Did Marquez err by putting on bulk?

So much of the talk about the upcoming Floyd Mayweather Jr.-Juan Manuel Marquez fight has been about the size disparity. Marquez, of course, got much of his best work done at featherweight and has never fought above lightweight. Mayweather fights at welterweight.

Marquez and his trainer, the renowned Nacho Beristain, have sought to bulk up Marquez so he can approximate Mayweather’s greater size. In contemporary boxing, this is what you do. You get as big as your opponent is if you can, and hope you don’t lose anything in the process.

“There's always concern when you're bulking up in weight and working and training that you're going to lose a little bit of speed,” Beristain said during a recent press conference.

“But no, on the contrary I'm very happy to say that Juan at this point in training has been acquiring much more speed than in fights in the past. Everything's come together. So we're looking very, very good. I'm very happy to see how things are coming along.”

Take as seriously as you wish Beristain’s counterintuitive claim that Marquez is getting faster with the extra weight. The fact is modern training techniques and a greater understanding of nutrition than was available in the past have indeed enabled athletes of all stripe to get bigger and stronger without sacrificing a great deal of quickness or agility.

Marquez’s nemesis, Manny Pacquiao, is a perfect illustration of this. So are 300-pound defensive lineman who can run like gazelles.

Still, one is forgiven for wondering if getting big just to match your opponent’s size is always the best strategy. Doesn’t it make more sense to fight at whatever weight is the best weight for you and let everything else fall into place?

“When you have a guy moving up a weight class or two, you know weight isn’t an issue, so I would just concentrate on execution and strategy in the gym,” Naazim Richardson, trainer of Bernard Hopkins, Shane Mosley and Steve Cunningham told Ring TV.com.

“You let him come in at the weight where he’s most comfortable. I wouldn’t try to bulk him up. It‘s different with guys like Michael Spinks when he was going up to work with those bigger guys,” Richardson said. “But at the lower weight classes it’s all about reflexes and speed anyway.”

Back when weight training was still verboten for fighters and steak was the recommended prefight meal, that’s what guys did, no matter how big the opponent was.

When Sugar Ray Robinson beat Jake LaMotta for the middleweight title, he weighed 155 pounds to LaMotta’s 160. When Robinson beat up Joey Maxim for 13 rounds before succumbing to the heat, he gave away 16 pounds.

Sam Langford fought everyone from welterweights on up to heavyweights and never “bulked up.” Same with Mickey Walker and Harry Greb and even little Joe Gans.

How did Billy Conn bulk up for Joe Louis before nearly beating Louis for the heavyweight title? By showing up to the weigh-in with weights in his pockets.

Conn was several pounds lighter than his announced weight of 174 (to Louis’ 199 ½) but the promoters believed the fight wouldn’t sell if the public knew Conn wasn’t much more than a middleweight.

Sure, you can argue that a heavier Conn might have beaten Louis. It’s just as likely that more weight would have made him an easier target for “The Brown Bomber.”

Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward told RingTV.com that you can tell what a fighter’s best weight is from his bone structure, and that he would have Marquez come in against Mayweather around 136 pounds, just a pound over the lightweight limit.

“I would not by any means have him bulk up,” Steward said. “I don’t think he needs to go up that high. He just doesn’t have to dry out like he normally would.”

Steward cited the case of Thomas Hearns, the wonderful 1980s puncher and multi-division titleholder who, along with Steward, made the Kronk Gym in Detroit a national boxing icon.

“Tommy won titles at 147 and 154 and then beat Dennis Andres for a title at 175. Then he went back down to 160 and won the title from (Juan) Roldan,” Steward recalled. “And he never lifted any weights or took any special weight gainers. He never did any bulking up.

“I’ve never went in for all these weights and special diets,” Steward continued. “You should eat whatever you’ve always been eating and doing whatever you’ve always been doing. We’ve gotten too caught up in this diet and weights stuff. Whatever you’ve been eating, keep eating it.”

With the fight against Mayweather less than two weeks away, Marquez does indeed look bigger than he ever has, though for all we know this is due to no more than what is a very interesting diet (see below) and a weight training program that involves heaving small boulders off a big hill.

But many of Mayweather’s opponents have been as strong or stronger than he is. He doesn’t care about that. What frustrates him is speed that is comparable to his own. At 135 pounds and under, Marquez had that. He may find out on Sept. 19 that in his quest to get big, he sacrificed his best chance for a victory.

Some random observations from last week:

As the second episode of Mayweather-Marquez demonstrated, HBO’s 24/7 series is the best thing to happen to boxing since some pervert got the idea to put round card girls in thongs. Still, I could have done without watching Mayweather get a pedicure. …

Whether or not he knows it, if Marquez beats Mayweather, he will give birth to a whole generation of raw-quail-egg-eating, urine-sipping health fanatics. And that’s not all. Think of what the resultant explosion in mouthwash sales could do for the economy. …

So Mayweather promises to make his match with Marquez “exciting.” OK. And Roy Jones will fight the winner of Vitali Klitschko-Chris Arreola. Some guys are exciting, some are great. Few are both. Settle for the latter, Floyd, and stop trying to sell us the former. The last time you were exciting, Joe Cortez still had a hairline. …

Speaking of Klitschko-Arreola, reports coming from Arreola’s camp have been mostly negative. He’s missed days, he’s too chubby still, he’s not Eastern European, etc. Doesn’t matter. If the fight only goes three rounds, they’ll be the toughest rounds Vitali will have gone since Lennox Lewis almost took his eye out. I give Arreola a heck of a chance. …

Bad news from over the weekend: Brahim Asloum is retiring. (Insert sound of crickets here). …

An early prediction for the Shane Mosley-Joshua Clottey fight, which reportedly is a done deal: Clottey builds an early lead but throws 11 punches over the last five rounds and screams robbery when Mosley gets the decision. …

Note to Kelly Pavlik: If you have a chance to score a big payday and an infected finger keeps screwing it up, you lop the offending digit the hell off. You can count a million dollars with nine fingers as well as you can with 10.

Source: ringtv.com