Jack Dempsey v Bernard Hopkins

Dempsey KO 1

 

Yep, I concede that anomalies could occur. The numbers would only be accurate in general, and would provide one guidepost among many.

And as you say, your judgments might also be incorrect.

Why not look at both?

My judgements would include my statistical analyses (especially if you're right that I'm the only one who'd do it), and I would thus not feel immoral for taking them into account. :hey

Again, why not both?

:yep

That wasn't what I meant.

When watching present-day boxing, the unpredictability is amazing. I'm never entirely sure what'll happen until they step into the ring. When watching boxing in the past, it's fun for similar reasons.

When picking the outcome of fantasy fights, it's a pain. I'll see if I can explain why:

Your analogy with chess is a great one. In chess (as you probably know), statisticians give players an ELO rating based on their performance. Although this number is rough, it pretty accurately predicts the outcomes of most matches. Guys with 1500 ELOs get crushed by guys with 1800 ELOs. Ultimately, chess is a numbers game.

Here's the catch, though: you can only measure players against their contemporaries. ELO ratings don't work across time. Like boxing ratings, chess ratings are tied to their talent pools.

Sure, you can compare individual technical details over time in chess just like in boxing. You can note certain good or bad moves that Morphy made in King's Gambit games, figure out how often Bobby Fischer castled queenside, and so on. But until you get a player from the 19th century to play against one of Fischer's contemporaries, you'll never be able to gauge what Morphy's ELO rating means compared to Fischer's.*

Chess analysts themselves -- including world champions -- don't agree about how good or bad Morphy was. He was clearly a great calculator and had an intuitive grasp of the game, but we have a lot of guys like that who never reach the top of the chess world. Plenty of GMs fall far short of the world championship, yet they still produce occasional sparks of genius just as Morphy did.

Now apply this to boxing. We don't have ELO ratings, but we do have a rougher gauge: the public's (and analysts') perceptions of individual fighters' abilities. Some of this, they get from looking at films. But they also get a lot of it from the guy's track record against the same talent pool that the other fighters compete in. In chess terms, these guys are all part of the same ELO pool. To get to the top, they need to get past a certain level of fighter consistently.

Now here's where the "sadly" comes in. We don't know whether the contenders, gatekeepers, journeymen, and tomato cans of today are better or worse than their counterparts of yesteryear. We know that Mayweather and Pacquiao are both great fighters by today's standards because they beat similar sorts of opponents coming up. They're fighting using a similar yardstick.

If they were chess players, we'd see 1900 ELO guys on both their records and know that these opponents were roughly equivalent.

Now bring Dempsey into the equation and see what happens. To abuse an already stretched analogy, you have no way of knowing what a 1900 ELO (journeyman, contender, tomato can, whatever) in Dempsey's era means compared to a 1900 ELO (journeyman, contender, tomato can, etc.) in Floyd's. That throws half of the boxing yardstick out of whack right from the get-go.


...And it's different from accurately picking fights today, because both guys are fighting in the same pool. I submit to you that the same methods that work so well today (boxrec + youtube) would work less well in picking cross-generational fights because you no longer have the luxury of a common yardstick.

This is why I'd never use "strength of era" measurements when picking fights today. It would be pointless, since they both come from the same era.







I know that you wrote more, but I'm afraid it's getting a bit later than I expected, and I have a ton of work to do. I'll try to get to it later. In the meantime, feel free to tear into my points as you see fit. :good





* Technically, I don't think Morphy had an ELO rating because he didn't play enough games to get a good grip on his strength statistically, but it's been a little while. I could have used Anderssen, but went with the less pedantic example

 

this is the classic forum, which means that if the more modern fighter is winning after 45 seconds of the fight then the ref will be distracted while Don King enters the ring and hits said modenr fighter with a steel chair over the head and then the referee conveniently turns round and counts him out

 

Hopkins is great, but he didn't become a LHW until his 40's. Really, does he have the stamina and activity to challenge Dempsey for 15 rounds? Does a more prime Hopkins build himself up to 180+ pounds to fight Dempsey? We haven't seen Hopkins against of anyone with a remotely similar style that I can think of. Pascal is probably more crude and nontechnical than Dempsey, and he only throws about 20 punches a round. Yes, this is a very old Hopkins. Calzaghe barely edged Hops based on activity but Joe practically has no punch in comparison to Dempsey. Imagine Hopkins not merely trying to counter-punch slapping activity, but counter-punch hard-leather dynamite coming after him? And since we're talking about Dempsey, we're talking about the peak version that ran through and dominated Fulton, Williard, Miske, and Carpentier. Not the distracted, tamed, Hollywood version that fought Gibson, Firpo, or Tunney that was seen as barely half the fighter whom burned blisteringly out of the hot sun in Toledo against Williard.

