Carlos Monzon vs Bernard Hopkins

I actually think this one would be something of a technical and tactical stalemate. Hopkins says it would be a "war", but he says that about all his fights, the rascal.

The defining factor in the boxing stalemate would be concerning distance and control of the distance. Who has it? Well, they both do. Hopkins won't want to let Monzon lead in on him, I think he would fight Monzon very like he fought Calzaghe, giving up real estate in an attempt to control the when and where of the exchanges. We'll get to pacing in a second, but let's have a look at the distance for now:
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Forget the grabbing too, we're talking about the prime version of both men, and so Hopkins isn't going to be trading on over-clutching here. Zip it on to about 45 seconds of the above to get a little look at what I mean. Hopkins makes a series of small moves over and again trying to keep Calzaghe from getting set. It's a braver strategy than it looked IMO because Calzaghe's punching style means he is blessed with a technically supernatural balance in the sense that his "slaps" (for want of a better word) don't call for traditional balance - now, Monzon's punching does. So from the off, I think this is a very positive strategy for Hopkins defensively speaking. Monzon would be working to make his own angles of course, but the minute or so of that vid is illistruative, in fact that whole second round is. Hopkins isn't "running" he's permanently in range, or nearly, but he is mobile enough and his timing of the moves is good enough that Calzaghe actually hardly puts a glove on him. I feel Monzon would struggle badly with this style.

Monzon-LiCata:
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LiCata actually tries a far less perfect version of what I think would be the Hopkins plan. He too is ceeding ground, though he is more often out of range. LiCata also actually shows, right off the bat, how clutching might be handy for Bernard, moving inside the left and holding as he does in the first action of the video. But it's what comes after that is interesting I think. Watch Monzon's feet as Tony moves. Tony does get hit but it's only when he's failing to force Monzon to move. That is, when Monzon eats up what is left of the real estate, Tony gets hit, and when Tony makes bad small moves, he gets hit. But when he is moving Monzon around with him, he doesn't get hit - in fact Monzon is made to miss a good deal in this few minutes of footage.

Check out the slow-mo replay at 2:45 for a good example of this. As Monzon is being forced to move in he he misses (mostly) with an uppercut and then misses with a right hand. He half catches his man with two other blows then, but it is only when he draws his man onto him, he really hurts him. This is Monzon of course, and he's using these sheparding punches specifically for this end result. The question though becomes, could Hopkins be sheparded?

The short answer is "no". Hopkins traded specifically with the currency that Monzon is trying to buy him with. Tony LiCata's title challenge descends into a bit of a hammering only as he becomes really disorganised, as he stops controlling, or at least contending, the space. Hopkins isn't going to become disorganised. But this coin has a flipside. How is his offence going to work out in conjuntion with this backfoot approach?

Hopkins punches are compact and accurate, but he's in with a different kind of beast here. Against another stand up boxer, Pavlik, his combos were absolutely devastating, but the thing with Monzon is he is a whole lot looser than Pavlik, going straight back to ditch straight punches and coming inside of down whilst firing back to smother and counter the more compact stuff.
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Benvenuti fought generally more aggressively than I would expect Hopkins to, but it's still a decent fight for looking at Monzon's defence in this situation.

Not the thumping jab thrown from maximum distance. This is not a punch for setting up combinations for even a skilled technician, it's a punch designed for it's own satisfaction and a defensive one. Even in countering this jab a fighter has to travel the entire distance of the jab. It's not a "stepping in" punch it's a "**** off" punch. An opponent has to travel the distance of the punch. This generally means that even the best balanced opponent will be less well balanced than the puncher. Combined with Monzon's short game, clubbing and short on naunces, every fibre in the being of a fighter like Hopkins will be saying "wait" in the light of this punch. He wants nothing to do with this fight. So he would move off and wait, transferring the balance issue back to Monzon but at the expense of his own offence.

Monzon is beautifully, beautifully developed to evade pot-shotting opponents. He drops the shoulder, he dips the head, an he's excellent at ditching punches at this sort of range. Bene throws 15 single leads, including jabs, in the first round, and lands one or possibly two of them, both on an opponent that is going away. This is what we mean when we say it is hard for an opponent to "get going" against Monzon I guess.


Combining Monzon's skill against pot-shots, a style that would be prohibitive in the extreme to any Hopkins rushes and the Hopkins ability to keep much more naturally balanced fighters off kilter (speaking purely in terms of punching style) and his second-to-none control of space I see a weird peace breaking out between these two. This fight isn't just hard to score because of the near identical quality of the two fighters but also their styles and the basic impossibility of knowing what the judges will see and like. So for all of this stuff, I add it up to "dont' know". But there are a couple of other things that might yet be more decisive.


In a fight where both guys are trying to win, violent exchanges are inevitable. No question that both guys want to win this one, but as I think I showed above, there isn't going to be a tremendous amount of leather being exchanged here. I do think serious exchanges would occur though, when one of two things happen.

Firstly, when the two guys run out of real-estate to trade. I haven't seen anybody above featherweight make escape routes without drama in the manner Hopkins does it. He can feint or step his way to "safety" more easily than any fighter i've ever seen that isn't tiny. However, Moznon has been know to aggressively attack the space, so he's going to peg Hopkins in occasionally.

Secondly, and more cruically, it can happen when Hopkins wants it to happen. Hopkins can "allow" himself to be caught at any time, almost. Worse for Monzon, if he settles into a pattern of pursuit it's inevitable that he's going to get caught more and more often.

I was going to dig up some video footage of all this but I can't actually be arsed. Based on all of the above I think i'd lean slightly towards Hopkins. I think he is the more skilled of the two strateigcally and that he has a serious tactical style advantage (the ability to chose when the two fight).

This gets scrubbed if Monzon can make him fight significantly more than he wants but the pressure is on Monzon there. Even a great fighter can start snatching or pressing for an opening that isn't really there in this sort of fight.

 

Cheers Cobra, for linking that, I redouxed it.