by James Slater: Almost ever since its conception back in 1979, the cruiserweight division has been looked at by fans as nothing more than a poor man’s heavyweight division – a weight class for fat light heavyweights or men too small to be genuine heavies if you like. That is not the case anymore, though. Thanks to great match-ups like the one we’re all going to be glued to tonight, in David Haye Vs. Enzo Maccarinelli, and others of recent times, the cruiserweight division has slowly, very slowly, become an interesting and exciting weight class..
That is surprising enough for a division that was once either laughed at or ignored, but just lately, thanks to the shortage of talent in the weight class directly above it, the cruiserweight division has become the one the fans go to if they want to see good action between two big men. With its weight limit these days being 200 pounds (as opposed to the original limit of 190) the cruiserweights are big enough to rekindle memories of heavyweights from a bygone era. Greats such as Joe Frazier, Floyd Patterson and others never weighed in at much more than 200 pounds, and they gave us truly great fights. It seems today’s cruisers are doing the same – while overtaking the once most important weight division known as heavyweight in the process.
The heavyweights are certainly going through a bad time right now, and the cruisers have taken this opportunity and captured many a fan as a result. Look at tonight, for example. We have a world cruiserweight title fight, and we also have a world heavyweight title fight. Guess which fight the fans are talking about the most? Yes, the cruiserweight affair. Such a thing would have been inconceivable once upon a time, but not now. The cruiserweight action tonight is also a unification bout. Going back a few weeks, we had the first heavyweight unification bout for almost a decade. It wasn’t very good, was it? Indeed, one of tonight’s cruiserweight practitioners, in “Hayemaker” Haye, called the Klitschko-Ibragimov fight, “one of the most embarrassing fights ever. One that made me ashamed to be a boxer!” Furthermore, Haye says he will take care of Maccarinelli tonight, and then move up to take care of “the bum” Wladimir Klitschko.
A few years back such talk from a mere cruiserweight, when talking about the heavyweight king, would have been deemed a massive slur, and one that would lead to nothing more than a severe beating for the disrespectful cruiser (unless his name was Evander Holyfield, of course). But today, many fans are looking at Mr. Haye as a potential saviour of the heavyweight division. Yes indeed, things have certainly changed for the weight class once known as junior heavyweight.
Ask yourself this, which fight are YOU excited about tonight, Haye-Macca or Sam Peter-Oleg Maskaev? The answer you give says it all. For the first time, the cruiserweights have shown up the heavyweights. A scenario that was unthinkable less than five years ago.