At age 34 Bernard Hopkins had a record of 35-2-1 1 NC

Hopkins copped a lot of **** at the time for his poor era. But, it's a different situation for a lot of reasons. Probably the biggest one however is that Hopkins was railing against the system for most of his early years and had no backing whatsoever from anyone. The networks didn't want to touch him and he was blacklisted by most promoters. GGG has had huge exposure, major backing from everyone and serious hype and money behind him from the start. He has said numerous times that he'd be willing to go anywhere from 154 to 168 for any champion or big name and that has proven undeniably false. His one downfall, at least in my opinion, is that he needed a bigger promoter from the start. The biggest names in the sport were below Hopkins, and moving up into his division when he was coming into his own still. He'd fought Roy Jones and beaten Glen Johnson, John David Jackson, Antwun Echols, Simon Brown, Sergundo Mercado, Lupe Aquino. All champions. At that stage however, he was still very early on in his reign and hadn't fought the biggest, best names yet, and yet that alone is still better than GGG's entire championship reign to date. GGG is beating the Joe Lipsey's time and time again. He's had one or two names on the level of a Mercado or Echols, but none as good as Johnson or Jackson. Nonetheless, that was just the start of Hopkins' reign. Do you see this as the start of GGG's reign? He's made nearly as many title defenses as Hopkins did, and yet Hopkins had a better resume while he was still at the very start of his reign. The other thing is that Canelo will be like Tito was for GGG. Smaller guy moving up, so if GGG beats him, people will downplay like they do with Hopkins win over Tito. Ridiculous really, but they will. The only difference so far is that Tito destroyed a true middleweight champion, while Canelo essentially beat a JMW champion, at JMW, for the full middleweight title. We've got to see how Canelo handles a proper sized, champion level middleweight like Tito was able to. He needs more money behind him to get these bigger names to the table, or he's got to stop acting like the 'A side' prima dona and demanding more than he's worth. He could have had fights with Canelo and Ward if he'd been willing to play ball and recognise that as the lesser name, take the fight and win it, and you'll move on to big things afterward! Hopefully we see something of his potential, but I have a terrible feeling he's going to get to the end of his career having fought what must be the worst championship reign of that length in the entire history of boxing. Why have his claims of fighting a big fighter from 154-168 proven false? Only in the sense that none have materialised. Floyd won't fight him at 154. Froch wouldn't fight him at 168. A Ward fight was never really viable due to his inactivity. What do you mean he could have fought Canelo? Yeah, if Canelo hadn't put in a voluntary request and was prepared to fight him at 160.

Nobody gave a **** about hopkins in 1999, thats the difference between hopkins and GGG in the scenario you are drawing. I am almost positive if Hopkins had the same buzz around him as GGG has right now around the same time in his own career (1999) and he was in the same situation, he would have definitely moved up because Hopkins has proven to us that's the type of fighter and guy he is, period. EDIT: I just went 1 page back in this thread and somebody said Hopkins being in jail can be considered an amateur system of boxing and he's dead serious LMAO. I'm legit done with this thread. Waste of time. What makes you think he'd have moved up if he'd have had ambitions of unifying like GG has?

People started giving him props after his flawless performance and utter domination of Trinidad. The Pavlik thing was many years later and it was because Hopkins showed his 43 years of age against Calzaghe, so naturally people started to wonder if his age had finally caught up to him. But make no mistake, beating Trinidad, who was viewed as #1 or #2 p4p and obviously a massive star is what gave Hopkins the recognition, and then of course knocking out Oscar a little later pushed him on to the next level of being a big time boxing star. But yes, you're right about him being pressured to move up in weight. To his credit, his patience paid off big time. Most of us are hoping Golovkin's patience will pay off as well, obviously Canelo could be his Trinidad. You've made some great points. But I have to ask you the following question: Was Bernard patient? Or was it a lack of ambition on his part?

At age 34 hopkins only had 1 belt and was still at middleweight what are you talking about? go re-read my post and do your research please. What the gibberish? You brought what Hopkins did at light heavyewight and didn't even address the Taylor fights. Hopkins was 34-2 and lost his first pro fight, the only other fight he lost was to rjj. Hopkins then went on to go up 2 weight divisions

lil g isn't under anymore scrutiny than any other "p4p" fighter to prove themselves. He is of the few that doesn't have the confidence to prove us wrong. What do you mean he doesn't have the confidence to prove us wrong?

