Top 10 greatest cherrypickers of all time

Unbelievable.:-(

 

hilarious to read all the name's who are mentioned here.seriosly Ali,Armstrong,Langford,Greb,Leonard,Duran,Hopkins etc.

lots of trolls here today?

next someone will claim that Robinson was cherrypicker?i bet some trolls overhere could make case for that.

 

Your not even good enough become a hater. If you had a brain, you'd see Wlad has fought many fighters that were ranked #1-#5 by ring magazine, fight news, and box rec.

He also gave re-match to Peter, who had his share of moments, Brewster who upset him, and Thompson, who landed a good amount on him.

Wlad has ducked no one. He has been champion for many years, much your your dismay.:hi: How many fighters ranked in the top five for say two years did he avoid? I count zero. Get a new gig.

 

Im not the worlds biggest Wlad fan, but he did face and beat the guys that have mattered.

Peters, Haye, Povetkin, Byrd.

Notable names that are missing are Vitali, Valuev and maybe John Ruiz, and maybe Adamek.

Other than that, hes beat everyone he needed to beat.

Obviously there will always be questions marks surrounding Sanders and Purrity.

I want to see Wlad fight Fury, Wilder, Chisora and Jennings before he retires, and maybe even Joshua if he is still around.

If he does that i have no problem moving him much higher up on my Top list of heavyweights.

 

Quote:
Originally Posted by scartissue

Hopkins, like it or not, fought such a glut of no-hopers that it is hard to get around that. I would like to think that he was going after Gerald McLellan, Jorge Castro, Reggie Johnson, Julian Jackson and Steve Collins but what we got was bums like Morade Hakar, Steve Frank and Bo James. We got pointless rematches with the ordinary Robert Allen and Antwan Echols and matches with overblown welters like Simon Brown, Felix Trinidad and DeLaHoya. You might say he fought Glen Johnson, but Glen Johnson wasn't even Glen Johnson then. He was 32-0 but not one recognisable name on his record. I won't doubt you if you say he was trying to get a match with these guys, but maybe his style had something to do with that. He was not the typical Philly fighter. He wasn't overly exciting, which maybe why some didn't want to fight him. I don't know, but again, it's hard to get the head around such ordinary opposition.


Ignorance.

Bernard Hopkins won his title in April of 1995. McLellan was a vegetable in February of 1995 just a few months later Jackson had been embarrassed by Quincy Taylor and tossed into the trash heap from which he never emerged. Jorge Castro could and probably would have happened had he not lost to the horrid Shinji Takahara at the end of the year due to weight issues and then moved up never to return to MW. Steve Collins had already moved up to 168 by the time Hopkins had won his title at 160 and dont get me started on Collins "wins" over Eubank or the level of his title defenses... Reggie Johnson was chasing Castro when Hopkins won his title and when he lost their rematch at the end of 1995 he not only left MW but leap frogged past SMW to jump two divisions up to 175 and never came back down. So yeah, your timing and your comment about Hopkins ducking people is way off base. Especially when you act like instead of fighting Morrade Hakkar he should have fought one of those guys. The Hakkar fight was nearly a decade after any of those fights could have even been dreamed of. Anyone who was around boxing in the mid 90s can tell you that Hopkins wanted the biggest fights he could get but was frozen out of the picture by Don King (which is why he went ape **** against King during the promotion for the MW unification). The division was depleted by the time Hopkins established himself and he chased any fight he could get, practically begging for it. Its sad that some want to diminish or ignore that and paint the holes in his record as ducking because in reality it was the exact opposite and why his domination of the MW tournament was such a feel good story. King had even tried to freeze him out of that despite being the longest establish champion in the division but HBO suits forced King to accept his inclusion (after Hopkins agreed to take short money) and he proved he was the man in the division all along. His two biggest rivals werent McLellan, or Johnson, or Castro, or anyone else but Joppy and Holmes, both of whom were prevented from fighting Hopkins by King and when they did you saw why: He dominated both easily. Yeah the guy is a cherry picker which is why hes still fighting at 50 and his next fight is against a guy some think will kill him. He could easily be sitting in a rocking chair right now and grinning over his millions while waiting for his first year induction into the HOF.

Ignorance??! I come on here for normal discourse with knowledgable fans and I get this? You'll have to forgive me for naming fighters not up to your standards. You see, I answered immediately. I didn't wait 3 days while I went over boxrec to get every stat so I could start a flame war. Twice in the above post you accuse me of saying Hopkins ducked an opponent, which is something I never said and I defy you to show me where I said that. The topic is 'cherry-picking', which every long-serving champ can go under the microscope for. You are very vocal with adjectives such as the "horrid" Shinji Takahara, yet give Morrade Hakar a pass. What are you doing, Cherry-picking your words? And let's not go into what he has done at super-middle or light heavy. I clearly said in my initial post of the top ten cherry-pickers that I named Hopkins at middle. I was talking about his middleweight reign. I feel he picked it up as he went up in weight. So don't put words in my mouth. When you do, that is just ignorance.

