Marvin Hagler, The Thread.

Beat the overrated Hopkins convincingly with an injured right hand?

 

Brilliant Hagler tribute that always makes me wanna train.

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I would definitely have prime Jones on top in any middleweight matchup with a prime Hopkins but it's hard to argue that Hopkins actual accomplishments at middleweight were not greater.

 

So Jones was better at middleweight even though he didn't stay there that long, Yes?
As evidenced in this thread, people seem to agree Robinson was so great at Middleweight even though he doesn't necessarily have the record.
Why can't I do the same with Jones?

 

There's a lot more than that to Hopkins but if you don't see it you don't see it. Hopkins always comes in with a great gameplan and can adapt on the fly. When he can whip opponents in a straight forward then he's going to do that all night, or until they fall. The guy is superb defensively, counters extremely well, works the body well with both hands,has great footwork, takes a great punch and is excellent in close for starters. His rounds won vs rounds lost ratio over his decade of dominance at 160 is sick.

Hagler let a lot of things happen against cerebral fighters. Hopkins would be coming at him with things he'd never seen and he would be making changes on the fly. Hagler is predictable and methodical even if multi faceted. You know what's doing. Only a small number would be great enough to do anything about it tho, he's got some serious assets. I think Hopkins is one of these guys.

Disagree. Monzon beat him (no shame in that) and Briscoe was the epitome of a straight forward fighter. Briscoe was absolutely perfect for Valdes to excel against, he was made for him.

What made Briscoe very very hard to beat was his toughness, power and relentlessness. He had excellent durability, solid and better power in every punch, didn't neglect the body and just kept on coming and chugging forward. He wasn't the most skilled but again, he was relentless. You wanted to be a good tough skilled boxer or better than him at his own game. Valdes was the second. He took a punch just as well or better, he hit a smidge harder, worked the body as well and he too could go allllllll night. On top of this he excelled against guys walking onto him and was quite skillful against such a style where his counter punching came to the fore. He was a different fighter against an elusive guy comparative to a come forward guy. Valdes was just better than Briscoe while matching of exceeding his assets.

Valdes isn't undersold by the more serious fan, but the casual yes for sure.

I think Monzon would beat Hagler and lose to Hopkins, all opinion as well of course. Valdes would likely have reigned for some time yes. Griffith may have been a difficult opponent very early in a potential reign.

He had the odd lot of shenanigans going on but was one helluva competitor on the whole. Who knows what was really going on. He does some great insights nowadays.

 

I think Monzon could beat him and I also believe Hopkins would have a very good chance

Hopkins is a big man at 160 and he has the right style to frustrate the hell out of Hagler and rack up a points win

The only thing against Bhop, is he might not be active enough and the judges would prefer Marvin's aggression

I'm not saying Hopkins should rank as the better MW (though it's close), but I think he could definitely take a decision

Why isn't Roy Jones Jr on the list? Was he not champion for long enough?

I would certainly favour him over Hagler and pretty much any MW h2h

 

John I appreciate your post although we just have to agree to disagree on this one. No hard feelings or arguments. You put as lot of effort in this post I just Hop differently. I appreciate the time and insight though.

 

Hey all good Rob. It's all about different opinions and angles mate.

 

Exactly...I've moved on from arguing with people about fights and fighters. I'm opinionated for sure but I also respect how others feel especially guys who are as passionate about this sport as me and I know your one of them.

 

I find it kind of annoying that Greb spent as much time as he did at middleweight, somewhat obligating us to include him in threads/discussions like this, when really, there's plenty of footage of every other great middleweight and zero for him. It feels silly to say he would or wouldn't beat Hagler, because we have no idea what he fought like (yes, there are written accounts, but.. eh..) - so I'm leaving that box unchecked not because my opinion is that Hagler conclusively defeats him, but just because to me there's no such feasible thing as having a valid opinion regarding Greb vs. anybody h2h, really.

Now that we've cleared that uncomfortable hurdle..

