Bernard Hopkins RTD 10 Carl Daniels: Prime B-Hop

It is not a great fight, but this is Hopkins emerging from his dramatic KO victory over Trinidad and you could argue that the added confidence is what makes this perhaps B-Hops very best performance if you're not allowing for the opposition.

The opposition though isn't terrible. Terrible opposition is unranked opposition. Daniels was in his second year ranked in the RING top 10, having moved up from 154lbs in 1997 and putting a long unbeaten streak between him and his failed bid at a 154lb title and was number 8 by the time he and Hopkins met ring centre. Daniels went off a cliff after this fight but his record up until this point was at the low end of respectable.

Hopkins doesn't lose a thirty second spell I don't think. The sneak right hand off the lateral step was never sneakier and the left-hook behind the ear was as good as I've seen it prior to maybe that Pavlik dismantling. This, I would argue, is the perfectly balanced Hopkins, one who marries the angles, quickness of thought and generalship from his later career with the legs, zip and volume of the early part of his career. He is absolutely dominant in every round, gorgeous body attack, and the fact that he has to take more steps than Daniels to do it doesn't yet matter (See his fight with Calzaghe for a fighter obsessed with economy, and tell me this version wouldn't have tortured him).

It's not a great fight obviously, but probably one more people should see. What do you make of it? What other post-epoch-making wins from history stand out to you in this way? How do you feel about this incarnation of Hopkins?

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I think you hit the nail on the head when you say "he doesn't make any mistakes". As Sanil says, Daniels isn't anything to write home about, and he's not testing those limits in the way Trinidad did, but Hopkins hardly puts a half-step wrong here.

 

That is very much the commnetary from the edge of that fight, hailng Bernard's "1950s boxing." Like everything else it exaggerated a bit but has truth to it.

 

Cool that you met him - but "no business at middleweight" - he was in the business of being ranked one of the ten best in the world (At least by Ring) at doing boxing weighing between 155 and 160lbs. That's some achievement.

 

I think he got it because he defeated Brian Barbosa (who beat Robert Allen), who himself was formerly ranked in the Ring top ten.

It's the most normal, natural way to earn yourself a number eight ranking imaginable really, happens all the time in all divisions.

He was also undefeated since 1997 at MW since his move up, which helps.

 

Absolutely off a cliff.

Certainly not alone in Hopkins opponents there, though that one is particularly disastrous.

 

Well, to do that, I'd have to watch the fight again.

So I could watch the fight for a second time...or you could do it for the first time!