The theory that DLH took a dive to get Hopkins in with GBP holds water ONLY because the shot didn't look that devestating and then after the fight DLH ditches Arum for good and signs Hopkins. Does no one believe in conincidences anymore?
Win or lose the partnership was going to happen. If DLH would have won, there would have been a very lucrative rematch for GBP. If anything, that would have been better for DLH and Hopkins financially than what actually went down. People act like this was some huge conspiracy like Ali-Liston II.
It isn't like Hopkins was a box office megastar at the time...he squandered away all the momentum from Tito fight when the Jones rematch fell apart, and what exactly did Hopkins have on the horizon that would be worth DLH TAKING A DIVE and potentially ruining his ENTIRE CAREER?
Jones had already been KO'd by Tarver, so forget about that. Taylor was still beating up on the ghosts of Marquez and Joppy. Hopkins would have had to go to England for a Calzaghe fight, where Frank Warren would be raking in the majority of the cash. Trinidad was the only big name out there to fight, and with DK involved, that would have been a very difficult fight to make AND GBP obviously would have to co-promote.
A DLH win would have made so much more sense, because then there could be the rematch, a GBP exclusive event, and then maybe even a trilogy. I'm NOT saying this was realistic, I'm just saying that THAT is the kind of domino effect a huge conspiracy would trigger, not a ho-hum fight vs. Howard Eastman (!) on HBO WCB followed by a PPV fight with the green Taylor.
So, don't just look at the punch and make up stuff. Think about what happened after and all the things that would have made it better.
Getting Pac would have been absolutely huge, and I buy the Roach-training-Oscar-for-Pac's signature theory a lot more than this one, because GBP can give Pac megafight after megafight. With Hopkins, that just wasn't the case.
Getting Pac would have been absolutely huge, and I buy the Roach-training-Oscar-for-Pac's signature theory a lot more than this one, because GBP can give Pac megafight after megafight. With Hopkins, that just wasn't the case.
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