SRR - if we're talking peak MW version, to make it as fair a match as possible with a prime Hagler, then I guess we mean Walker from about Olson I (alternately Bobby Dykes, if we're looking to avoid the Greb conundrum and limit ourselves to what's readily available for analysis on film) through maybe the St. Valentine's Massacre, or thereabouts? Which is considered to be a good 5-6 years after his respective 'true prime', down at welter...but he was still great enough to etch his name into the annals of legend at 160.

Here's what I think: his footwork still had plenty of sizzle & sheen on it, and he could have danced circles if not loop-de-loops around Hagler, but nonetheless, Robinson of the 1950s found a way hit to get too damn much, by lesser fighters than Hagler, with alarming frequency. I can't see him dancing on the head of a pin over twelve and never getting hurt - but then, I can't see Hagler finishing a pre-retirement Sugar, either. If they fought ten, I'd expect ten decisions of varying degree of controversy, much as with the other Sugar Ray.

Monzón is a super interesting one to ponder, and has been debated countless times on here. Escopeta is criminally underrated, in terms of the inverse proportion of his greatness to how often he gets mentioned - and he took full advantage of the also quite underrated Amilcar Brusa's (sort of the Dundee/Beristáin of Argentina, easily its coaching GOAT and up there with the great boxing IQ brains globally all-time as well) guidance to develop a brutally effective if not always "conventionally handsome" style. Here's something to chew on, though (and if this is factually inaccurate, please, anyone feel at liberty to correct me) - Monzón, incredibly, seems to have accomplished the statistically improbable feat of racking up a hundred pro bouts and never facing a southpaw. At least, certainly, not past the 'cutting his teeth' stage in the first couple of years - from Briscoe I draw onward, nary a lefty. Of course, that wouldn't automatically disadvantage him in this enough to imbalance the scales, but it would mean that both combatants were, each no less than his adversary, looking across the ring at something the likes of which he never had seen before, and which could throw him even the slightest touch off-kilter (which, in a mental game of inches as this would be, is hardly slight). I feel like they would confuse and irritate one another over the long haul, with Monzón dialing in the straight right and scoring it plenty, but finding the imperturbable no-sell from Hagler discouraging. Likewise, for Hagler the initial joy at having someone cruise toward him on relatively slow legs, with seemingly not the most buttoned-up defense, would turn quickly to ashes in his mouth as his frustration mounted at realizing, as every Monzón opponent did, just what a logic-defying pain in the ass he could be. I think we ultimately end up with a distance affair that never quite pops off, despite threatening eruption at times, with lots of ugliness and puzzling about in between...and while there might be a degree of controversy, it would be the kind of fight where a majority of fans have it for one fighter, as would most pro judges, and I feel that'd be Hagler.

B-Hop from the bulk of his MW reign, any 1990's version really, loses hands down to Hagler. Like fine wine, he really did improve with age, becoming his "best self" while past the flower of youth and what should have been his athletic prime. Likewise, as of the losses against Taylor his rose had lost too much of its bloom at once, as if compensating for lost time (oh, he was still very good, as Jermain Taylor isn't a joke, and of course there was his bizarrely lengthy and decently successful run at light heavy beyond that, but nor was he firing on all cylinders as for that brief window in the first years of the millennium, when maturation and evolution into a cerebral predator had set in, while the better part of his power and reflexes had yet to abandon him). From about Echols II until Allen III (or, stretching it, DLH or Eastman), we find Hopkins' best chance of hanging with Hagler. I think, obviously absent the "blown up welterweight" circumstance and Tito's being orthodox, in this one Hopkins would approach it much as he did the fight with Trinidad: beaching himself on the ropes and lying in wait to show off his ambush-fighting chops. The problem is, Hagler was a world class feinter, and would himself be poised and ready on the way in, countering past Hopkins' counters wherever possible. I see Hagler taking an uncomplicated if somewhat cagey and worked-for decision, with the aggregate consensus giving Hopkins between three and five rounds.