I think the parallels between Dempseys early ferocity compared to his Hollywood patchy activity run very much alike to Pacquaio's Tasmanian ferocity early in his career in comparison to the civilized man that's lost much of the fire and is far too busy entertaining the ideals of politics and other endeavors to have the same reckless killer instinct. Marquez and Nacho were counting on this and they predicted such a subtle shift towards controlled technique and tamer fuse would play more into a counter-punchers hands. The same scenario of course can be argued in the case of Dempsey-Tunney. Let's be honest, even if life was a distraction, age probably played a part to slow these high energy destroyers down anyway.

I digress. Dempsey UD 15.

Basically, I can't trust and expect an ATG MW (We're speaking peak now, right) whose most significant victories come from fighting JR MW & WW to take on a high volume, dynamite swarmer at his best and win. The point of these is to determine best versus best who wins. Not if Hopkins catches Dempsey on a bad night can he win? Of cousre he could, but this is not the hypothetical scenario of these threads. What is Hops to do on his best night to thwart off Dempsey, and convincingly beat him. Don't mention Tunney, Hops doesn't maneuver with mobility the way Tunney does. He relies far more on his classic stance and skills to out-box opposition. I don't see this happening. I don't see Toney able to do so either. Roy Jones Jr is actually a candidate I'm willing to consider.

 

i'm drunk and posting on this forum long enough to enter an honest ****ing opinion. i think dempsey wins this, purely on speed. frankly dempsey is **** on film. his resume isn't great either. if he was active in any era but the roaring 20s he'd be forgotten.

hopkins hates speed, especially when he doesn't hold a physical size advantage. hopkins is good, MAYBE great but he always selected his opponents carefully. pick his top 10 wins...how many WEREN'T middleweights or higher

like flea said,, dempsey would impose speed, terrify the bully hopkins and win. wait, let's pick all the time hopkins overcame an advantage and went on to win. if you say pascal, dlh, or pavlik you suck ass

 

1. Dempsey looks excellent on film at his peak, and certainly isn't a fighter to ever be forgotten, whatever the era.

2. Pure speed, Hopkins is likely the quicker man. Jack was very fast for a heavyweight, not so much for a Middleweight.

3. Hopkins is undeniably a great. Anyone who says otherwise is talking ****.

4. You want to pick all the times Dempsey overcame an advantage and went on to win? Hopkins is a different fighter altogether than pretty much anyone Jack ever faced, and I feel some people are overstating the size discrepancy here. Even if he wasn't at his peak anymore, the Tarver fight is a fine version of Hopkins to pick here and he likely weighed about 180-185lbs that night. The difference would be a matter of a few pounds.


This fight isn't cut & dry.

 

I'm sorry for ever having a go at you lufc. You have argued well against Janitroll. Well done.

 

Dempsey in one or two rounds. Just another thread trying to put down past champ by comparing them to guy who does not deserve it. Some love to do it especially when fighter is smaller, like Hopkins.

 

It is an interesting match up, Hopkins in his prime at MW was really a 170lb man, at LHW he was really a 185lb man. He has a big skill advantage but Dempsey may well bully the smaller Hopkins, the older Hopkins may get caught with something.

It is also easily conceivable that Dempsey gets completely schooled like Tunney schooled him

Why do you always persist with this lie when it's proven time and again not to be true. He beat Greb who dominated Brennan and Miske. He beat Gibbons who went 2-2 with Greb, he beat Carpentier, Heeney and Risko. Oh yes you persist with it to pretend Dempsey had beat opponents on par with Tunney when in fact he hadn't come close to

 

Essentialy, yes.

Of course, there is no value in re hashing this debate here.

My point is that five title defences put Dempsey somebody the upper echelon of lineal heavyweight champions, unless it is a Tommy Burns style title reign where many of the opponents are not genuinely elite by the standards of the day.

 

If you're going to claim dempsey is an "upper echelon" champion based on his number of lineal title defences then you can't deny tommy burns the same status.