I'd have to go with JT. The guy wrote the book on making title defenses off of guys in lower weight classes.
Norris. Dont get me wrong, I liked Terry, and he was one HELLUVA fighter, but he feasted on Curry, Leonard, Taylor, and to a lesser extent Blocker when they were all shot and above thier best weight.
I'm not including big heavyweights (Valuev, Lewis, Klitschko, etc..) who fight other heavyweights who are smaller.
Bernard Hopkins for a time made an open challenge to 3 guys who were all several weight classes below him.:: Merchant called him out on it. Think it was in the post-fight interview after Hops/Hakkar.
I remember that. Hop gave Larry a dirty ass look :: you can't call out HW's for fighting smaller HW's. If you can't hang with the big guys you should drop to cruiser. That is one thing I always respected Byrd for, he fought the biggest guys around.
Without a doubt BERNARD HOPKINS,...he was granted fucking IMPUNITY and given celestial praises for bludgeoning welterweights like Tito and De La Hoya, ..he's the size of a fucken fully fledged light heavyweight. Then everybody said, Oh wow Hopkins is so amazing for jumping up two weight divisions to take on the enormous Antonio Tarver,...:eeeek: WTF they're standing eye to eye and Hopkins has the thicker build!???.... some Middleweight. If Margarito lured Pacquioa, Barrera and Morales in the ring and mauled thier little bodies, DAYUM DAY SOME GOOD HIGH PROFILE NAMES!!!...better than Cintron and Clottey,..WHO?? they aren't p4p4p4p4p4p.
Nobody said Gatti? Regardless of how he managed to get down to 130, 135, or 140, he would gain 15-20lbs between the weigh-in and the bell. He was 160 when he fought Joey Gamache, and Gamache was small at LIGHTWEIGHT but weighed a few lbs over the lightweight limit! Gatti was also 160 against lighthitting Reyes Munoz and he almost killed him as well. People also seem to be forgetting Gerald McClellan who was usually a lightheavy or more when he fought guys like Julian Jackson, who was more of a junior middle. In fact, after they fought the second time, Jackson was thinking of going back down to Junior Middle because he was closer to the Junior Middle limit whereas Gerald was 171-172.
I was thinking more of guys who fought others who moved up in weight rather than guys who were bigger due to the relatively new weigh-in procedures against guys who fought in the same weight class. Still, Gatti gets a lifetime nomination simply based on the Gamache fight alone, when he "made" 141 and outweighed Joey by 16 pounds on fight night. I don't think Gatti ever allowed himself to be weighed on fight night again after that debacle.
Yeah, but I got no problem with what Hops did. He called out Mosley, ODLH, and Tito but it was mainly because he wanted big money fights and since Calzaghe didn't have the balls, he figured he'd try a few weights down.
I think it was Hopkins who genuinely turned Calzaghe down Lib four Lib, the white penis-tongued raven has a queer little obsession with Hopkins the way Fraud did with Gatti.
exactly... and the part everyone leaves out of that night was that during the post-fight sign-off, Merchant went on record as to say that ALL OF THOSE FIGHTERS would beat Bernard, that he was ripe for the taking. Larry pulled all that shit in the ring because HBO gave him the green light. Everyone involved in the network had the same exact pre-written quote to offer to the media, all along the lines of being embarrassed for the fight. When in fact the fight turned out exactly as everyone predicted the moment HBO agreed to air it.
missed the part about Calzaghe - it was Bernard who turned the fight down, though it was because he wanted to milk the remaining terms of his contract w/ King, fighting nothing but mandatories. Bernard didn't want to take money fights - in fact turning all of them down - while still w/ King, because he knew that a large chunk would never see its way to his pockets. Though for what it's worth, he never made much of an effort to reschedule fights w/ Calzaghe and Toney after leaving King.
The guys he called out were jr. middleweights (Winky, Vargas, DLH, Mosley), one weight class below. Larry asked if B-Hop was embarrassed to be calling out junior middleweights. It was later when the old wino said "you got paid for doing nothing" and Hopteeth said "you do that for a living" or something like that.