Ruby Rob, that's hard at first glance. Coming from an era even earlier than Greb, he was basically playing a different sport than Hagler would be several decades later, Chinese chequers to chess and whatnot. What transcends time periods and the continued ontogenesis of the discipline and its fundamentals is what Fitz had in spades: raw, bone crushing oomph. Hagler, though, boasts maybe the GOAT set of whiskers at the weight. So judging whether he could take Bob's hardest wallop is a doozy to mull over. He wouldn't, however, just sit there and take it, of course. Hagler could box every bit as well as punch, and his greater wingspan and educated southpaw jab would give him all the requisite angles to drill down on Fitz's chin, which we know to be imperfect (although in fairness only undone by what in his day were called heavyweights). I suspect this is a KO for Marv, even if you give Fitz the benefit of modern training and molding himself into a style befitting the craft as it exists today.

Tiger's one hell of a middleweight (and not a shabby 175lber either) but even at his absolute finest - early 60's, we're pretty much all in agreement? - he isn't Hagler's equal in any department IMO.

Steele was a beast for his time, and with his smash-mouth disposition and murderous right hand (although he was by no means a one-handed threat, packing thunder in both mitts and ruining plenty of men's nights with his left hook as well) a real handful for any of his contemporaries. I'm not sure he's complex enough to bother Hagler, though. Maybe, just maybe the Lesnevich version (a legendary performance, btw, that everyone should view that hasn't; arguably something akin to a "Hagler vs. Hearns" of its day) could give him a mild scare, but that's about it. Steele got himself in trouble countless times in slug-fests (against rivals who may have been respectable contemporaries, but I have to believe Hagler was sturdier than most), even in his prime, and so I feel he gets stopped by some method or another here - be it a ten count, a towel, a compassionate ref, or just spilling pints of blood under Hagler's fists and inviting the ringside doctor to honor the oath and earn his keep.

Curious that you didn't include the 160lb greats of this century for consideration - not that I'm prepared to pick Golovkin nor Martínez over him, but I'd probably like their chances of winning a few in a series of ten more than anybody else's in the poll save, obviously, Robinson and probably Monzón. In the case of the Argentine (Martínez, that is) we have more a case where if he pitched a perfect game and was careful as could be, he might outbox Hagler, say, thrice...of 20 attempts...while getting KTFO the other 17. GGG is perhaps a little too much a case of an object's size being distorted from "as it appears in the rearview mirror". We're fine to leave that one to marinade in our brains for a while, maybe until a few years after he ultimately retires.

Now, in summation, while my only actual vote was for SRR, that doesn't mean that any of the rest beating him would be impossible (he is but a mortal, even if one feels he's the h2h king of his division). Just that you'd never catch me dead betting on any of them against prime Hagler. Even with SRR, it'd feel like punting on a coin flip at best.

 

The best version of Robinson I've seen was his performance against Turpin in their rematch. July of '51. That was his Ken Norton so to speak. Except he knocked him out after outboxing him.

Monzon/Hagler? I can't call it. It could go either way or probably be a series of fights.

 

Ah, the list makes a lot more sense now. Your ten greatest, I see. Good list. This illustrates perfectly how "greatest" lists don't port over all that comfortably into h2h, sort of a round peg square hole situation (as exemplified by Greb needing to be essentially graded incomplete since there's nothing extant surviving of him...belonging for sure on a greats list, but needing for clarity's sake to be left off a h2h list, simply because - and by the problem of Jones having not just beaten Hopkins but etched himself in the minds of most as the more dynamic head to head force at middle, although he wouldn't do as much there)

 

Great post. Hagler was just such a complete fighter, that he had the tools to potentially dismantle any possible rival at the weight. He's one of those guys who you have to say, "well, if Hagler had a bad night out, I could see X beat him" ... which is pretty much conceding the argument as to who was better straight off the bat. Monzon would probably have been his stiffest challenge stylistically imo. I'm a huge Golovkin fan, but even there, there's fights that Hagler fought where he'd be a real stylistic challenge for GGG, for example, if he does the up-close infighting thing. Not to say Golovkin can't infight - he can - but he just looked less impressive than his usual self when doing so. Ultimately the best argument I'd make for Golovkin is that he's simply a bigger MW than Hagler, given that their rehydration rules are different. Golovkin was closer to a 175 for Hagler's day than 160. It would be a big advantage for Golovkin to fight under modern rules. On the other hand, if he had to fight Hagler under Hagler's rehydration rules I've no doubt that MMH would clean him up.