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

[robertzimmerman]

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.

[robertzimmerman]

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.

[robertzimmerman]

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?

[Mitchell Kane]

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

[robertzimmerman]

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?

[robertzimmerman]

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?

[robertzimmerman]

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.

[ИATAS]

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.

Don't get it twisted. What I said is that there was a boxing program in prison that Hopkins was a part of, which obviously helped mold him into the fighter he is. The US has a long history of boxing in prisons, something we don't see much these days but we can through the list of past great fighters who boxed in prison.

Hopkins started boxing at the age of 7. He won the Philadelphia Golden Gloves at age 9. As I stated, he didn't lace up his gloves for the first time in prison - that must be a misconception or a myth. He was in & out of amateur boxing as a kid, but obviously was a street kid and got into a lot of trouble. You have to remember, Hopkins uncle Artie McCloud was a pro fighter, also a middleweight, and who got Bernard into boxing as a kid. Boxing was already in his blood. Fortunately the prison he was sent to at age 17 had a good boxing program, where he was coached by Smokey Wilson.

"Winning Pennsylvania Junior Olympics when I was nine. Won a trophy which had to be two-feet tall! When I won that I was the baby in the gym. We had guys like Robert Hines. I got my butt kicked 95% of the time in the gym by guys who were bigger and older than me. But I was too advanced for my level. I beat a guy named ‘Bunchie’ Williams, a good, good amateur who went 12-1 as a pro but then I think drugs got him. I still see him all the time. He says, ‘You didn’t really beat me that night, you had the politics with you.’ But I knocked him down three times! There was no politics then. We joke. Good connection there. He says Roy Jones is afraid of me." - Bernard Hopkins