Its clear that you don't get the point of this thread. Would you have been saying, in 1999, that Hopkins should move up, or were you fine with him staying a middleweight until he became undisputed champion? I'll give you my thoughts from the late 90's: I wanted to see him move up, but I wasn't that bothered either way, as there were loads of huge name fighters out there amongst the other weights classes. Also, he wasn't really exciting. There was of course no social media etc back then either. Today, there's less stars than in the late 90's, there's more hype due to social media, and there's more excitement and a bigger demand surrounding GG due to him being an exciting KO artist.

His best win was Glen Johnson, who went on to lose 20 more times. lol. He had fought Robert Allen and Segundo Mercado twice, and the biggest name he fought was Roy Jones. That middleweight era was rather thin, so my question is this. If he was doing this today, would you have pressured him to move up? Or would you support him in his goal to be undisputed middleweight champion? He stayed fighting as a middleweight til he was 40. After reading the rest of the thread, I'm confused. Are you asking us to look from his perspective as though it was 1997 today? Or are you asking us to look from his perspective if he was active in today's MW division at 34? Thanks.

Compare a guy with little amateur experience and started boxing late and was in jail for many years to a guy whos been boxing his whole life, has an extensive amateur record and a silver medal in the olympics lmao. Hopkins was 34-2 and lost his first pro fight, the only other fight he lost was to rjj. Hopkins then went on to go up 2 weight divisions and upset all the top light heavyweights when he had no following and nobody has his back or cheered him on, nobody really cared for him really. If we're gonna talk about who he fought at middleweight he must have done something right collecting all the belts and defending them over and over again. Compare that to GGG who constantly calls out people in weight divisions under him, had numerous opportunities to move up to 168 and fight the best available guy there in Ward, and unlike Hopkins definitely won't be willing to chase him up to 175. Says he'll fight Froch at 172, definitely wouldn't fight Kovalev or Ward at 172 though. Willing to go up to 168 and light heavyweight to fight everyone except the best in those divisions. While Hopkins moved up and fought the very best in that division. Want me to keep going? Would fight mayweather at 154 and weighs in 164 30 days and 162 2 weeks before his fight, but won't fight Canelo who's moving up at 155. This is the same guy being hyped and followed by everyone and ranked number two pound for pound. I've never in my life seen someone ranked number 2 pound for pound and hasn't fought a top 3 guy in his division yet lmao. What the f*ck? You need to put a good few things into perspective: First off, Hopkins is naturally bigger than GG. And he had to make incredible sacrifices both mentally and physically to remain at MW for as long as he did. His first fight was at CW, and he then had almost 20 fights over the MW limit, before finally committing to the MW division mid 1992. His first major title was obtaining the IBF title in 1995, after Roy Jones Jr had relinquished it the previous year to fight Toney. He then started his record breaking run where he was content to fight whoever was put in front of him until King's MW tournament was put together in 2000. That was a period of 6 years. After a great win over Trinidad to unify the division in 2001, he then refused a big money offer to fight Roy in a rematch at a proposed CW of 168 pounds. He then spent over a year out of the ring before coming back and fighting Morrade Hakkar. He then remained at the weight for a further 2 years, only moving up to LHW after he'd suffered back to back defeats to Jermain Taylor in 2005. It was only at that point that he started to take risky fights. But by then, he was in a position where he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. So although I obviously respect him for taking on the likes of Tarver, Dawson, Calzaghe and Kovalev etc, that guy did not exist until 2006 onwards. Again, when he was at MW he showed no real ambition of wanting the best fighters available, the majority of who were up at LHW. In an interview just prior to his fight with Joe Calzaghe in 2008, he admitted that he could have moved to LHW much earlier than he did. So before you start criticising GG, you need to take these points on board. Bernard was a great fighter, but he's taller than GG and his reach is 5" longer, which meant he was physically bigger than almost all of his MW opposition. Now GG wants to unify the MW division. But if he can't due to politics, I doubt very much he'll remain at the weight for years like Bernard did, just hoping for an opportunity to present itself. Regarding GG and Ward, that fight was never really viable. Andre has only fought 4 times in as many years. Regarding Canelo, what do you mean he won't fight him? It's Canelo who won't fight at 160, even though he holds the lineal belt, GG's a fellow champ, and he's also his mandatory. It's a joke.

