Supersized: The 10 heaviest heavyweight champions in history

Supersized: The 10 heaviest heavyweight champions in history.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published this past January.

 

The heavyweights of the current era are gargantuan, led by oversized titleholders Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, who outweigh many great champions of the past by 50 or more pounds.

However, we’ve seen unusually large heavyweights throughout the history of boxing, going as far back as the early part of the 20th century. And some of these bygone behemoths reached the pinnacle of the sport, becoming champions.

Here is a list of the 10 heaviest heavyweight titleholders ever.

A few guidelines:

  • The heavyweights are ranked according to their weight while they were titleholders.
  • We include their weight when they lost their titles if they were at their heaviest in that fight.
  • We also include their heaviest weights of their careers, even if they didn’t hold a title at the time.
  • The weights were found on Boxrec.com, the official record keeper of the sport.

Here we go:

Supersized: The 10 heaviest heavyweight champions in history

Supersized: The 10 heaviest heavyweight champions in history.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published this past January.

 

The heavyweights of the current era are gargantuan, led by oversized titleholders Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua, who outweigh many great champions of the past by 50 or more pounds.

However, we’ve seen unusually large heavyweights throughout the history of boxing, going as far back as the early part of the 20th century. And some of these bygone behemoths reached the pinnacle of the sport, becoming champions.

Here is a list of the 10 heaviest heavyweight titleholders ever.

A few guidelines:

  • The heavyweights are ranked according to their weight while they were titleholders.
  • We include their weight when they lost their titles if they were at their heaviest in that fight.
  • We also include their heaviest weights of their careers, even if they didn’t hold a title at the time.
  • The weights were found on Boxrec.com, the official record keeper of the sport.

Here we go:

Degrees of Separation: Connecting fighters from different eras

Boxing Junkie kicks off a new feature — “Degrees of Separation,” in which we connect fighters from different eras.

Six degrees of separation is a theory that everyone in the world is separated by no more than six social connections.

In other words, you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows Queen Elizabeth. Or so the concept goes.

We’re borrowing the six degrees concept — well, sort of loosely — to connect fighters from the past to their more contemporary counterparts in our new occasional feature, “Degrees of Separation.”

Example: Let’s connect Julio Cesar Chavez Sr. to Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Super easy; we did it in two steps. Senior fought Grover Wiley, who fought Junior.

To kick off the new Boxing Junkie feature, we were more ambitious than that. We connected the first modern heavyweight champion – John L. Sullivan – with the current No. 1 big man in the sport – Deontay Wilder. And we did it in 15 steps.

Check it out:

John L. Sullivan fought …

James J. Corbett, who fought …

James J. Jeffries, who fought …

Jack Johnson, who fought …

Jess Willard, who fought …

Jack Dempsey, who fought …

Jack Sharkey, who fought …

Joe Louis, who fought …

Rocky Marciano, who fought …

Archie Moore, who fought …

Muhammad Ali, who fought …

Larry Holmes, who fought …

Evander Holyfield, who fought …

Nikolai Valuev, who fought …

Sergei Liakhovich, who fought …

Deontay Wilder

Whew! That took a while. But, in our defense, we bridged more than a century. Sullivan last fought in 1892 and Wilder, of course, is still active.

Could you do it in fewer steps? Let us know via Twitter or Facebook. Or you can contact me on Twitter. And please follow us!