By Tom Donelson (Photo by David Martin Warr)

Boxing fans that have followed my writings for the past few years know that I love the cruiserweight division. Last week, Jean Marc Mormeck’s defeat of O’Neil Bell proved a point that I have made for years. The cruiserweight limit is one of boxing’s best and deepest divisions. Any fight in this division is an evenly matched affair between good fighters. This is not a case of mediocrity chasing mediocrity, but talented fighters competing with one another.

Mormeck and O’Neil Bell will likely face off in a third match to determine the best fighter at the weight, but below them are a lot of hungry tough fighters that are waiting their turn to face the winner. The problem of the cruiserweight division is not a lack of depth, but a lack of recognition. And this division is proof that boxing occasionally does get things right, like adding a weight class.

Every fighter ranked in the cruiserweight top ten is of championship caliber and unlike other divisions, there aren’t enough championship belts to pass around.

If nothing else, the cruiserweights proves another point that I’ve been making over the years; that an explosion of different and more diverse divisions is actually good for boxing. This is one area where most boxing pundits and historians disagree with me. If nothing else, the biggest complaints against boxing is that there are too many divisions. The way I look at it, the problem with boxing is not too many weight  divisions, but the presence of too many sanctioning bodies.

 

Take the cruiserweights for example. What boxing has figured out and many pundits or historians have not; athletes are bigger and stronger today than before. With modern training methods, big money and occasional use of steroids, athletes have grown in stature. The physical structure of a heavyweight just a generation ago is now a cruiserweight. Many of the cruiserweights today are just not strong enough or big enough to compete with the behemoths that populate the heavyweight division.

 

Chris Byrd is considered a small heavyweight at 210 pounds, but if he fought in the 60’s, 210 pounds would have been considered a big heavyweight. It is only logical that boxing recognizes the changes that have occurred and the cruiserweights have shown that a new division can produced excellent fighters and competitive matches as good as any era.

 

There are two factors to consider. First, boxing draws talent from the entire globe. In the middleweight division and beyond, European fighters are making impact and in weight division below 160-pounds, Asian and Latin American fighters compete with the best that America has to offer. The end of the cold war helped build entire classes of fighters that only two decades ago would have been fighting as amateurs for their communist masters. Now they box for high-end purses, and add to the depth of boxing worldwide.

The second factor is that multiple divisions have allowed for more sensible move in weight. Boxers are not forced to jump from lightweight to welterweight in a single leap, but can proceed gradually through the ranks – a few pounds at a time.

A fighter like Diego Corrales or Jose Castillo can move from junior lightweight to lightweight and then junior welterweight in small steps and produce some excellent fights along the way. And with boxing having the world at it’s disposal, the sport can populate any division with excellent fighters and each division has enough depth to produce great bouts.

The cruiserweights are not the only division with depth throughout the top ten. If you analyze the rankings of each respective weight class, there are numerous fighters in each division that are near or at, the A-level.