That's not true. He didn't lace up the gloves for the first time in prison. But in prison it was a legit amateur program and certainly molded him into the fighter he became. I think it's obvious there are many similarities between the two's middleweight careers. Both struggled for a long time to get big fights. Both had terrible management/promotional issues that led to legal disputes. Both couldn't unify the belts due to politics (for Bernard, the other title holders were Don King fighters and he wouldn't let them fight Bernard (until Bernard had sign to King to fight Trinidad, who King didn't even want Tito to fight in the first place)). Likewise, Golovkin has had big trouble getting unifications, only Lemieux has been willing so far, whereas guys like Canelo, Saunders have ran away, and going beyond that Peter Quillin, Anthony Mundine, Felix Sturm and Daniel Geale. So both fighters were forced to fight top ten guys, mandatories, while trying to secure the bigger fights and racking up title defenses in the process. Very, very similar. Obviously Bernard got his "Canelo" in Trinidad, got a huge money fight in Oscar and went on to achieve crazy things after the age of 40 after "losing" to Jermain Taylor twice. No one is saying Bernard hasn't achieved way more, no one. People are simply pointing out the similarities of their middleweight reigns which as I shown had a ton of similarities. They both struggled but remained patient, which ultimately paid off for Hopkins and hopefully it will for Gennady as well. Natas just ended the thread.

His best win was Glen Johnson, who went on to lose 20 more times. lol. He had fought Robert Allen and Segundo Mercado twice, and the biggest name he fought was Roy Jones. That middleweight era was rather thin, so my question is this. If he was doing this today, would you have pressured him to move up? Or would you support him in his goal to be undisputed middleweight champion? He stayed fighting as a middleweight til he was 40. If a 34 year old version of Bernard was fighting at MW today and he had a belt, I'd support his goal to unify, but I'd want him to move up afterwards. That's how I feel about GG.

His best win was Glen Johnson, who went on to lose 20 more times. lol. He had fought Robert Allen and Segundo Mercado twice, and the biggest name he fought was Roy Jones. That middleweight era was rather thin, so my question is this. If he was doing this today, would you have pressured him to move up? Or would you support him in his goal to be undisputed middleweight champion? He stayed fighting as a middleweight til he was 40. Hopkins copped a lot of **** at the time for his poor era. But, it's a different situation for a lot of reasons. Probably the biggest one however is that Hopkins was railing against the system for most of his early years and had no backing whatsoever from anyone. The networks didn't want to touch him and he was blacklisted by most promoters. GGG has had huge exposure, major backing from everyone and serious hype and money behind him from the start. He has said numerous times that he'd be willing to go anywhere from 154 to 168 for any champion or big name and that has proven undeniably false. His one downfall, at least in my opinion, is that he needed a bigger promoter from the start. The biggest names in the sport were below Hopkins, and moving up into his division when he was coming into his own still. He'd fought Roy Jones and beaten Glen Johnson, John David Jackson, Antwun Echols, Simon Brown, Sergundo Mercado, Lupe Aquino. All champions. At that stage however, he was still very early on in his reign and hadn't fought the biggest, best names yet, and yet that alone is still better than GGG's entire championship reign to date. GGG is beating the Joe Lipsey's time and time again. He's had one or two names on the level of a Mercado or Echols, but none as good as Johnson or Jackson. Nonetheless, that was just the start of Hopkins' reign. Do you see this as the start of GGG's reign? He's made nearly as many title defenses as Hopkins did, and yet Hopkins had a better resume while he was still at the very start of his reign. The other thing is that Canelo will be like Tito was for GGG. Smaller guy moving up, so if GGG beats him, people will downplay like they do with Hopkins win over Tito. Ridiculous really, but they will. The only difference so far is that Tito destroyed a true middleweight champion, while Canelo essentially beat a JMW champion, at JMW, for the full middleweight title. We've got to see how Canelo handles a proper sized, champion level middleweight like Tito was able to. He needs more money behind him to get these bigger names to the table, or he's got to stop acting like the 'A side' prima dona and demanding more than he's worth. He could have had fights with Canelo and Ward if he'd been willing to play ball and recognise that as the lesser name, take the fight and win it, and you'll move on to big things afterward! Hopefully we see something of his potential, but I have a terrible feeling he's going to get to the end of his career having fought what must be the worst championship reign of that length in the entire history of boxing.

Hopkins was in the top ten pound for pound in 1999. Perhaps you should know what you're talking about first before you start making yourself look silly. But you have made it clear, you hold different fighters to different standards.So because hes a top 10 p4p fighter that means that people actually care about him? What? You can't be seriously trying to make that argument? There's been plenty of p4p fighters no one has really cared for. We're talking about Golovkin here, some argue he is the best p4p currently. How do you expect me or anyone NOT to hold him to a higher standard then let's say "Hopkins in 1999", what are you actually saying? As if I'm being biased or something lol really?

Been out all day, thanks for saving me the time Natas. The trajectories of Hopkins and GGG are eerily similar but the only ones who choose to ignore it, are the ones who want GGG to fail. Strange. Triple G ain't got that swaggalistic street cred that the hardened brotha been gotten while serving time in the pen. That's the only reason I can think of.

