In terms of virtuoso performances, they don't come much better than this. A 36 year old B-Hop totally dominating one of the worlds best fighters before finishing him in the final round. Amazing viewing. Where does this rank in terms of great performances in recent years?
The welterweight who hadn't fought at welterweight for 2 years, held a middleweight title and was the large favourite heading into the fight?? Yeah that's the one.
Also the same guy that was beating the other middleweights, including Joppy who was supposed to be the second best to Hopkins.
Exactly. He destroyed Joppy who was rated highly at the time. I'm a big Trinidad fan but that was a boxing lesson from Hopkins that night. No excuses.
I'd say it ranks behind these: Tarver-Jones II Marquez- Pac IV It's in a similar place as Kessler-Calzaghe or Mayweather-Pac/Canelo
Someone remind me again of the middleweights that Felix beat. This was the last fight I bet before giving up gambling for good. I made a sh*t-ton on it.
I made a bunch on this too. Hopkins won me a boatload over his career. Trinidad, Tarver, Pavlik and Wright. Calslappy was the only cash I lost.
Joppy was the only middleweight he beat before Hopkins. In hindsight, he clearly was not an elite middleweight, but after he destroyed (the then overrated) Joppy like that everyone overestimated his power at 160. That being said, it's still very rare to see that kind of dismantling against a fighter of Trinidad's quality. Dominant ww champion, had beaten some very good fighters at 147 and 154, still under 30 and in the best shape of his life, almost the same size as Hopkins (outweighed him), and still got absolutely dominated and broken down. I only gave him one round. Great performance.
Terrible performance by Tito's dad and George Foreman though (one of Foreman's worst performances). Foreman spent the whole first half of the fight criticizing & complaining about Hopkins and warning about all of the terrible things that Tito was going to do to him until Larry Merchant finally got tired of it and checked him in the 7th round.
The man who turned pro at 175 wearing down a man who made his debut at 147. It doesn't rank among the great wins in the sports history in any way shape or form.
The fact that Hopkins turned pro at 175 is less than useless; it's misleading. He fought Tito at 157. I agree that it's not one of the greatest wins but it's certainly a classic performance against a high-quakity, dangerous opponent.
Agreed, Foreman was awful. Hopkins totally dominating the fight and big George claiming he was playing right into Tito's hands atsch
