I just don't get the whole Hopkins is a pure legend thing

He went to his alt, lmmfao...

 

Castillo beat Floyd.

Maidana beat/drew with Floyd.

Oscar drew with Floyd.

Castillo and Maidana are both beneath Barrera.

 

Smoke and mirrors, brah. Most people don't pay attention enough to realize that he started fighting at light heavyweight, then moved down to middleweight when he got his ass beat. They just go "Wow, he moved up from middleweight to light heavyweight." Instead, they should have looked at the size difference between him and his opponents and realized that he should have fought his whole career at light heavyweight. So he gets a lot of credit for weight climbing, ie stopping his massive weight cut.

Then you have him beating some decent competition at light heavyweight. Tarver, Pavlik, Pascal, and Cloud aren't bad for a career, although it's not enough to make him a top light heavyweight. Ezzard Charles, Gene Tunney, Archie Moore, Harold Johnson, Billy Conn, Roy Jones Jr, or Tommy Loughran would have took his lunch money, but if you only compare him to middleweights then a good light heavyweight is a great middleweight and he stacks up with the best of them.

It all depends on how you measure him. If you think he was a middleweight who moved up to light heavyweight then he's great. If you think he's a light heavyweight who moved down to middleweight then he's just alright. If you think his post 40s career was the product of great technique then he's great. If you think that his post 40s career was a product of modern pharmaceuticals then he's just alright.

 

Don't mean as an attack, but surely Hopkins is in the top 10 middleweight. I would be struggling to find 10 better names?

 

And Barrera was beaten to Pulp by Pacman

 

All this because he lost to a Joe Smith Jr At 51 Years old?

Pac has 6 losses does that diminish his legacy as well, tinman? I guess not huh, since he beat MAB, and Ledwaba, right?

 

You'll be banned again just for impersonating a boxing fan.

 

I call BS on the "he was a L-Heavyweight from the beginning" argument.
The man weighed around 168 for decades.
That is like saying that Shawn Porter is actually a MW.

 

I think he was a top 5 Middleweight ever. I base that on the eye test though. I don't think he beat any elite Middleweights ever. But he dominated the division. In my opinion, when you don't have that elite fighter in your division, you have to dominate the Division for a long time, and he did. So then he moved up to Light Heavyweight, and won a title, at an advanced age. Since then he has been a legit contender, up until Kovalev. Everything after age of 40 in this era, just adds to the legend argument. All great fighters have 1 or 2 fighters that people claim they ducked, or did not fight at the ideal time, so what. He was a pure figher, master technician, did not have a knock out punch, so had to outwork/smart in most fights. 1st ballot Hall of Fame!

 

Check boxrec if you don't believe me. His first fight against Clinton Mitchell he weighed 177 pounds. That was his natural weight, the weight that he returned to in his forties when he didn't feel like doing crazy amounts of exercise and having a crazy limited diet anymore. He could have been 140-200 lbs with the right diet and exercise, but his natural weight was 175. Look at Christian Bale loosing 100 lbs for The Machinist then gaining it back for Batman, or just look at James Toney and the things he did with his weight. The man lost 50 pounds in a little over a month. Then he gains 60 pounds and fights as a heavyweight.

 

He was excellent at what he did. Without him there's no Andre Ward.

 

Pacquiao is shot and fights in a stacked division, GGG's style isn't going to age well once he stars getting into wars and gets hit more and more as his speed and reflexes deteriorate even further and Lomachenko wants to fight too often (on top of his already very active amateur career), he'll probably pile up a lot of injuries.

Klitschko on the other hand is a good candidate to break that record if he will still bother to box at that age. Heavyweight division isn't that deep in talent and I can see Klitschko beating a stylistically suitable opponent (some short cruiserweight-ish HW) 6 years from now, provided it's in Germany and the ref and the judges are on his side.

Let's face it, anyone from top 20 can become the champ nowadays, we've seen some guys winning HW titles that even a Klitschko 6 years from now would be the favorite against like Charles Martin and Lucas Browne. Guys like Szpilka or Glazkov could be champs 6 years from now if the stars align for them and I can see Klitschko beating someone like that with pure experience in a typical boring Klitschko fashion.

Also, we also need to take the modern PEDs into account.

 

gotta admit though, hopkins literally getting knocked out of the ring was legendary...

 

his longevity at the top was something special. Fact he fought big hitters like pavlik, kovalev and smith jr.... shows he's not a coward....

Although he has tainted his legacy with his excuses in his last fight with smith jr, his disrespecting of nazim richardson with the diaper comment and his refusal to do VADA testing which even pascal openly called himn out on.



The refusal to do VADA testing throws a big question mark over his acheivments. Just like pacqiuao acheivements prior to taking VADA testing when he was this killer knockout machine and after the cotto fight when people started looking at his excuses for not testing closer, pacquiao became much easier. Both pacquiao and bhop have made people suspect them because of their refusal to do the VADA testing. both had remarkable achievments, pacquiao moving up in weight and knocking out fighters twice his size and bhop fighting on at the highest level until his 50s.... but both these feats are highly suspicious because they never took the tests