he has excellent instincts and is naturally gifted as an athlete but his defensive genius, tactician mind and skill is a craft learnt over years id say probably 50/50 James Toney is much the same, however he mastered his craft very young and very quickly
His main gift is slaughtering the concept of sports enterainment, the ugliest fighter to watch bar none, and he can fight when he wants to ergo the Pavlik scrap, his durability however is awesome as is his longevity.
i would say 35-40% natural, and 60-65% learned. if you follow his career and see the different stages he goes through, he was cerebral even when he was younger, though much less polished than he is now.
He had above average physical tools to start with, but his approach to the sport is rare even among world class fighters. That he had the instinctual capacity to absorb as much as he has of boxing and the mental strength to stay focused in a sport where 9 out of 10 fighters lose their hunger after a couple of title defenses is something I consider a natural gift, and probably his strongest one. From an athleticism standpoint, he never had a single freakish quality like Roy's speed, Julian Jackson's power, or Calzaghe's conditioning. He was pretty good at just about everything physically, but it was his boxing brain and temperament that set him apart. Alot of fighters had the potential to be as good or better than Hopkins physically, but they didn't have Hopkins' mental strength to completely dedicate themselves and their lifestyles to the sport.
Two types of star fighters. 1. Physically gifted: Roy Jones, Hamed, Ali, Pac, Sweet Pea, Toney, Vitali, Broner 2. Technically skilled: Hopkins, Marquez, Hearns, Joe Louis, Tyson, Lennox, Wlad The stars in Group 1 shine brighter but don't last as long.
Clearly he's gifted/special. It's hard to narrow down for me anyway. Clearly he has athleticism but not over the top special. He has a great sense of timing, distance, position and situational awareness. In his youth his eyesight was probably faster than normal. Some of that is biological but who knows how much is gifted how much is learnt by an intelligent talented athlete.
