Jimmy Ellis's weight jump - the first concrete sign of steroid use in boxing?

Where is the concrete????????????/

 

Jimmy Ellis was a pretty scrawny fighter as a middleweight. And he was kind of soft and not well defined as a heavyweight.

Just looks like a normal guy who filled out as an adult.

Ellis as a middleweight.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/16...=eqkVtPPB94C9D0mI8ld53veoRbbYnXP8tvzBQltEQD0=

Ellis as a heavyweight.
https://media.gettyimages.com/id/51...=vAQTMNfKyjUiP2YswpbJoxduQYXSjGQiDNYNzk5AF2w=

Ellis wasn't a weight lifter. Weights at the time weren't considered beneficial to boxers. And steroids back then were really crude and people who were using and abusing them didn't know what they were doing for the most part. That was back when the "skulls" of people shooting up would morph and change to look like Frankenstein and they needed to get braces on their teeth because everything was warping in their bones.

Guys in their 20s who are married and start having a bunch of kids and are approaching 30 tend to put on weight, too. Happens to the best of them.

His weight was all over the place once he started competing at heavyweight. He'd look really soft in the high 190s and then drop back down to the high 180s. He was 201 for Frazier when he thought he needed to be heavier and 188 for Ali the next year when he thought he needed to be faster.

He was just consistent with an aging boxer who trained harder for some fights and not as hard for others.

 

He went from having to make weight to being able to eat anything he wanted and not having to worry about it. So he was all over the place.

Ellis wasn't packing on muscle. He was tall for a middleweight so he could add 20 pounds or so and still not look fat. But when he took off his shirt he wasn't well-defined anymore. Just heavier.

Like Dundee said, Ellis' problem was he liked to eat.

People 50 years later who grew up with athletes abusing steroids look at the past through the current lens.

But there was "actually" a time when athletes put on weight because they just ate more and didn't run as much, too.

 

You're assuming he "put on" that much. It's more like he didn't LOSE as much anymore.

And you're being selective in the weights you're picking. Ellis occasionally boxed as a light heavyweight during the years people say he was a middleweight. For example, Ellis weighed 167 pounds for a fight with Leroy Green in 1962.

Going from 164 pounds in 1961, to 167 for a fight in 1962, to 176 for a fight in 1965, to 183 for a fight in 1966 doesn't seem like some massive weight gain. AT ALL.

In the two pictures I posted, Jimmy Ellis looks like a formerly REALLY SKINNY guy (whose ribs and muscles are clearly visible) to a kind of soft looking fellow who just put on some weight. He looks like a normal man. You're grasping at straws.

Buster Mathis weighed 300 pounds when he turned pro in 1965 and was 80 pounds lighter three years later, and at another point he added 30 pounds in a matter of months. People gained weight and lost it all the time. Everyone wasn't on THE GEAR, for God's sake.

People ate. They ran. They didn't eat. They didn't run. They didn't have to make weight. So some guys' weights fluctuated wildly.

 

Frankly, there's more evidence to suggest Jimmy Ellis was a "weight bully" when he was fighting at middleweight than anything else.

I've always considered him a guy who fought middleweights because he thought he'd have a size advantage over them, and when he started losing quite often (because he was cutting too much weight and was weaker), he just stopped doing it.

 

He wasn't putting it ON. He just wasn't taking off as much.

Ellis was basically a light heavyweight who could make middleweight if he worked at it (and even when he was considered a 'middleweight' he didn't actually make the weight half the time) ... and as he got older and cutting the weight made him weaker, he moved up.

His weight was all over the place because the money was at middleweight and heavyweight ... and even light heavyweight champs back then didn't want to be light heavyweight champs if they could win a title somewhere else.

Look at nearly everyone around that time who was a name light heavyweight champ or contender. Ellis went from middleweight to light heavyweight to heavyweight. Jose Torres went from middleweight to light heavyweight to heavyweight. Eddie Cotton went from middleweight to heavyweight and back to light heavyweight. Floyd Patterson went from middleweight to light heavyweight to heavyweight. Johnny Persol went from middleweight to light heavy to heavy to light heavy. Bobo Olson went from middleweight to light heavy to heavy to light heavy. Bob Foster went from heavyweight to light heavyweight to heavyweight to light heavyweight ...and on and on.

Hell, Bobo Olson lost a middleweight title fight to Ray Robinson. In his next fight, Olson was 27 pounds heavier and beat Joey Maxim in a heavyweight fight. Was Olson a 'Cow" at heavyweight? No. Was he "lean?" Yes.
https://brewminate.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/071520-28-History-Boxing-Sports.jpg

So, where's your concern about him? There isn't any, because guys in that weight range did it fairly regularly. You, for some reason, have just keyed in on Ellis.

You're looking out it through a modern lens. You aren't looking at it from the view of that era.

Ellis was the #5 ranked light heavyweight in the WBA in March 1967 when Ali was stripped of his title. Ellis didn't want to be a light heavyweight. Ellis only got in the WBA tournament because Johnny Persol, who was a light heavy, got ranked #7 at heavy with a win over Amos Lincoln. So Ellis fought Persol, won, and got his slot in the heavyweight tournament.

Because being a heavyweight champion, like being a middleweight champion at the time, was preferred over being a light heavyweight champ. If you could cut the weight, you cut it. If you could put on the weight, you put it on. They did it all the time. And you aren't factoring in what weights these guys walked around at before camp.

 

It has been said many ways, & the evidence is as definitive as is possible.
Anyone could have done anything. We all could secrelt by Axe Murderers.
But given the natural frame & size of Ellis, how his body fat also varied, considering the speed he gained weight, the social environment around him...

There is nothing at all suspicious about his weight or muscle gain.
Many folks have done similarly, sometimes more total weight & muscle, sometimes before steroids were even invented.
Even at his largest lean weight-only near 190 lbs.-he could have dehydrated & for the last @ 4 decadeof day before weigh ins, easily made LHW!

Nothing about his look, where muscle is distributed (those on gear tend to have more muscle ~ the traps & adjacent areas, deltoids, maybe neck, where there are more androgen receptors-like Holyfield's proportions.
No side effects, physically or temperamentally.

We have to conclude that it is very unlikely Ellis ever even dabbled in PEDs.

 

Pastrano went from Featherweight to Heavyweight in FOUR years. I don't know how gradual that was. He'd make leaps in 20-pound clips year after year at various times throughout that span.

He'd be a featherweight in one fight and the next year jump to welterweight. Be a welterweight and the next year be a middleweight. He was a middleweight and the next year a heavyweight.

Pastrano was 157 in 1954 and was 185 in 1955.

How many people have gone from fighting a 125-pound featherweight to a 208-pound Roland LaStarza in four years?

If someone did that today, there would be scandal written all over them. People can be too jaded these days.

 

Your reasoning is sound, but I am saying looks is just one indication of usage-evidence, side effects, rate & total amount of muscle mass gain are some of the others.
There is minimal likelihood Ellis used PEDs-which were in no sense illegal in the US or sports at that time anyway.
As strongly as I am against them.