Bernard Hopkins vs Sugar Ray Leonard 160

Someone bringing up Taylor atsch I thought we were talking PRIME 160lbs Hopkins not 40year old Hopkins.

 

Well, why does it have to be prime. Leonard was clearly past his prime at 160...So lets use a past prime Hopkins at 160 too.

 

Hopkins physical prime IMO was about 97 for me but no doubt 99-01 was his prime mentally and I think he was just as smart/cagey as he's ever been as proven by his brilliant performance vs Trinidad.

 

TS made it clear he was talking about the best 160lb version of Hopkins and this version as stated by others was better then the smaller past prime Hagler who SRL had a very close fight with but if we're talking Hopkins from the end of his 160 reign then you'd have to give the edge to SRL.

 

The only time Hopkins faced a fighter similar to SRL he was embarrassed, by Roy Jones Jr. The guy is a great, and yea he can beat the blown up Trinidad's and Rock Allen's of the world, he's already made that clear, but he's not beating a SRL.

 

Hopkins from Trinidad fight by split decision over Leonard from Hagler fight.

 

Hopkins wasn't "embarrassed" by Jones. He won about 4 clear rounds. He was hounding and stalking Jones and made it uncomfortable for Jones at times. But Jones' amazing natural gifts were just too much.

 

Yeah I think his physical prime would have been around about then, perhaps extending to around the Joppy fight. When I see him develop into the cagey fighter who uses his experience as a one of the strongest weapons in his game, I'd say around 2006. When we see him take on a Jermaine Taylor, that he can't keep up with but manages to steal enough rounds on my cards to win the first and draw the second. From there he really blossoms in that regard beating stylised boxers such as Tarver and Wright.

I think prior to that we see him developing that aspect of his game but not being as dependant on it as he is on say, his power, punching form, punch variety etc. I mean he struggles with the gameplan that Oscar de la Hoya brings to the table, and it takes him quite a while to work out that he should just be going at this guys with power punches where-ever he can. Against Trinidad he puts in a resounding performance, using the gameplan from de la Hoya-Trinidad but altered to factor in Hopkin's own size and punching power which means he can engage Trinidad more than de la Hoya could. He adapts the plan from a previous Tito fight well, but hes only really factoring size and his power, its not a revelation as such.

Both men where physical phenoms but I think Leonard shares much more stylistic similarities with Oscar de la Hoya, than with Roy. One thing that Roy could do for example was punch on the move, Leonard has to plant and then punch to be effective as JMP pointed out.

 

Because it has the word J U S T I N in it. That being said your not really allowed to separate words to get around blocks like that.

 

You DKSAB.

 

Ok, he was convincingly beat as he would be by SRL. Hopkins has always had issues dealing with speed and movement, and the fastest guys he has ever faced he lost to.

 

Well, no two fighters are going to be exactly the same, stylistically, and there are some similarities between SRL and ODH, but what troubled BHop the most has always been speed, something SRL had a lot more of than Oscar imho.

 

Leonard by Points from pitty pats. 7-5, 8-4 type decison....close but clear, outworking hopkins but never hurting him.

 

Both men match up well in speed, Leonard of course having slightly faster hands but much quicker reflexes in my opinion. That being said while Leonard has a lot of those physical qualities that made Jones such a great fighter, those qualities are confined within that style. I mean I thought Hopkins had quite a bit of trouble with Oscar before he worked out what he should be doing and stopped him. With Leonard being a bigger man than Oscar and a much more physically gifted individual, thats why I think he'd be able to pull out the decision here against B-Hop. I look more to that fight as an indicator than I would look at Jones-Hopkins for example.

 

93 Hopkins can hardly be considered prime and RJJ was a similar size to Hopkins hence his need to move up to 168 soon after his win over Hopkins and then to 175 and eventually getting to fight at HW. SRL is naturally smaller then Hopkins and Hopkins has shown how he dominated smaller men, the two best 'smaller men' he fought were DLH and Trinidad and he KO'd both of them and while SRL is no doubt a level above both Trinidad and DLH especially at 160lbs (where he carried the weight better then the other two) he was still the smaller man and not the same fighter he was at 147lbs and if we're talking about a PRIME Hopkins he'd give SRL problems all day long, he didn't gas as he does now, he could maintain a high workrate and he hit a lot harder then he does now.