Worse Title Reign - Hopkins Or Ottke?

This is a **** comparison.

 

Ottke wasn´t as bad as some make him out to be.His boxing style was unattractive as hell, but nevertheless he was a decent boxer.The Reid robbery just blinds al lot of people on the overall picture.Ottke vs. Calzaghe would be closer than people think, Ottke had kind of the right style to give Calzaghe problems...

 

Ottke

 

Long title reigns (more than 15 defenses of the Lineals or abc belts):

1. Joe Louis
2. Bernard Hopkins
3. Larry Holmes
4. Joe Calzaghe
5. Sven Ottke

 

Close poll.

 

The thread asks who had the worse reign as champion. You can't take away from his reign as champion of one division because he did not fight fighters that were in another division. By '95 when Hopkins became champion, Toney was at 175, McLellan was done as a fighter, Benn basically was as well and was at 168 anyway, Eubank was at 168 and winding down his career, McCallum was at 175, Nunn was at 168 and losing to Steve Little and Frankie Liles, Jackson was over the hill after being stoped in a round by G-Man and was losing to Quincy Taylor and beating nobodies before losing some more and retiring, Calzaghe was at 168, Reggie Johnson lost to John David Jackson and Jorge Castro and later moved up to 175, Littles was at 168 and after losing to Toney did nothing, and Collins was at 168.

There was no reason for Hopkins to defend his title against any of them, they have no affect on his reign as Middleweight champion. He would have to had gone up in weight to fight the ones that were still top level fighters by the time he became champion and such fights would have no impact on his Middleweight reign.

Facts are that Hopkins beat every noteworthy Middleweight from '95 to '05, all in one-sided fashion, with his challengers generally being of a clearly higher caliber than Ottke's. Ottke did not beat all of the top level fighters at his weight, he got a gift against Reid and close calls with Mitchell and Brewer, and had another fighter "dominating" his same division at the same time as him. Comparing Ottke's reign to Hopkins' is idiotic, what Hopkins did at Middleweight was far superior to what Ottke did at SMW.

And to your comment of Hagler's reign being far better, guys like Caveman Lee and Obelmejias were no more deserving challengers than Allen, Hakkar, and Daniels on Hopkins' list of challengers. What Hagler did before winning the title was clearly superior to what Hopkins did before winning his title, but his reign was not better at all.

 

***git.