Tony Bellew has declared that he is in favour of creating a new ‘super-cruiserweight’ division in boxing. The former cruiserweight world champion was placed in charge of a new committee to investigate Don Majeski’s proposal to form a new weight class between cruiserweight and heavyweight The top three divisions in the sport are light-heavyweight (175lbs), cruiserweight (200lbs) and heavyweight (200lbs+). During his career, Bellew competed in all three of these categories. He told talkSPORT Fight Night: “I am a fighter who fought obviously at light-heavyweight. I boiled down to that weight category and then jumped up immediately and went to cruiserweight. “I’ve done it, so I understand how tough the weight jump is. The difference in all the other weight categories is minimal – 4lbs, 3lbs, sometimes 6lbs. “The weight jump from light-heavyweight to cruiserweight is from 175lbs to 200lbs – that’s 25lbs. That’s just too much, I get what Don Majeski’s saying because in the current game at heavyweight the big boys are too big and the smaller heavyweights are not able to compete with the bigger boys. “As great as some of them are – the likes of Oleksandr Usyk – it’s looked at now that he’s not gonna be able to compete with the monsters. Not because of his boxing ability, purely because of his size… Here’s where my thinking goes with the WBC, and I’ve said this to Mauricio Sulaiman the WBC president. I actually like the divisions going from 175lbs up to 190lbs [instead of 200lbs]. “That will make it a bit better for the guys who are struggling at light-heavyweight, but are not monster cruiserweights. Then, if I had my way, I would go from 190lbs to 220lbs. You’re looking at the ‘small heavyweights’. I would’ve fallen into that category quite comfortably, Oleksandr Usyk falls into that category quite comfortably. Deontay Wilder falls into that category quite comfortably, David Haye falls into that category quite comfortably.” When this idea was initially floated by the WBC a couple of years ago, their thought was to make a new ‘super-heavyweight’ division. This was slammed by fans who insisted that the iconic heavyweight division must remain boxing’s greatest prize. Bellew agreed: “You can’t mess around, you can’t have a ‘super-heavyweight’ in boxing. There’s one heavyweight division, that’s all there should ever be, you can’t go messing around with the names of them. "People say, ‘Well, what would you call it?’ I would say you go to cruiserweight [at 190lbs] and maybe ‘super-cruiserweight’ [at 220lbs]. Something of that ilk. You can’t ever have a ‘super-heavyweight’ division, it’s not reasonable, it’s ridiculous. “This weight class we’re looking to bring in is the perfect thing and if I had complete control of something like this, the first match-up I would look to do would be Deontay Wilder vs Oleksandr Usyk for the belt. It’s an amazing fight, the division would be relevant immediately with a fight of that magnitude.”
Source: TalkSport