"Bernard, save us!" Hopkins had no formal amateur career, or Olympic boxing credentials. Golovkin went 345-5 as an amateur. Come on stop comparing GGG to Hagler or Hopkins. Let him have his own career. And GGG is not going to fight anyone of the level of Joe Calzaghe or Kelly Pavlik 10 years from now at 43-44 years old like Hopkins did. Or Kovalev level opponent at 50 years old. Hopkins late surge in his career was forgiven because of the end result, Ring champ at 160, 2 time Ring champion at 175, and racked up names well beyond that 35-2 record. What you are asking for critics to do is to forgive and forget Golovkin's late surge because of what another man did before him. You are essentially saying "Hey, Hopkins at 34 didn't do anything big yet and you all love him now...why not love GGG." Because GGG hasn't gotten to the point where Hopkins go to, to let the fans know that when he was 35-2 he was just getting warmed up, beating Trinidad shortly after, and starting his second gear onwards with De La Hoya, Tarver, Winky, Pavlik, Pascal. Make this thread again when GGG retires with a stellar record and feats like Hopkins had, and if critics don't give credit, you'll make a good point. Right now you are trying to gain sympathy for a guy with a less than stellar resume and has maybe 3 prime years left at most. That's not true. He didn't lace up the gloves for the first time in prison. But in prison it was a legit amateur program and certainly molded him into the fighter he became. I think it's obvious there are many similarities between the two's middleweight careers. Both struggled for a long time to get big fights. Both had terrible management/promotional issues that led to legal disputes. Both couldn't unify the belts due to politics (for Bernard, the other title holders were Don King fighters and he wouldn't let them fight Bernard (until Bernard had sign to King to fight Trinidad, who King didn't even want Tito to fight in the first place)). Likewise, Golovkin has had big trouble getting unifications, only Lemieux has been willing so far, whereas guys like Canelo, Saunders have ran away, and going beyond that Peter Quillin, Anthony Mundine, Felix Sturm and Daniel Geale. So both fighters were forced to fight top ten guys, mandatories, while trying to secure the bigger fights and racking up title defenses in the process. Very, very similar. Obviously Bernard got his "Canelo" in Trinidad, got a huge money fight in Oscar and went on to achieve crazy things after the age of 40 after "losing" to Jermain Taylor twice. No one is saying Bernard hasn't achieved way more, no one. People are simply pointing out the similarities of their middleweight reigns which as I shown had a ton of similarities. They both struggled but remained patient, which ultimately paid off for Hopkins and hopefully it will for Gennady as well. Been out all day, thanks for saving me the time Natas. The trajectories of Hopkins and GGG are eerily similar but the only ones who choose to ignore it, are the ones who want GGG to fail. Strange.

Nobody gave a **** about hopkins in 1999, thats the difference between hopkins and GGG in the scenario you are drawing. I am almost positive if Hopkins had the same buzz around him as GGG has right now around the same time in his own career (1999) and he was in the same situation, he would have definitely moved up because Hopkins has proven to us that's the type of fighter and guy he is, period. Hopkins was in the top ten pound for pound in 1999. Perhaps you should know what you're talking about first before you start making yourself look silly. But you have made it clear, you hold different fighters to different standards.

Its clear that you don't get the point of this thread. Would you have been saying, in 1999, that Hopkins should move up, or were you fine with him staying a middleweight until he became undisputed champion?Nobody gave a **** about hopkins in 1999, thats the difference between hopkins and GGG in the scenario you are drawing. I am almost positive if Hopkins had the same buzz around him as GGG has right now around the same time in his own career (1999) and he was in the same situation, he would have definitely moved up because Hopkins has proven to us that's the type of fighter and guy he is, period. EDIT: I just went 1 page back in this thread and somebody said Hopkins being in jail can be considered an amateur system of boxing and he's dead serious LMAO. I'm legit done with this thread. Waste of time.

Didn't the great hopkins do like 8 years in prision. At 34 gg had been a professional much longer than Hopkins He went to prison when he was 17 years old and did less than 5 years of time.

Me, too. I know I had Barrera pinned up back in his unbeaten days. Ricardo Lopez, too, I believe. I really miss going to the magazine rack the grocery store and finding issues of The Ring, KO, Boxing '96/'97/etc., Boxing Illustrated and tons of others. I hate how it all dropped off. Yea times have changed...i still pick up the ring once in a while, usually top 100 or year end awards issues.

I guess racism is cool on here now BostonGuy TBear I guess racism is cool on here now BostonGuy TBear Says the guy who only roots for black fighters and thinks all others are inferior.

KO magazine! With the fighter poster, stats and record in the middle of every issue. Really miss that old mag. Hell yea...i used to put those on my wall.:lol1: