I think that any discussion of Hopkins in the way of discussing his position in the grander scheme of ATG's has to take in the fact that many/most of the people that would be on such a list with him competed in the era of 15 round fights. Given that (except for the last fight) Hopkins generally takes a long time to build momentum and frustrate his opponents, he is also a classic throwback in the sense that he would have done much better in pulling out wins that were losses in this era if he had the advantage of putting three more rounds in the tank per fight (certainly against Taylor, maybe against JC). Thoughts?
He beats Taylor both times in 15 rounds, loses to Calzaghe with clearly a less amount of people feeling he deserved the win.
Fighters in the 15-round era had to have tremendous conditioning, but they also paced themselves accordingly. Is that Blind Lemon Jefferson in your avatar?
hopkins was not involved in 15 round bouts so what's your point please? i think hopkins never exhausts himself due to the smart way in which he boxes and his closed style of boxing - a bit like james toney and george foreman (comeback version)
It's true. Part of the fact we see a lot more older fighters now is because they don't have to go 15.
And conditioning it unbelievably better than it used to be. We don't know HOW good a lot of fighters pre 1990 would be if they had the unlimited training tools avaliable to modern day fighters.
I guess the point is that BHop is one of a few fighters that would have legitimately stood up to a lot of past fighters because of his smart style of conserving energy and coming on late. I think, as a result, it is easier to rank him alongside fighters from past eras that today's fighters who, even as middles and supers seem to gas out by round eightish.
