Very underrated fight. Plenty of hard punches landed and one of the most combative fights of roys career. The crowd just happened to be very quiet and Merchant reinforced the idea it was boring with his commentary. But watch the fight again and youll see it was more of a fight than many realize. Bernard landed more than a few good shots This content is protected
I am a big B-Hop fan and found the fight a big let down. RJJ clearly won although Hop closed the cards late if memory serves? But a clear RJJ win. I am not sure if I would call it boring, but both guys were very respectful of the others ability that they were both very tentative in engaging as much as I would have liked. I am not sure that Hops could have beat Jones at this stage but I wished we didn’t have to wait quite so long for the joke of a rematch. Not on my rewatch anytime soon list....
It heated up in the second half and Bhop showed alot of heart walking through some of the left hooks that would have laid most Middleweights out cold. But yes the first few rounds were very tentative. Bhop is one of my top 5 all time favorite fighters, so is roy. I dont think Hopkins could have beat roy before roy was already declining for a few years. Around 2002-2003 it would have been close to a 50/50 fight imo.
I was there It was rather boring Of course, I wasn't exactly close to the action. I had a seat in the lower part of the upper deck. I remember I was the only white guy in my immediate area. All the brothers had pagers which were going off quite frequently. Bowe destroyed Ferguson in exciting fashion and Sharmba Mitchell short circuited Kenny Baysmore face first on the undercard.
Jones claimed he was 180 in this fight, and had a 16 pound advantage. He certainly looks massive compared to Hopkins.
bhop respected jones to much early and solved him the last 4 rounds. If he woulda been more aggressive went to the body early he woulda stopped jones that night
