All Time Great Fighters Who Never Lost in Their Prime...

Are we just debating now for the sake of debating? I thought the topic was, fighters who never lost in their prime?

 

When would you say his prime ended?

 

Well that's pretty much impossible to say, the best we can do is conclude

1. That his prime has passed and....

.....2. Draw up a time frame for when it most likely ended.

Some further examination would have to be done, as to the prime of Kelly Pavlik, Bernards win over whom loaned so much credence to the notion that Hopkins might still have it. Likewise, how much did Joe Calzaghe have left. If he lost to "Prime Joe" and beat "Prime Kelly" then it would seem he had more left than not. If Joe was faded and Pavlik was too, then you draw the opposite conclusion. Personally I think Pavlik was shit and Joe was faded and new at 175, which makes me lean towards the Tarver fight as his peak of peaks.

Some fighters have a long discharge rate- they don't suddenly drop off a cliff in terms of their "prime", they wind down much slower. Is Hopkins one of these guys?

I would say the win over Tarver was probably the height of his prime, how long he stayed there then is a matter for individuals. The Calzaghe loss suggests a decline, the Pavlik win suggests the decline was not pronounced, depending on how you look at it.

Its a skewed debate because being tight at the weight at 160, in addition to the fact that he is probably "taking something" at the higher weight, would help any fighter look better.

Consider Vitali as being a sort of common comparator. Vitali comes out now and says his fights are getting easier because of experience. What's the ratio? Whats the formula? 60% Experience + 40% Physical is better than 40% Experience and 60% Physical? Nobody would argue reasonably that a guy with 3 serious injuries, a 4 year layoff and who is 40 years of age is in his prime. Or is he? Does the experience more than counteract the loss of physical resolve? Do performance enhancers make things easier?

Prime is a tricky concept, thats why it should be avoided in most cases. Vitali is today better equipped to deal with the same Lewis he fought in 2003. Seems perverse but that's how it is.

I don't mean to be obtuse, but prime is a hard concept to pin down. It's like separating brain from mind.

 

Id say this post here marks the height of your buffoonery. its all downhill for you, now.

 

:: Hopkins prime blows in the wind. Tomorrow, it might lie somewhere else. I'm like a guy who has looked at the stars and predicted the weather, my guess is as good as anyones.

 

I agree with Irish that prime is a fuzzy concept that should be avoided.

To illustrate, if you agree a fighter's performance varies normally (normally distributed), then the end of his prime is marked, not by a less than spectacular performance, but by a series of them, such that an adequate sampling of his performances yeilds a mean performance that is less than that of his career as a whole.

The notion that fighters have three phases in their careers, before their prime, during their prime, and after their prime, suggests their performances follow three different but overlapping distributions, with that of their primes having the highest mean. By definition then, delineation between these phases cannot be made with certainty (there's overlap; the variability due to career phase is confounded by variability due to the opponent, training, etc.).

But it does imply that fighters can have good performances, despite being past their prime. It also implies they can have bad performances, despite being in their prime.

So it's not useful to zoom in on individual performances, but rather to consider series of performances, and how they compare to previous ones.

In Hopkins' case, you can say that his win over Tarver, although a good performance, was simply a better than average post-prime performance on his part. However, when you begin to consider his other supposed post-prime performances, such as his fights with Calzaghe and Pavlik, it starts to look like he might still be in his prime.

 

I use prime in place of "at his best". If a fighter was at his best, to me, he was in his prime.

Obviously, Hopkins was at his best long before he beat Tarver. That one's not even a debate. He was a much better fighter in his early-mid 30s than he was in his 40s.

I think it's a pretty simple term.

 

How long was he at his best for?

In what fight was it clear that he was no longer at his best?

In what fight did he next look at all good in?

How would the guy against whom he no longer look good fare against the next guy he did look good against {Taylor vs Tarver or Taylor vs Pavlik}

 

Probably started with Oscar, maybe Allen. He looked awful against Eastman, many including myself thought so at the time.

I mean, even then, we were talking about a fighter in his late 30s. He's got a ton of skill, especially in comparison to the younger/bigger fighters he's defeated in his 40s. That has carried him a long way as an old man.

The other questions really aren't relevant. You're over thinking a very simple concept here.

 

Wouldn't a fighter's prime, then, span just a single fight? The one in which he looked his absolute best?

 

No, I don't think so - there can be a series of fights over a series of years where a fighter is in his prime, obviously.

 

Nobody looks great against Eastman, and that includes Joppy and Abraham.

The concept is simple. The reality is not.

 

The Duran did lose for our sins but he rose again like a great harvest, reborn

 

Actually, it's not so obvious because you just got done saying a fighter's prime is, "simply," when he's at his absolute best.

And so by your definition, a prime could last only one fight - the fighter's best performance.

The only reason it seems so simple to you is that you're not giving consideration to everything.

 

Don't see how inferior fighters like Joppy and Abraham are relevant here.

I'm just calling it like I see it, gents. I don't care one way or another about Hopkins. In fact, other than Tarver, I have pulled for the other guy in all his major fights.

But he once said he'd never lose to a white fighter, so I know why you're throwing objectivity out the window.

There has never been a 40 year old fighter in his prime, and there never will be.

 

How do you decide when a guy is "at his best"????

How is it even possible to identify that period in time???

Vitali was probably at his best when he blew out Hide {pre-injury physicality}, or when he blew away Adamek {40 years old experience} but people will say his "best fight" was against Lewis. Was he "at his best" that night? Come on.

Its nonsense. How do you decide when somebody is "at their best"???


They could be at their best and never be fighting the guys who would make them look their best.

If Hopkins fought a 160lb version of Tarver in 1997 its hard to see him improving on the result he got vs Tarver at 175 in 2004 or whatever.

 

a prime hopkins beats tarvers ass a lot worse and stops him. downhill ass whippings are what hopkins dealt to folks in his physical prime.

 

The concept of, "prime" could be brushed aside if it weren't referenced so often as being a major factor in the outcome of fights. In my opinion, if its definition were held to higher scrutiny, it wouldn't be referenced as often.

 

Oh yeah, like who? Keith Holmes? Andrew Council? Syd Vanderpool?

 

The only place Prime belongs is in the Mythical Matchups section, where we are taking the very best bits of guys over a long period and patching them into a collective figure and then squaring that figure off with an identical process for another fighter, and trying to decide who comes out best.

Nobody would dream of saying "Oh, I think Bernard beats Ray Robinson at 160 cos Robinson faded down the stretch vs Maxim"

The Mythical Matchup suspends the fighters, literally, in a vacuum where we can siphon off the freak injuries, the marital breakups, the wear-and-tear etc that contributed to bad results over the course of their careers and just pit best bits vs best bits.

Thats when we decide not WHEN their prime, but WHAT their prime was. We shouldn't be asking "When was Prime Bernard, it should be "what was prime Bernard".

Of course, people will find a way round that too, but let them.

 

I'm not suggesting prime isn't a convenient way to cope with the fact many fighters fight beyond their physical peaks. I just think the significance of losses that fighters inevitably suffer are too often and too quickly written off to their primes having ended.

 

:laugh11::laugh11: