undecided about what weight division

[HerbM]

Don't take anything I say on this subject too seriously (I know a bit about making weight from high school wrestling and also about competing there as a heavyweight who only barely exceeded the next weight class down, about 175-185 lbs when the lower weight class was 175 or 180 different years] So my experience is not directly in boxing.

Do consider my thoughts and if they help you work it out then good....

At 6' 6" you are pretty slim at that weight, and so I would ask do you already have the muscle mass you would want for fighting at the level you wish to compete?

If not, you are going to put on some 10 pounds or (perhaps a lot) more getting your arms, shoulders, lats, maybe legs, etc to the mass/strength you wish.

If that's the case, then trying to make a weight class yo already exceed is going to get even more difficult.

If you need to bulk up a bit (to be your most competitive) then you are going to be forever working against yourself, trying to lose weight while also trying to gain muscle.

Another consideration is that at 6'6" you likely have a healthy reach and so fighting super heavy "giants" won't be as big a stretch (pun intended) for you as it would be someone my size (at 5'10" but with a reach comparable to most guys 6'4" or so).

On the other hand, if you are satisfied with your current muscle mass and have more than fat content than you really need then going down won't be that big a deal.

What is your fat percentage currently? If it is much lower than 12% you will struggle to get it down, for some people 15% is difficult to maintain. (I know it is for me.)

Figure out what fat percentage you can reasonably hold, figure out how many lbs you can drop from that reasonably, and how much water weight you can SAFELY and COMFORTABLE drop for a weigh-in without doing damage to your health or feeling done in before you even start the fight. Then do the math and think about all those days or weeks you will have to "watch everything you eat" and "do without" to get there each time.

BMI is generally worthless for measuring an athlete since it makes no allowance for additional muscle nor for bone density/build.

BTW, when I wrestled as a 'tiny heavyweight' my toughest matches were the guys only 20-30 lbs heavier -- they were all in really good shape and generally top notch technically. The guys 40-50 lbs bigger tended to be overweight and slow while the real giants heavier than that were just opponents I had to try to outrun or outthink. Speed, movement, and sneakiness were my only real weapons against guys who outweighed me by more than 50 lbs, but I had one really good win when I gave up 75lbs to a fellow who was all muscle (fortunately this included his head) -- my team was behind 4 points going into my match (the last of the night) but won the match when I got him disqualified by sneakiness. <grin>


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HerbM