Quote Originally Posted by Truth View Post
It has the biggest talent pool to draw from. Your average 5'9 guy who walks into a boxing gym with boxing training and diet will be a welterweight.

Yea I think that's most of your answer right there, if you take about the average size grown man and have them train and cut lbs properly, they will be right around the weight class. Of course there is also the fact that for men of such stature; pretty well most other major sports requiring such athletecism consist of giants, ruling out their chances of taking it up seriously off the bat.
Can you name five ELITE athletes who weigh under 150, even 160 pounds in any sport besides boxing?(I'm not beginning to say they aren't out there, but you'd basically have to jump right to horse jockeys or something) It's virtually impossible to make it being so undersized in most sports worth watching.
Hypothetically, if you took say football or basketball and made a seperate league for players under 160 pounds and could conceivably pay them millions, there's no doubt that you would see phenomenal athletes coming up in time, and and incredibly high level of play. But with an open playing field, guys that size have no chance of competing. Of course I am grossly overstating this example as those two sports are cut out for huge men to dominate.
Obviously it also has a lot to do with biomechanics.. Going much lighter than WW, or perhaps lightweight, as a general rule guy's lose a lot more power pound for pound than they gain in speed or mobility etc, wheras going up much more in the weight classes guys will hit harder and be exponentially stronger but very rarely close to as quick. I'm drunk, that seemed like way to much typing but I think I'm right.