Best technician: Hopkins or Toney?

Toney. Unbelievable timing and infighting ability. Defensively excellent. I could watch fighters like Toney when he was really clicking all day. Hopkins ability is vastly overated in my book. He could never fight heavyweights like Toney did.

 

Hopkins is a fouling technician , Toney is a boxing technician and in boxing now I mean not just outfighting and countering but also infighting .

 

That´s like the specialist against the jack of all trades. Hopkins could do iprettymuhc everything and pretty well too. Toney could do one thing but that amazingly good, better than Hopkins could do anything he could do. Depends with that you like.

 

Toney had a few peaks I guess when he maintained his fitness, but Toney just had some serious natural talent. You cant just learn what he could do.

 

I think Toney would tear Hopkins a new one on the inside. His inside ability would offset a lot of that BS that Hopkins is good at.

 

If they fought I don´t think the fight would be on the inside very often. Hopkins has the footwork and footspeed to avoid beeing there. And yeah, I think Toney is superior to Hopkins there although not as much as you seem to think.

 

How many fighters were mobile with Toney and completely outboxed him? One? How many people were mobile with Hopkins and outboxed him? 3? Toney could close the gap to make the fight where he wanted it. He wasnt just a guy waiting on the inside.

 

Toney has very good footwork and closes the gap behind a jab and righthand very well.

 

I think the fact limited fighters were able to rough him up on the inside, guys like Echols, and Allen, and box him from distance like Taylor, makes a pretty good case for a guy like Toney to have some success. Hopkins really never fought anyone like Toney, and he definitely preferred a close range fight. That darting in and out would be countered by Toney who was excellent at it.
Hopkins really did most of his damage breaking guys down on the inside. He wasnt an evander Holyfield type stylist who boxed in and out, he would get inside wrestle, and wear guys down and then resort to going righthand happy. Jones and Taylor really used their footspeed to outbox him and keep him from doing a lot of his tricks to break them down at close quarters. I dont think much of any of that would work against Toney. He was big and strong and could fight out of the clinches very well. Just a superior technician and counterpuncher in my opinion.