Come on man, are you serious. It is easy to name 40 or 50 fighters better. Man Bhop aint ****. The guy cheats his way to victories.
If I sat down and thought about it I could! But that's my point - once you get to around 25, it's so hard to clearly, and distinctly rank them; so, the difference between being 25, and 40 is nothing. . . Now the difference between 25, and say, 75 would be easier to distinguish, and clarify. . . I guess for me, it's the fact that he was beat twice by Taylor, and we saw what happened to Taylor shortly thereafter. . . I know styles make fights, and all, but still, Taylor is nowhere CLOSE to Hopkin's class, yet he beat him. . . Two times. . . And, his overall lack of world class scalps at 160. . . Without his historical run at 175 (for his age), I'd probably push him back to around 60. Of his 20 (20 some? defenses) 7 (about 1/3 of 'em) were against the same three guys. . . I'd argue that his best win at 160 was against Glen Johnson, as Tito and Oscar belonged nowhere near 160. . . But for me, his run at LHW really sealed the deal on his fistic greatness, and "legendary" status: Wright (although like Oscar, and Tito, he belonged nowhere bear 170), Pavlik, Pascal, and Tarver. . .
theres a huge amount of truth in that post, and when you add to it the majority of his best wins were when he dragged fighters up through the weight divisions to fight him, fighters who never went on to achieve anything at the weight they fought bernard at like oscar, trinidad, winky, and pavlik. hopkins strengths were his amazing longevity, his game plan to take fighters out of their rythmm and his mental strength to impose himself on other fighters but when all is said and done his list of victims at a fair weight is not that of an all time great fighter. In fact hopkins most impressive victory was his 2 weight jump against tarver and i've got to be honest i don't rate tarver all that highly. you also have to figure into the equation that there were 8 times hopkins got into the ring where he was not good enough to beat his opponent.
Hopkins is definitely one of the all time greats, although I wouldn't rate him as one of the top 10 most accomplished middleweights ever given his thin resume there.