Glen Johnson, Antonio Tarver, Chad Dawson, Bernard Hopkins, rate 'em at light-heavy

This is complicated.


By my reckoning, Glen Johnson lost just once between moving up to LHW in 2001 and summer 2008 when he was legitimately shaded by Dawson. IN that time he became the world's #1 LHW by beating Eric Harding, Clinton Woods, Roy Jones and Antonio Tarver in quick succession. LHW was obviously blown up when Tarver beat Jones, but it was Johnson who resealed the division by beating Jones then Tarver. I would consider his losses to Woods, Gonzalez and Harmon unfortunate at worst for the Jamaican. Dawson's reasonable victory over him represents the end of his prime, I reckon.


Antonio Tarver went on an absurdly good run beggining in 2002. He beat Reggie Johnson, Eric Harding, Montell Griffin, Narrowly lost to Roy Jones, then beat Roy Jones lost to Glen Johnson, beat Roy Jones again then got caned (and finished at the highest level) by a resurgent Bernard Hopkins.


Chad Dawson is troubling. In 2006 he cracks the whipping boy for this bunch, beating Eric Harding, then Adamek. He legitinately defeated a slipping (I think) Glen Johnson in 2008 and 2009, sandwhiching a pair of wins over Dawson in between these two victories. So he's gone 4-0 versus the above, and then he beat Hopkins very clean in 2012 - but before that he gets pretty cleanly out-pointed by Jean Pascal, a fighter Hopkins thumped pretty cleanly, and one who I think it's fair to say just isn't in the same class as Johnson and Tarver.

Bernard Hopkins and kicked hell out of Tarver but lost narrowly to Joe Calzaghe, beat Pascal, loses to Dawson. I think he's clearly #4 out of these four, but I included him because he beat Tarver.

So how do you rank them, overall, at 175lbs only. This isn't just relative to each other - who would rank higher all time, that sort of ****.

 

If we include both Dawson losses for Johnson, he has four legitimate losses in his core run. This is the same number as Tarver (Harding, Jones, Johnson,Hopkins).

I wouldn't hold Cloud against Johnson any more than I would Kovalev against Hopkins, really.

Dawson has fewer, but he suffered a KO1 loss against Stevenson, which is pretty devastating.

Still, Dawson as #1 is an interesting choice. On paper I think it might be the right one. The question, really, is how good were Tarver and Johnson when he beat them? Both were getting on a bit at the very least.

 

Dawson was underwhelming but look:

Bernard Hopkins
Antonio Tarver x2
Glen Johnson x2
Adamek
Harding

That's impressive on paper. Very impressive. And he's the only one to have beaten all of the other four.