How Good Was Bernard Hopkins In His 1993 Loss To Roy Jones?

WHen you fight a speed demon tha makes you pay for mistakes you fight more timidly. Jones had something to do with that. Look how Toney even fought Jones.

 

People who actually had seen Hopkins before the Jones fight, were of much higher opinion about his chances, than the people who knew about him from reading boxing magazines. How many people here had seen a few Hopkins' fights before the bout with Jones?

 

What were the odds before the fight? What were the experts' opinions?

Btw, those who claim Jones was all athleticism and more or less sprang out the way he was at his best, without being refined or polished in any way during the process, are hard to take seriously.

Jones had boxed since he started walking more or less and was much more skilled than generally given credit for. He was brought along in a similar way to Mayweather, by a father who was a former pro boxer. There's footage of him sparring a ww champ as a teenager and his technique is supreme given his age.

Those that think that all it takes to do the things Jones did is extraordinary reflexes and fast-twitch muscles have probably never boxed themselves. The balance, accuracy, timing and awareness he had takes a long, long time to develop.

 

I'ts a bit too simplifying to just go with how Hopkin's was viewed at the time. When Clay stepped into the ring with Liston he was, quite rightly, viewed as just another contender, but who had managed to hype himself. But we all know that he really would have been a handful, to say the least, for any HW who's ever lived that night.

Ponder this scenario: Liston beats Clay, but Clay manages to bounce back to outclass Patterson, Terrell etc - as he did in real life - and comes back after a lay-off to beat Frazier and Foreman et al. Even though Clay was just another contender when he met Liston, in this scenario it would still be Liston's perhaps best win.

 

I love when people act like that. Shows that their emotion got the better of them and thus reason goes out of the window.

But yes, of course. Jones did improve. Show me where I wrote that he didn´t? But what made him a great fighter was all already there, while what made Hopkins was still developing. That´s the point.

 

Everyone knows you hate Jones and always try to discredit him. Just pointing out your post was way off base and it was.

 

You really should read what is written and not what you think people perhaps could mean.

 

Yes, right. I know. You critizise Jones or Tyson and you are a hater. You guys should take a step back and take a long look in the mirror before posting things like that. :good

 

I know that, I was just pointing out, that despite Hopkins patient approach against Jones, he was still the aggressive fighter he was in the Mercado fight, so the assertion that he was a technical fighter at the point, is wrong imo.

 

Ali was well hyped and managed at the time though, and the number 1 contender, it's just that Liston was thought to be near invincible at that time.

Bernard Hopkins was rated with the likes of Vinny Pazienza. We know Hopkins was better than that, but I think we should rather find some middle ground than claim Hopkins was at the peak of his abilities and that it's a career-defining win for Jones.

He had not been tested at top level, or even a level below that really, and he was far from the crafty boxer he later became, which is quite evident in his following first fight against Segundo Mercado. Hopkins being as timid and cautious as he was against Jones fools people into thinking that he was being "crafty", I'd say it's more so that he just had no idea what to do in there against Jones. Not that he necessarily ever would've, but beating a 2001 Hopkins is surely a better accomplishment than beating 1993 Hopkins.

A fighter like Hopkins was not a natural talent, but one that learned from experience. In Jones's case, some observers felt that the Jones who fought in the Olympics already had the talent to win a world title right there and then, it was just a matter of time for him. The Jones who fought the likes of Malinga and Tate was already about as great as he ever was. The one criticism I have of Jones is that he never truly improved from his early days and in some aspects even regressed, relying too much on his physicality. By 1994 we were pretty much looking at the finished product.

 

I believe both Hopkins and Jones had about the same amount of fights.

 

Hopkins also had over a hundred amateur fights before getting into prison, not counting street fights.

 

That sums about up what I think. But of course when I write something like that I´m a hater. :roll:

 

Sure did, but anyone up to date with the amateur scene at the time will tell you that Hopkins was a nobody. He wasn't exactly tangling with top amateurs.

Going from fighting Gilbert Baptist to fighting Roy Jones is a big step, surely. Dennis Milton who fought a young Hopkins basically described him as a tough, well-conditioned guy, but wasn't impressed by his boxing expertise at all.

 

Jones competition, prior to their fight, was fairly comparable I think.