Hopkins Jones Jr II is on

Brave aren't you.

Classy too.

Congratulations to your parents.

 

Chad Dawson is the best lightheavy today. He's the future of the division and Bernard Hopkins knows better than to fight him. What kills me is the **** Dawson takes, even from his promotor DiBella to be a more "crowd pleasing" fighter and disregard his careful, patient skilled style. Thank God his man Eddie Mustafa and Chad himself has the wisdom to discourage this kind of thinking. Dawson would give Hopkins a trouncing and Hopkins knows it, that's why Bernard wants no part of him apparently and instead wants a fight with Jones.

 

Congrats to your parent raising a **** sucker who butts in on other peoples banter, did your dad used to molest you? Or did you just used to beat off to Duran posters?

 

Its a shame HBO dont get behind Dawson and put him into some big fights. He has a nice resume but we need to see him in with some young guns now, which he hasnt faced Adamek aside. Anyone know who hes fighting next

 

Just as he was a brilliant fighter, Eddie Mustafa is a brlilliant trainer. I love how he desires for his man Chad to have a "long and safe" career, as he said recently in a Ring magazine article. Chad Dawson has a good personality and reminds me of a latter day Ezzard Charles in being a decent guy who dosen't talk trash and respects his opponents.

 

Bernard's retirement was about as serious as Floyd Mayweather's.

They are both about the same size naturally, but there's no doubt that Joe would have done better had the fight been at 168. I'm sure even Hopkins would admit that.

Well, if only the fight occurred at 160 then the Jermain Taylor performances could have been relevant.

If being the operative word. If he wasn't stylistically bad for Hopkins and if he fought at a weight he was best at.

I don't think Joe avoided so much as didn't really think Kelly was worth it. But Joe surely took the softer option in fighting a shot Roy. It wasn't the worst fight Hopkins could take, but at that weight and with his stylistic advantage, it turned out to be a low risk fight for Bernard and I think he knew it would be going in.

Sure and Bernard is a great business man. He's making the economically sound decision every time out. That's not going to get him shooting up the all time great list for me though. Not to the extent most others see him doing so, at any rate.

 

....

A budding Ottis Toole. Get help, boy. You have some serious issues around sexuality.

 

Are we saying that cynicism eo ipso detracts from Hopkins' achievements, or that Hopkins didn't achieve all that much because of the questionable circumstances of those wins?

 

The latter for me. I still think he's a great, but I have a lower regard for him than most given the circumstances of some of his wins, and the fact that he didn't actually make some fights that could have propelled him really high up there had he made them and won.

 

Isn't this where you tell Stone he's obviously never boxed?

 

Regardless of the 168 division being null and void at the time neither Hagler nor Monzon seriously entertained the idea of stepping up and taking on bigger and better challenges. Granted the opposition was very serious, but the more serious the greater the historic reward, right. Both dominated their divisions and when we really cut to the chase their was substancial criticism of both fighters opposition and division at certain times.

We hear a lot about Briscoe and Valdez but i have an article somewhere (from the day which is always telling) declaring both to be quite average.

Some things

1. Were Hagler and Monzon serious about legacy's given they never even rose?

2. Hopkins was a serious underdog vs both Tarver and Pavlik (Caz too?) so it's hardly cherry picking. Running down both Tarver and Pavlik given hindsight doesn't cut it here imo.

3. Tarver was coming off two excellent wins vs Jones who beat Hopkins and was very highly regarded. Again Tarver was heavily favoured and Hopkins was thought to be gone. Tarver had been matching it with the best of the division for some time and looked quite decent in doing so. It's a damn big jump from 160 to 175 and Hagler and Monzon were obviously reluctant.

 

The Americans certainly had disdain for the '70s middleweight scene.Some real critical pieces on Monzon out there as well.

 

Agreed, and agreed. Maybe if it was an American champ the likes of Briscoe and Valdez would have been built up much much higher.

 

I think coming after the great sixties period was tough, and with Monzon not paying much attention to the American scene there was myabe a bit bitterness as well from some writers.You could find at least ten sources that say he lost the Griffith rematch, most of them American.