There has been some talk in recent months about Jake Paul potentially facing Gervonta ‘Tank’ Davis in an exhibition boxing match. While Paul fights at cruiserweight tomorrow against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr live on DAZN, Davis began his career at 125lbs and has only gone up 10lbs in weight in the twelve years since.
And, yet, there has been talk of the pair meeting, with what would likely by a 60lb difference in weight between them.
In May, Paul said that an exhibition match had been discussed but was dependent upon Davis winning a rematch against Lamont Roach (Davis and Roach drew in a March bout). Such a rematch has not been set.
Paul also had a series of stipulations should such a match take place.
The bout, Paul said, would take place at 195lbs.
He added: “It would be an exhibition, 10 three-minute rounds. No restrictions, just the fact we couldn’t actually get it professionally sanctioned.”
Such a proposal looks increasingly unlikely. Should Paul beat Chavez this weekend, his star seems to be turned towards a run at a world title at cruiserweight or a shot against ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.
So Paul-Davis, even as an exhibition, may not happen. Thankfully, such disparities have been rare in boxing. That does not mean that they have never taken place.
It should be no surprise that the biggest weight disparity in history should have come in the heavyweight division. There is, after all, no maximum weight limit unlike other divisions. Instead, there is a de facto minimum of 200lbs.
It was against this background that the WBA heavyweight championship was fought in 2009 in Nuremberg, Germany, between Nikolai Valuev and David Haye. Valuev, 50-2 (34), was 7’2” and came with a shady, murky past in Moscow. Valuev won his title against John Ruiz in Berlin, Germany, and defended it against a host of undersized heavyweights such as Ruslan Chagaev, Monte Barrett, and Evander Holyfield.
But it was against David Haye, 28-4 (26), where the weight difference was most apparent.
Haye had moved up to heavyweight after unifying the cruiserweight division below with a second-round knockout over Enzo Maccarinelli. After moving up to heavyweight with an uber-200lb fifth-round win over Monte Barrett in London, Haye took aim at Valuev.
On the night the pair met in Nuremberg, Valuev weighed in at 316lbs. Haye, meanwhile, came into the ring at 217lbs. For the hard of maths, that is a 99lb difference.
It was Haye who won that night by majority decision. Valuev, despite his size, was never a large puncher and he allowed Haye to bounce around the ring and potshot him. In the closing moments of the fight, Haye staggered Valuev.
The win gave Haye the WBA championship, which he defended against John Ruiz and Audley Harrison, before losing to Wladimir Klitschko in Hamburg. After a series of lucrative-but-smaller fights, Haye retired after two losses to Tony Bellew.
Jess Willard vs Jack Dempsey, 1919
We have to go back over a century for this one, and it is another heavyweight championship – this time between Jess Willard, 22-5-1 (20), and Jack Dempsey, 53-6-8 (43). The pair met in Toledo, Ohio, in a fight that saw Dempsey, now recognised as one of the great heavyweights, anointed as the toughest man on the planet.
There was 58lbs of weight difference between the men. Willard, at 6’7”, weighed 245lbs – around average in today’s super-heavyweight era, but far above the 180-190lb average seen at the time. Dempsey, meanwhile, was 6’1” and came in at 187lbs. One wonders whether Dempsey, in today’s era with our modern methods, would fight instead of light-heavyweight rather than heavyweight or, even, cruiserweight.
That weight disparity did little to help the heavyweight champion. Willard took a hell of a beating in the fight, being stopped in the third round. There has been a lot of talk in the years since that Dempsey entered the ring with his hands loaded or that he carried a railway spike in his first. More prosaically, it seems most likely that Willard just caught a ferocious beating from a smaller, more-ferocious man.
Eric ‘Butterbean’ Esch vs Billy Zumbrun, 2001
Far from the top level of the heavyweight division, but this match between Eric ‘Butterbean’ Esch, 77-10-4 (57), and the journeyman Billy Zumbrun, 27-14-1 (16), over twenty years ago saw a whopping 150lbs of difference between the weights of the two men. Esch, at 5’11½”, weighed in at 373lbs. Zumbrun, 6’1”, came in at 223lbs.
It made no difference for Zumbrun, who outscored Esch over four rounds (yes, four) by scores of 39-37, 40-36, and 38-38.
Unfortunately, it seems that the bout was not recorded. That begs the question: What did we invent film and videotape for?
Muhammad Ali vs Wilt Chamberlain, 1971
What many do not remember about ‘The Greatest’ was the sheer number of exhibition fights that he fought over the years against athletes such as Antonio Inoki (Tokyo, 1975) or Lyle Alzado (Denver, 1979), and Michael Dokes (Miami, 1977).
But one that never came off would have seen the 6’3” Ali take on the 7’1” basketball superstar Wilt Chamberlain. The difference was not so much about weight as it was about height (about 10” of it in total).
Chamberlain, who was playing for the LA Lakers at the time, was extremely nervous about facing the then-former heavyweight champion. Ali’s people told him to not goad Chamberlain, who was yet to sign the contract.
On entering the room, Ali took one look at Chamberlain and, acknowledging the height difference between them, yelled out, “TIMBER!”
Chamberlain did not sign the contract.
