Who has the best most impressive win over Hopkins

Kellerman is a moron, no doubt. He was pontificating on Hopkins the whole early part of the fight and was made to eat his words down the stretch. Manny has forgotten more about boxing than either of us will ever know.

Sometimes volume of output and high pace beat pot-shotting at a low rate. Hopkins was clearly looking for a way out in the 10th and got it by faking a low blow. If he had not done that, he would have been stopped. Calzaghe was starting to nail with great consistency.

 

each to their own eh?

I'm not saying I expect Joe to have stopped him, I wouldn't expect Haye to stop him. I'm saying trouble, he took the breather for a reason.

nah I don't question the win, as I said I've scored it 3 times now with 2 going in Joe's favour. I'm not sitting through it again anyways, horrible fight to watch.

ottke refused to fight him though. That aside I scored the Ottke - Mitchell fight for Mitchell and Joe beat him next so that point is moot imo anyways. Plus the holding all titles at the same time argument is pretty weak since he beat the title holders but got stripped. For me he achieved greatness as a SMW. maybe you disagree, it's a subjective sport after all. Remember, I value achievement higher than you.

 

Yup. Tiredness. Guy was 43. Couldn't sustain the pace 3 years earlier vs Taylor. Joe Cal set a higher pace when Hop was 3 years older. Still didn't have a hope in hell of putting Hopkins remotely close to any trouble at all ever.

Fair enough. Can't make you watch round 10 again. I do believe you'd score it differently if you removed any annoyance at Hopkins from your scoring of the fight though. JMHO.

I don't believe much of anything that the Calzaghes or ****** say about anything. The facts are, they never made a lot of big fights that could have been pursued. That's just the reality.

Calzaghe had already beat Sheika, and some people scored Sheika-Lacy for Sheika. Your point kind of devalues Calzaghe-Lacy if you considered that fight a moot point as well before it had even happened, using the same logic.

It definitely makes a difference for an undisputed champion to defend all 4 belts, IMO. To reign as an undisputed champion, facing the #1 contender of the whole division in your defences, is a rare and special thing. That is truly dominating a weight class.

Fair enough, you have lower standards for greatness than me. I can't bestow greatness on a fighter who had basically one top win, and zero wins over prime HOF-class fighters, from an entire career.

 

Not going to waste time conversing with you anymore man. You're off your rocker, not got time for this sort of madness.

 

tiredness in a professional boxing ring = trouble.

we'll never know

your choice

no, my rankings use my cards. I've personally watched and scored Ottke-Mitchell. I haven't watched Sheika v Lacy. Either way though he also beat Sheika so even if I was to watch (doubtful) and score for Sheika (hypothetical) he's still beaten him anyways. If anything it increases the value of the Sheika win.

Well you hold the belts in higher esteem than I.

yeah I guess I do. for instance I class John L as a great despite having a weak resume. Hopefully there aint a fighter you consider great that I don't or that'd put a spanner in the works eh kid?

 

It was obvious Hopkins could not hold the pace Calzaghe was setting. Joe cornered him a couple times and was pounding him, no more slapping, in the 8th and 9th. As Lederman said, those were incredibly easy rounds to score. Hop didn't have a response and pulled that inexcusable fake job. You do at least admit that was a fake, right? Why else would Hop have to resort to such tactics? It didn't earn him points; it was merely to stop the surging Calzaghe and the punishment he was absorbing.

 

The Marquis of Queensbury called it something otther than "dry humping" though...I think he had a Victorian type term for it..but you're right..it was held in high esteem.

 

1) Jones, 1st fight.

2) Dawson, 2nd fight.

3) Calzaghe

Those are the only impressive wins anyone has over Hopkins.

Clinton Mitchell MD4, Jermain Taylor UD12, Jermain Taylor SD12, and the no-longer-existent Dawson TKO2 can all **** off.

