People forget that De La Hoya only weighed 155lbs for that fight, whilst Hopkins weighed 156lbs, which meant the bout was pretty much fought at light middleweight, which was Oscars natural habitat.
Hopkins only weighed two or three pounds heavier than the light middleweight limit when he defeated Felix Trinidad and John Jackson also.
So don't undermine Hopkins' victories over "smaller" men when he made himself "small" in order to fight his opponents in their "comfort zone".
Bigger or smaller is not just about weight. Hopkins was pure muscle, while his opponents carried extra water. Besides, do you know what their rehydrated weight was ?
ikorolev wrote:
Bigger or smaller is not just about weight. Hopkins was pure muscle, while his opponents carried extra water. Besides, do you know what their rehydrated weight was ?
DLH was too small even for LMW.
Don't try to defend with guesses, assumptions or raising extra questions. Give me some facts, otherwise what you claim is redundant.
You often make claims and then I enc up barraging you with facts to contradict the things you say.
So let's see if you can break your lifelong habit and backup your claims with facts for a change?
Anybody who got eyes could see that Hopkins looked bigger and more athletic than Trinidad. Oscar looked like a midget in the ring with Bernard.
Chepppaaa wrote:
hopkins resume from 94-04 is better than gggs resume, but the point is, does that realy matter in a coutcome prime X vs prime GGG?
so hopkins goes into the ring against b-level fighters like robert allen or keith holmes and beat them easily.
so ggg goes into the ring with b-level fighters like murray or geale and beats them easily.
okay, now what, they both can beat b-level fighters, great.
but ones an b+ or a+-level boxer like taylor or jones comes around than hopkins starts losing.....
basicly we would have to weight how ggg fights a b+ or a level kind of boxer, sadly, except quillon who is b+ in my eyes, there is nothing a level type at middleweight except ggg himself, but he cant fight himself, so we cant exactly say how he would do against a. all we know is that X even at his favourite weight at midd. had problems against an a level opponent. and ikorev is right trinidad and oscarito were 147, maybe 154, but they had 0 business at midd.!!!
style wise, i could see prime X make a lot of problems for ggg, by fighting the same style against trinidad, boxing unpredictable, being sharp and with low but precise punch output and being fast on the feet. in the other hand, x would not deal with a blown up welterweight or a b level boxer, he would deal with a guy who some say might be the in the top 5 of the hardest punchers the middleweight division has ever seen, someone who can punch quick to the body, just as good as the the head and is also unpredictable with his looping punches. strength wise they equal, power wise ggg over x all day and technic wise x over ggg all day. tough i'd say ones x realy feels gggs power, he starts running to much and gives up to many rounds, close ud win for ggg.
Never thought I'd say this about you, but...this is a good post, I agree with pretty much everything.
Robert Allen, Keith Holmes, Carl the Squirrel...so what. Trinidad was a good win as was Johnson. A bloated Oscar wasn't. GGG beats every damn middleweight foe Hopkins ever did and more convincingly in many cases. Plus, he would have smashed Taylor while Hopkins couldn't.
I'll second that, excellent post.
I think it's also worth considering that styles make fights and what Hopkins has always struggled the most with is speed. A pre-prime Hopkins lost an 8-4 type decision to the super quick RJJ, while a 40yo Hopkins lost two disputable decisions to Taylor before he moved to light heavyweight. Based on the available evidence, I think it's a 60:40 fight in Hopkins's favour, but GGG would change my mind if he could beat a prime Andre Ward.
expe wrote:
For the record, Hopkins beats Golovkin on points, Golovkin doesn't have the power to knock him out and Hopkins would slow the pace, tie him up constantly and pot shot his way to a unanimous decision victory.
Of course, if you say so, he will. Many people said he would school Kovalev too. Golovkin would not allow him to slow the pace. Bernard would have to work hard for 12 rounds to not get stopped.
There's a difference between fighting a 49 year old Hopkins you have all the advantages against compared to fighting a in his prime Hopkins at his ideal weight class. Size, youth, speed, stamina, Kovalev had every advantage you could think of going into that fight other than experience (and I give Kovalev a lot of credit for the way he even beat a 49 year old Hopkins). GGG wouldn't have had hardly any advantages fighting Hopkins in his prime other than Power. I think GGG would have had a fair chance of winning, but I would still favor Hopkins he was light years better than anyone GGG has faced up to this point and even any version of Martinez at 160 (probably the second best MW in the past 5 years) would have got his ass handed to him by a prime Hopkins.
ikorolev wrote:
Of course, if you say so, he will. Many people said he would school Kovalev too. Golovkin would not allow him to slow the pace. Bernard would have to work hard for 12 rounds to not get stopped.
There's a difference between fighting a 49 year old Hopkins you have all the advantages against compared to fighting a in his prime Hopkins at his ideal weight class. Size, youth, speed, stamina, Kovalev had every advantage you could think of going into that fight other than experience (and I give Kovalev a lot of credit for the way he even beat a 49 year old Hopkins). GGG wouldn't have had hardly any advantages fighting Hopkins in his prime other than Power. I think GGG would have had a fair chance of winning, but I would still favor Hopkins he was light years better than anyone GGG has faced up to this point and even any version of Martinez at 160 (probably the second best MW in the past 5 years) would have got his ass handed to him by a prime Hopkins.
That is correct. Any version of Martinez would have got his ass handed to him by Golovkin too though.
ikorolev wrote:
Of course, if you say so, he will. Many people said he would school Kovalev too. Golovkin would not allow him to slow the pace. Bernard would have to work hard for 12 rounds to not get stopped.
There's a difference between fighting a 49 year old Hopkins you have all the advantages against compared to fighting a in his prime Hopkins at his ideal weight class. Size, youth, speed, stamina, Kovalev had every advantage you could think of going into that fight other than experience (and I give Kovalev a lot of credit for the way he even beat a 49 year old Hopkins). GGG wouldn't have had hardly any advantages fighting Hopkins in his prime other than Power. I think GGG would have had a fair chance of winning, but I would still favor Hopkins he was light years better than anyone GGG has faced up to this point and even any version of Martinez at 160 (probably the second best MW in the past 5 years) would have got his ass handed to him by a prime Hopkins.
That is correct. Any version of Martinez would have got his ass handed to him by Golovkin too though.
I don't disagree with that. But the thing is, there isn't a guy at MW that compared to Hopkins 10 best opponents, it's such a weak division it's so hard to gauge how good GGG really is. Like I said, the eye test tells me GGG would have a fair chance of winning the fight, but the quality of GGGs opponents is the only reason I have the opinion he loses to Hopkins. Hopkins has proven that he's among one of the best by facing and beating very high level competition 10 times over, where as GGG has yet to prove it against one true world class opponent. The simple fact I could say that Hopkins and probably his 10 best opponents would have beating Martinez is a tell tale sign of how weak the MW division is this day and age, GGG is a man among boys in that division and it's not because GGG is that much better than any other MW that has been the division in the past 20 years, IMO it has much more to do with the MW division being in dyer needs of some real world class talent. 15 years ago there were a handful of guys at 160 that would have dominated the MW division at it's current state and they were struggling to become champions at that time.
I am not sure about that. Hopkins schooling Pavlik at 170 doesn't mean that he would do it as easilly at 160, and Pavlik would likely beat most of Bernard's MW opponents. On the other hand, Martinez defeated Pavlik at 160 almost as convincingly as Hopkins at 170. Of course, it is all about styles, but if Hopkins defeated Martinez and Pavlik at 160, they would be in top 3-4 of his best MW scalps.
