Extracts from a British magazine article on B-Hop written BEFORE Saturday's fight...

These are extracts from an article by Gareth Seward, written in this week's Boxing News:

"...It is a fact on record that Hopkins is the most dominant champion in history in one of the traditional and historically great divisions. Going undefeated for 12 years with a 10-year reign as world champion saw him not only defend the title successfully a record-breaking 20 times, but to become undisputed champ and the first man to hold the titles of all four major sanctioning bodies simultaneously (IBF,WBC,WBA&WBO).

Although the middleweight division hasn't been overwhelmingly strong in recent years or particularly during Bernard's reign, he did no less than what he could have done - he was thoroughly dominant and ducked nobody...

The common attempt to diminish these victories by Hopkins's detractors is the argument that both Trinidad and De La Hoya were naturally smaller men moving up in weight. It is a biased, twisted viewpoint that relies heavily on hindsight and straw-clutching. De La Hoya may not have been at his best and most comfortable weight at 160lbs, but the slanted view here is that he was totally out of his depth in the division. I don't believe that to be true. Sure, he had struggled in winning a close, controversial decision against Felix Sturm several months before his fight with Hopkins in September 2004, but you can see the difference in Oscar's motivation and his conditioning in the two fights he had at 160lbs. He looked nowhere near as fit for Sturm as he was for Hopkins, and I would dare argue that on that September night Oscar would have had a very good chance of beating any other middleweight on the planet. Unfortunately, though, he fought the best in the world. Hopkins ended Oscar's challenge in the ninth round of a reasonably competitive contest, yet still very little credit was given. This not only denies Bernard the credit he deserves but also does a disservice to Oscar.

The myth that Trinidad was just a blown-up welterweight also does a grave injustice to Hopkins' accomplishment. I seem to recall Trinidad was actually the big betting favourite going in! It was no secret "Tito", who was rated highly on everyone's pound-for-pound lists, had struggled for a while to make welter, and had not only destroyed David Reid's career at light-middle in taking his WBA title, but was also widely expected to embark on a dominant reign by cutting through the middleweights. This had begun with his fifth-round annihilation of Joppy for the WBA title, with Hopkins all set to be the second victim. However, as we now know, Hopkins failed to read the script. Bernard destroyed Tito with one of the most masterful, one-sided displays seen between two champions...

So after unifying the titles by destroying a rival champion he was the underdog against, suddenly it was a hollow victory as Trinidad was coming up in weight? Nonsense. I don't recall too many people prior to their 2001 showdown saying Trinidad was too small. Again, another example of bias and distorted views against Hopkins...

It is also worth noting that two of the other greatest middleweights in history, Carlos Monzon and Marvin Hagler, had some of their most famous victories against men who had come up from lower weight classes. Some of Hagler's highlighted wins include Tommy Hearns (former welter), John Mugabi (light-middle), Roberto Duran (former lightweight), as well as the controversial fight with Sugar Ray Leonard in which Leonard was a former welterweight moving up... Some of Monzon's most celebrated victories came against Emile Griffith (welterweight), Nino Benvenuti (light-middle) and Jose Napoles (welter). Nobody seems to haul either of these two legends over the coals for their victories over assorted light-middles, welters and lightweights. Yet when Hopkins beats two pound-for-pound greats of his era, his achievement is diminished?

Let's not forget Glen Johnson either. I'm not claiming Johnson is a great, but in recent years he has emerged as one of the top dogs in the light-heavyweight division... Look at all the losses on his record and you'll find most of them were, to put it generously, close decisions. Who is the only man to have stopped him? That's right, our man B-Hop. When everyone rattles on that Hopkins beat only smaller guys coming up, nobody ever mentions his knockout victory over one of today's toughest light-heavies...


The Calzaghe fight in April saw another split in opinions over who won. Do you go for volume and workrate and favour Calzaghe, or do you go for the precision and quality punching of Hopkins? Forget the stats that say Joe landed 200-plus punches. Nobody takes over 200 punches in a fight and comes out totally unmarked the way Hopkins did. For me, Bernard did the better work in landing the better punches, and a lot of Joe's flurries were non-scoring punches that were rewarded by the judges. An analogy I often use when explaining this principle is this: in a football match, if Team A take 20 shots on goal and score only one, and Team B take ony five shots on goal and score three, then Team B still win 3-1. It doesn't matter how many shots were taken, the only ones that count are the ones that score...


You can look at paper statistics all you like, but just look at Hopkins and his opponent after the final bell. Who always looks worse? Taylor looked beaten up and swollen. Calzaghe was cut and bruised. Hopkins looked fresh as a daisy. When have you ever seen Hopkins cut or even seriously hurt?


So there you have it. Hopkins is not a myth. He is a very real legend."



WTF IS BEING SAID ABOUT HIM AFTER PAVLIK?!?!

:good

 

There's a clear difference between goals in an 11 man football match and whether 1-2 clear precise shots matter more than 20+ connected blows in a 3 minute window. If Joe's punches were so crap Hopkins would have walked through them and KO'd Calzaghe rather than grabbing him and tieing up his right arm every other time Joe engaged wouldn't he?

Stop trying to say the fight should have gone one way when Hopkins himself failed to make it so.

 

For one, who said it was fact?? I was merely showing some US fans what the features writer for one of Britain's foremost boxing magazines had to say about Hopkins before the Pavlik fight.

Also, it's clear you are not the most educated of men.

"Everything inside the inverted commas are the quotation", everything outside them was written by me. The part about a very real legend not being myth is inside them, that was not me 'stating a fact' based upon reading the article.

Log out.

 

Hopkins landed more clean, flush, significant shots - although he threw far far less. Calzaghe hit Hopkins on the arms, shoulders etc, and therefore had more connecting shots. The point the writer is making is that a low number of actual flush shots beats a high number of blocked or missed shots. I couldn't agree more. I just do not understand why people value coming forward and throwing lots of punches so highly in terms of accruing points - in essence all you are achieving is proving how good the other guy's defence is, you are being frustrated, negated and nullified despite your best efforts. How in hell does that translate into points these days?!?!

The skill, the art of boxing is being substituted for high-octane flurrying. It's a sad day for the purists.