A great display from Hopkins. Both were not entirely what they would become, probably, but they were both experienced men in their physical primes. Given what has occured since with Johnson, "The Road Warrior", this looks a very impressive domination. Here is the last couple of rounds. Contested at MW, Hopkins shows some nice feinting, superior strength, he's throwing right hand leads without needing to duck out first, got some speed. You boys rate this performance/win? The entire fight is on YouTube if you fancy it. [yt]MgphmCrLwpY&feature=related[/yt]
Hopkins looks like a very well rounded and adaptable professional who gives anyone who ever weighed 160 lbs, and very tough evening. Hopkins looked tremendous in this fight.
It's a top notch performance, though i've always thought Johnson was a thoroughly average fighter. I tend to see a high number of middleweights putting clinics on him. Can't fault HHOpkins for that though.He beat what was in front of him/
Imo this was the fight Hopkins entered his prime and along with Trinidad and Tarver his most impressive performance.
While Hopkins did look good against Johnson, his handspeed never looked as fast as it did against Trinidad. I'm not for one moment saying he wasn't complete or never looked good against Johnson, but not quite at his peak.
I'm glad someone started a thread on this. It was a great and underrated victory. Johnson was 32-0 at the time, he only lost his way for a bit after this fight because his zero was taken and he was schooled. He has always been a good, tough fighter. And no-one else has ever stopped him, and he's 40 now fighting the best young LHWs. A brilliant win and performance by B-Hop.
This summarises my feelings quite well - Mantequilla I think you're being a bit hard on Johnson, do you think he was firmly pre-prime? I mean Johnson hasn't looked close to being stopped since and still fights amongst the best despite his advanced years. Never stopped and here he is just systematically broken into little pieces.
I rate the performance well, i rate B-Hop as an elite, meaning the top tier of MWs history. Interesting how the styles employed in this one seem to be reversed as these warriors aged.
Hopkins is among the best technical fighters in history. No glaring weaknesses. I would say his biggest weakness was late in his middleweight reign when he was extremely cautious with a long punch volume. Probably both fights against Taylor, the second one more so, spring to mind the most as his lack of activity cost him those fights. When stepping in countering he would usually pull back out of range ducking, thus not being landed on and countered himself. His judgement of distance was remarkable at times.
This is a great effort. He'd be a tough out for any of the OTHER ATG Middleweights. I'll be glad to watch this fight in it's entirety. I'd rather remember this version than the recent, righthand-headbutt-clinch combination version.
Top notch win. It's going to take a lot to beat up Glen Johnson no matter when and what weight it's at.
An excllent performance. He's taking on a solid fighter an looks flawless against him. Johnson wasn't what he became later on, and even then wasn't all to special, but he was a world class guy here and he didn't even come close to winning a few seconds against Hopkins. It's an excellent win, but more so for how impressive Hopkins looks rather than the level of Johnson at the moment. Personally, I like the massacre of Joppy, it's his last performance that can be argued in his prime IMO, he never again (even against Tarver) looked as impressive as he did in that fight and the couple of years before. A great fighter, unquestionably.
That was the peak of Hopkins's career, so I wouldn't say he wasn't what he'd once become. Maybe in terms of mainstream appeal and acceptance he would go on to greater things, but he was never a better fighter than he was that night. Johnson was not the fighter he'd become in his older age either. A true example of a fighter who improved as he aged, stylistically and in terms of effectiveness. He was basically a sitting duck for Hopkins in that fight. Still, impressive display from Hopkins, on par with his rout of Tito.
Vintage Hopkins and a real domination. One of his signature performances and i think this version of Bhop matches it with anyone down the historical line, beating many.
Excellent performance by Hopkins, but it gets massively overrated now because of what Johnson's accomplished the last few years. Going into that fight, Johnson's level of opposition was terrible and he wasn't near what he'd become. Not OK, not average, we're talking a level of competition that made early Julio Cesar Chavez look good. That 32-0 was more inflated than Valuev's record was by a mile. Johnson then went into a streak where he lost to nearly every decent fighter he faced for the next 6 years (and no, they weren't all robberies like people like to pretend), improving steadily to the point where he finally became a world class fighter. He's a classic late bloomer who, once exposed (he shouldn't have gotten a title shot at that point in time, anyways), went through the sport the hard way to get to where he was, which is why I have alot of respect for him and root for him now. Even though Hopkins' win over Glen looks much better on paper due to the sparkling undefeated record, Tarver's win in 2005 was the far superior win.