 

It is ignorance. Ignorance of the context of the times. You said he cherry picked during his MW reign and then picked a bunch of guys he supposedly avoided who were done within his first year as champion. One of them was brain dead by the time he was champion. Sorry pal but thats ignorance of the situation.

You say you didnt say he "ducked." Symantics. Cherry picking is when you pick an undeserving or easy opponent over a difficult one to avoid a challenge. Hopkins didnt do this, at least not willfully, and certainly not in regards to the fighters you threw up as examples. I illustrated why above. If you dont like it then go back and blame history just dont shoot the messenger because I point out that your timeline is all screwed up.

 

I don't deny that Tony Zale and his management choosing Rocky Graziano over more highly regarded opponents had a very strong element of cherrypicking in it, but history shows that Graziano was an extremely formidable fighter in his series of bouts with Zale. In fact, that series of bouts is generally regarded as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, in boxing history.

A more blatant form of cherrypicking is fighting opponents or challengers who are not capable of providing any meaningful competition, leading to inevitable mismatches. That doesn't come close to describing Graziano or his bouts with Zale.

- Chuck Johnston

 

Graziano was formidable because Zale was already slipping and up for a tear up.

Before and after, Graziano never beat a highly ranked middleweight. As far as I remember.

 

Lucky for Wlad those few top rankers he fought were all half the size of him and he still needed to consistently break the rules to win.

 

He ducked Valeuv, Briggs, Chisora, Sanders, Willianson and Povetkin.

The Povetkin duck was the most disgraceful since it took place in the ring. So shocking it caused death to a member of the audience.

 

I dont agree with his constant holding at all.

But at the end of the day you have to beat whats put in front of you.

 

Do it impressively if you want to have any fans or leave behind a legacy.

Boxing is a spectator sport at the end of the day. Appeasing the fans and giving them their moneys worth is the responsibility of the fighter.

There's heritage to the HW championship. It shouldn't be degraded and dragged through the mud like it currently is under the ownership of Wlad

 

Hagler and the Duran rematch fit your definition of cherrypicked to a T.

 

Originally Posted by scartissue

Hopkins, like it or not, fought such a glut of no-hopers that it is hard to get around that. I would like to think that he was going after Gerald McLellan, Jorge Castro, Reggie Johnson, Julian Jackson and Steve Collins but what we got was bums like Morade Hakar, Steve Frank and Bo James. We got pointless rematches with the ordinary Robert Allen and Antwan Echols and matches with overblown welters like Simon Brown, Felix Trinidad and DeLaHoya. You might say he fought Glen Johnson, but Glen Johnson wasn't even Glen Johnson then. He was 32-0 but not one recognisable name on his record. I won't doubt you if you say he was trying to get a match with these guys, but maybe his style had something to do with that. He was not the typical Philly fighter. He wasn't overly exciting, which maybe why some didn't want to fight him. I don't know, but again, it's hard to get the head around such ordinary opposition.


It is ignorance. Ignorance of the context of the times. You said he cherry picked during his MW reign and then picked a bunch of guys he supposedly avoided who were done within his first year as champion. One of them was brain dead by the time he was champion. Sorry pal but thats ignorance of the situation.

You say you didnt say he "ducked." Symantics. Cherry picking is when you pick an undeserving or easy opponent over a difficult one to avoid a challenge. Hopkins didnt do this, at least not willfully, and certainly not in regards to the fighters you threw up as examples. I illustrated why above. If you dont like it then go back and blame history just dont shoot the messenger because I point out that your timeline is all screwed up.


OK, you Mensa candidate, here it is again. Don't parse my words or extract. It says "I would like to think he was going after..." Never did I say avoided. Those are your words and I don't want to hear about semantics (spelled correctly here). Floyd Mayweather avoided Manny Pac, Cus D'Amato avoided Liston, Williams, Folley. Hopkins to my knowledge never avoided anyone, he just cherry-picked. Do you understand about low-hanging fruit? I finally went over to boxrec and looked at names he could have fought such as Lonnie Bradley, Dana Rosenblatt, Quincy Taylor, Otis Grant and he could have made an absolute fortune taking on Davy Hilton up in Montreal but instead wasted his time taking on another pointless defense against Robert Allen. I recall an article at the time after his 3rd fight with Allen that stated, "Hopkins is looking to defend his title soon and has his sights set on Robert Allen...once Allen gets out of the hospital." Everyone was making jokes about his reign at the time. But that's not to say others didn't fight bums as well. Carlos Monzon fought them too. But he called them non-title fights.

 

Excellent comment. :good