning pro, he was 12-1 in the semi-pro World Series of Boxing with his lone defeat coming at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk. With today’s career-defining win, he upped his pro ledger to 12-0 (11).

Other Bouts

Top-rated WBC super lightweight contender Jack Catterall (26-0) won a predictably one-sided 10-round triumph over 33-year-old Tunisian Abderrazak Houya (14-3). Catterall scored two knockdowns en route to winning by a 99-90 score. This was a stay-busy fight for the Lancashire man who was the mandatory challenger for title-holder Jose Carlos Ramirez and accepted step-aside money with the promise that he would meet the winner of the unification fight between Ramirez and Josh Taylor which is expected to come off in February.

The lead-in fight was a 10-round contest in the super welterweight division between 21-year-old Hamzah Sheeraz and 33-year-old Guido Nicolas Pitto. The fight was monotonous until Sheeraz (12-0, 8 KOs) kicked it into a higher career in the final stanza and brought about the stoppage. Pitto, from Spain by way of Argentina, declined to 26-8-2. The official time was 1:11 of round 10.

In an 8-round cruiserweight bout, Jack Massey improved to 17-1 (8) with a 79-74 referee’s decision over Mohammad Ali Farid (16-2-1). Massey was making his first start since losing a close 12-round decision to Richard Raikporhe in December of 2019 for the vacant BBBofC title. The well-traveled, one-dimensional Farid had scored 16 knockouts in his previous 18 fights while answering the bell for only 33 rounds.

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Daniel Jacobs Edges Past Gabe Rosado on a Matchroom card in Florida

Published

1 day ago

November 27, 2020

David A. Avila

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Former world champion Daniel Jacobs needed the last round to win by split decision against upset-minded Gabe Rosado and keep his place in line on Friday for lucrative super middleweight matchups.

But when the ring announcer erroneously announced the winner was from Philadelphia, confusion reigned for a moment until Jacobs was correctly called the winner.

Brooklyn’s Jacobs (37-3, 30 KOs) jumped out ahead against Philly fighter Rosado (25-13-1, 14 KOs) and held on for the win in front of no fans at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida. For a second, many thought Rosado had won.

Both were careful during the first three rounds measuring each other’s distance and looking for openings to counter. There were very few.

It was the kind of fight expected by those who know boxing: two veterans with immense experience against top-flight world champions. Mistakes were few.

Jacobs, a former middleweight world champion, had fought Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in close but losing efforts.

Rosado had battled Golovkin too, six years ago in a bloody affair that ended in a loss. He had also lost to other champions like Peter Quillin and Jermell Charlo. But none were able to knock him out.

Both were aware of each other’s reputation. Bitter words had been exchanged for years and now they finally got their chance to prove their mettle and they did.

Though Jacobs was recognized as a knockout puncher, Rosado’s resilience was just as well known. Both neutralized each other for most of the fight with their feints and jabs to the body. Neither was willing to leave openings for each other.

Jacobs scored big with a left uppercut at the end of the seventh round. While Rosado wowed viewers with a sizzling right cross in the 11^th round.

It was 1950s style, boxing with intelligence. Each found it difficult to land combinations, let alone find openings to score knockout blows. Instead, they had to be satisfied with scoring enough to convince three judges the actual winner.

Neither was able to pull out ahead with any conviction.

After 12 rounds one judge saw Rosado the winner 115-113 while two others saw Jacobs the winner 115-113 to give him the win by split decision.

“It felt just a little weird. It felt like a sparring match,” said Jacobs about fighting without fans in the audience. “This wasn’t a valiant effort.”

Rosado was certain he was the true winner.

“I thought I won the fight. I surprised him,” said Rosado who trained with Freddie Roach for this fight. “I’m a veteran, I know how to fight.”

Indeed, he does.

Jacobs now stands poised to fight one of many super middleweight champions in need of a marquee name.

“I live to see another day,” he said honestly.

Other Bouts

Kazakhstan’s Daniyar Yeleussinov (10-0, 6 KOs) proved he was not an easy touch and knocked out former world champion Julius Indongo (23-3, 12 KOs) to march forward in the welterweight division while grabbing the vacant IBF Inter-Continental title.

In a fight featuring southpaw versus southpaw Yeleussinov caught Indongo with a roundhouse left the first time they exchanged and down went the former super lightweight world champion. Indongo beat the count and survived the round.

Indongo wasn’t as lucky in the second round as Yeleussinov again connected with a left and down went the fighter from Namibia again. He would not get up at 1:24 of round two giving the knockout win for Yeleussinov.

A battle between undefeated heavyweights saw Azerbaijan’s Mahammadrasul Majidov (3-0, 3 KOs) use roundhouse rights to stagger the heavier Sahret Delgado (8-1) to win by knockout in the third round. Majidov actually helped Delgado get to his stool after knocking him out on his feet at 47 seconds of the third round.

Emmanuel Tagoe (32-1) defeated Mason Menard (36-5) by majority decision after a 10- round lightweight fight that saw a lot of clinching and leaning.

Nikita “White Chocolate” Ababiy (10-0) out-fought Detroit’s Brandon Maddox (7-4-1) to win by unanimous decision after six rounds in a middleweight clash. Ababiy hurt Maddox with body shots but found Maddox more resilient than expected.

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