How Cagey is Hopkins?

10.

 

I don't know if this means the same thing as cagey, but it's like this, Hopkins is like a chess player that tries to never leave any pieces for capture, even when he decides to launch an assault on his opposonent's king, he'll try and not lose many pawns in doing so. He has perfected his defence from a technical standpoint. If you look at most Hopkins fights when he was young and brutalising his opponents, he'd be slaughtering guys along the ropes without exposing his own chin. In mid-ring, that powerful overhand right he has dropped people with, he steps to an angle before he leads with it, so as to have his opponent blindsided and to minimise the chance that he'll get hit in the process, that's when throwing a knockout punch. When he backs his opponents up he'll throw punches in bunches, about three or four, in an attempt to not get countered, you can see this in both Roy Jones fights, which are at polar-opposites in terms of the stage of his career they were contested. In his later career his footwork has been outstanding. It's essential that people understand the difference between mobility and footwork. Somebody like Roy Jones is a great athlete who is very mobile, Roy Jones' movement is different, it's born of practice, he has perfected his footwork in a technical sense. He has opponents unwilling to throw punches because the punch is not there to be thrown. Pernell Whitaker for example, could stand in front of a man and have that man think he can hit him, the man would try and to his dismay, hit nothing but thin air. Hopkins wasn't blessed with such special reflexes, but as aforementioned, his positional awareness is some of the best of all time.

If all of this stuff factors into caginess, then he's one of the goats. Tommy Loughran was amazing at being cagey, but it was usually a pure boxing affair in a defensive manner on his behalf. Hopkins has often been very versatile and retained his caginess, as i've described above. Basically he's mastered boxing.

 

Got progressively cagier as he got older.

 

great analysis. :good

 

While becoming progressively worse overall.

 

Thanks kmac and kopejh, gotta go to bed now.

 

11 A defensive artist, very differant from most defensive specialists. He's old and great!

 

not all that tricky

just the refs LET him get away with whatever


does the same dirty bs every fight and they DONT SEE IT lol

 

Does faking low blows and getting 4 minutes to recover count as cagey?

 

Excellent post teeto. Hopkins is soneone who didn´t became a great fighter through talent or natural ability but through dedication, discipline, practicing and experience. In that regard he is some kind of a rolemodel for young fighters IMO.

 

:good

 

I concur :good