Bernard Hopkins vs Marvin Hagler.

You're winding up, right? 'Cause this seems a bit too stupid for you.

Mercado got an undeserved draw in the first fight (held at in his home town at close to 3 000 metres altitude) and was easily dispatched in the rematch.

Jones didn't outclass Hopkins. He won by a handy points margin, but most of the rounds were quite close. Hopkins actually gave him one of his most competitive matches until Tarver. Certainly did a lot better than Toney.

I'd say that Calzaghe was closer to his prime than Hopkins. Hopkins must be the only fighter in history that gets stick for close losses in his 40s, in this case against another great fighter. He was 10 years older than Hagler was when he was embarrased by a ringrusty WW, for what it's worth.:tong

I do think you were trolling with the post above, though.

 

let's look at the facts: Jones, with a busted mitt, & weight drained whipped Hopkins, winning 9 rounds to three

to me, that's outclassed

he's already shown that against the elite, he can't win. against lesser competition, and almost everyone out there is way below Hagler & Jones, B Hop will beat or compete evenly against all of them

people here are just kidding themselves

be it bob Foster or Micheal Spinks at 175, or Marvin Hagler at 160, he's going to get his ass kicked every time

 

A shoitload of replies later....a simple and accurate summary of how it goes. Hopkins simply outclassed :good

 

What horse ****

How many people on here actually saw the Mercado fight?

See the following;

Hagler is way overrated for his top ceiling ability. Remember this is a guy that got beat by Bobby Watts of all people. Even Willie Monroe beat him in his prime then the you have the cherry on the cake...getting outboxed by a blown up coming out of retirement welter.

Hopkins prime for prime offers better ring IQ footwork and technique then anything Hagler would have experienced in his career. If anyone is getting stopped it's Hagler.

 

Hagler's fights with Leonard and, to a lesser extent, Duran showed that he was vulnerable to lead rights and could be made tentative against a crafty boxer-puncher. That doesn't bode well against Hopkins, who is a master at punching-and-grabbing and making fighters tentative.

I would favor Hopkins on points.

 

Perhaps sometime after the man-killer version of Ray Leonard?

 

If Hagler was slow to adjust to a little smart boxing by Duran, how well can you expect him to adjust against someone as tricky and unpredictable as Hopkins?

 

Dave's top ten: "Hagler went into the Duran fight with a counterpunching, conservative strategy, which Duran refused to fall into, which created somewhat of a stand-off"

He's got the above the wrong way around....It was Duran who went into the fight with the counter-punching, conservative strategy. Hagler admitted he thought Duran would be aggressive. He openly admitted Duran tricked him after the fight. And Hagler fell into this kind of fight with Duran.

He doesn't make any sense above either....if Duran had refused to fall into a counter-punching, conservative strategy, then he obviously would have been aggressive.

 

the way you describe it, one would think Hagler with his 60 odd fights, never saw a right hand before

 

Hagler was fooled into a 10-5 victory.

May we all be so dumb.

 

If you just compare name-for-name, then I would agree Jones' resume comes off better.

But if you consider the actual quality of the wins, I think it may be much closer.

Hill and especially McCallum were past their primes when Jones beat them, and Hopkins was still on the way up - just as Johnson was when Hopkins beat him. By contrast, fighters like Tito and Pavlik were at the heights of their careers. I don't think beating a 40-year old McCallum is a better win than beating a peak Tito or even Pavlik.

If you just compare the wins based solely on "name" value, then Johnson should be much higher on Hopkins' list, based on what he went on to do years later.

I think it's also worth noting that Hopkins completely owned Tarver, whereas Jones only scraped out one razor thin win in three fights.

TBH, I don't think too highly of many of the names on Jones' list. I think Gonzalez was arguably the weakest fighter ever to win the "lineal" LHW title, and DelValle, Malinga, Woods, and Grant were also fairly unexceptional fighters IMO. Even Griffin is mainly noteworthy because Jones lost to him in the first place; otherwise, he was a fairly unexceptional journeyman IMO.

 

No matter how you dress things up, Hagler was made to look ordinary by Duran. 10-5 or 9-6 or whatever one chooses to score it. All the press slated Hagler for his performance.

 

10-4-1 actually on my card.

Personally I thought Hagler did fine in the fight. He didn't destroy Duran, but he thoroughly outboxed him, which is normally hard to do for the bigger fighter against any smaller fighter, let alone one as cagey as Duran.

Could he have been more aggressive and taken Duran out? Yeah, no doubt. But it wasn't like Hopkins/Taylor where it could have gone either way or anything. He was in control pretty much the whole way.

Clear UD to anyone with their head out of Duran's ass.

 

Hagler clearly won but looked ordinary in doing so. It would have been a brilliant performance by an average middleweight at the bottom of the rankings with limited power. Hagler was rated as the greatest fighter in the world at the time. He had tools to finish the fight inside the distance. He showed Duran far too much respect.

 

You could think the same of most of Hopkins' opponents after seeing what he does to them.