Why is the welterweight division so strong?

[Kev]

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.

I agree with most everything you say but boxing welterweights are not quite as small as you make out.

I mean they are the weight of the average man, if he were lean and in shape.

Actually I would imagine that there are tons of elite athletes in other sports who would be welterweights, outside of basketball, rugby and American football it's probably the ideal size.

Remember welterweight boxers don't walk around at 147 lbs, most of them are probably over 165, even 175 when not cutting to make weight for the weigh in.

So I'd imagine an awful lot of tennis players, golfers, formula one drivers, soccer starts and a lot of track athletes would be welterweights if they fought as boxers, bascially anyone who walks around close to 165/170 would fight at welterweight if properly trained.

A welterweight boxer is only actually a welterweight for about an hour before the weigh in, the next day they are middleweights, and probably a month after the fight light heavy weights in a lot of cases.

You seem to be comparing athletes in other sports and saying they are heavier than welterweight boxers, a lot will only be heavier when the welterweight is weighing in.

Take Paul Williams for example, if he was a basketball player he wouldn't be weighing 147 lbs, he could easily get up to 180 lbs with his frame. In a sport where you don't need to cut weight, athletes wouldn't.