 

I agree with you on this, I think I was actually in agreement with Harold Letterman on this one and Manny Stewart and the team all had Calzage comfortably ahead. I think some posters do not read into the foul act (replays showed no foul) so why was B-Hop faking them (to gain rest and stop Calzages momentum) I guess its how you look at a fight but I think Bernard knows he lost this one.

 

:good

 

:good

 

I agree with this....

 

Yes!

I actually started typing a follow-up post, before you replied, but never got to finish due to a wet diapers and then a slew of other distractions...then my computer restarted itself (and vBulletin doesn't auto-save the contents of unsubmitted replies-in-progress :twisted...

Anyway, I'm going to delay reading the rest of what you wrote so I can spit out what I had earlier reconstructed from memory and complete the thought, then I'll look back...

 

Morning!

This content is protected

Alrighty then, back to business...

So, really, we've observed and commented upon much of the same...it's just down to interpretations differing a bit.


I see 47yo Hopkins as worse than 43yo Hopkins, indeed, but it's far less of a drop-off than the one between prime Hopkins and 43yo Hopkins. :conf There is separation there, doubtless, but looking at his career from a distance, telescopically, 43 and 47 are "close enough" - not only in chronological proximity but also in Hopkins' apparent in-ring abilities.

Let's not forget that Calzaghe himself was knocking on the door and probably near shot himself, probably hitting the "eject seat" button and hurtling into space at exactly the right moment. Pavlik was faced with someone who wasn't much smaller than him, couldn't be bullied or impressed having already seen it all, was much smarter than him, and had the style & guile to really lay him over a knee and spank his bottom. Jean Pascal - I love his grit, and he's a talented athlete - but let's face it, he's a ****ing moron. You can't really be a ****ing moron and do too well against Bernard Hopkins.

I would posit that Hopkins has been well 'past it' for a lot longer than people realize, but the dispositions and styles of certain opponents have made it seem otherwise, briefly, at times. IMO his last real hurrah at peak ability was the rout of Tarver. (Winky was just too small to have any serious prayer of clearly earning a decision, but he still showed the beginnings of deep cheeeenks in that well-worn armor..) Since then, he's kept everyone fooled - including, probably, himself.

As for Hopkins' complete ineffectiveness and resorting to the lowest of the low and foulest of the foul deeds, because that's all he really had left to work with at that point - I agree. Those acts were a smokescreen for the fact that he was bereft of any other options in there. However, if you rewound 4 years and installed the slightly less creaky and more determined version of Hopkins into the ring with that 2012 version of Dawson in a time warp, I really don't think the outcome's any different. Still wide for Dawson. Because Hopkins was pulling the same mischief he'd largely been up to for 4-5 years already as his bread and butter, just taking it to the extreme in this final bow. (again, probably as a last "**** you" to Dawson, with his intent being to make as big a poopy mess as possible rather than legitimately try to win) He was a caricature of himself that night, really aggravating to watch...especially for those of us who were hoping he'd have been incited by the TKO2/NC2 ordeal to bring out the "vintage" stuff one more time and give us a behind-the-woodshed classic.

The offense he mounted against Calzaghe, or even Pavlik? Dawson fights absolutely nothing like either of them. The defenses he plotted out against the 2012 non-offensive Hopkins would have served as an effective barricade against those earlier versions. He wasn't trying to swarm Hopkins and overwhelm him with high-volume bursts (au contraire ) and thus creating openings like Calzaghe did. He wasn't...well...plodding in ham'n'egging it and begging for a knuckle sandwich like Kelly. I just don't see how a mid-40's Hopkins putting in a more serious effort and spoiling less would have accomplished anything as far as swaying rounds his way against that Dawson. He didn't lose because he was old and shot and couldn't do anything but jump on your back and foul you. He lost because current Dawson is better than any post-Tarver version of him. The antics were his way of slapping a band-aid on that.

 

Jones or Calzaghe

I would give the edge to Jones because he beat him more decisively