Who beat better competition at 160 lbs; Hopkins or GGG? For the purposes of this discussion, let's exclude anything Hopkins did at 175 lbs. Who beat better competition at middleweight?
Hopkins. His opposition hardly set the world on fire and had outright poor points but Golovkin's middleweight era is the worst in history that we have significant film of imo.
Hopkins, but it's marginal to me, Golovkin's numbers are great and he's underrated legacy-wise at MW I feel.
Hopkins but not by much at 160. His dominant wins over Tito, Holmes, Joppy, Eastman, and Allen are pretty impressive. All of those guys could fight. In a mythical matchup, I would take BHOP over GGG hands down. He could beat you so many different ways.
Hopkins. Almost certainly that's purely down to the MW tournament and the politics of the time allowing him to keep every title. Golovkin is a missed opportunity for greatness imo. He spent 7 years ranked in the top two of the division. And many of those years he'd have been the favourite over the person ranked above him. But someone always got there first. Cotto got to Martinez and Alvarez got to Cotto. By the time he got to Alvarez he was faded enough that Alvarez could argue victory. But my problem with Golovkin was his competition stepped up in perfect time with his performance declining. So we're left with a relatively low quality resume. Where as with Hopkins he got the big fights and won them all dominantly.
IMO Hopkins got hosed against Taylor and Golovkin against Taylor and they were both old by then. I don’t factor those “losses” in. That said, it’s Hopkins. Trinidad was a great victory (though he wasn’t a natural middleweight) that’s the only great middleweight victory between the pair that’s official.
really? I don’t think either guy was at their prime just yet in the first fight. I think they were both still a little green. In the 2nd fight certainly not.
I'd say Hopkins, overall, competed with a better level of opposition. The gap between his and Golovkin's ledger might not be huge, but there's a significant enough of a margin to matter, in my opinion. I'll take Hopkins' contests against Taylor; Trinidad; Holmes; Joppy; Jackson; Johnson; Allen over Golovkin's against Canelo; Jacobs; Murray; Macklin; Geale; Lemieux; Brook... ...any day of the week.
I think Bernard Hopkins competition was a lot stiffer., Tito Trinidad, Roy Jones Jr, William Joppy, and Oscar De La Hoya.