People complaining about Hopkins being slow, of course he is slower he is 110 years old, and people say winky is boring but the guy has an un-believable defense. And Hopkins counters are always good to see, granted they are few and far between. I thought Winky deserved a lot of credit for going after the bigger guy. He was very aggressive more so than anyone would have expected. I think the cut had to affect him. With both their styles and B-Hops age could this fight have been more exciting? All fighters have their own style and I appreciate how both of those guys go about their business. (not so much Hopkins) I suppose the other side of the coin would be someone like Katisdis that guy was highly entertaining last w/e but did you see the state of him after. You could never imagine Winky looking like that especially after a Win!
How about Hopkins fights a light heavyweight since he's campaigning as a light heavyweight. Let him face Chad Dawson or rematch Glen Johnson.
Exactly. He's now had two catch-weight fights with guys who had no business in his division...with the other being DLH. I don't consider it a very impressive distinction. I do give credit to Kellerman for at least bringing up Dawson's name Saturday night (I believe it was him).
I know the fight didn't have much sustained action. But I still enjoy watching hopkins ply his trade. Yes, he fights dirty, and his style is not a crowd pleasing one, but the way he controls the distance and tempo of a fight, as well as his ability to take away his oponents best weapons is remarkable. Winky did his best in there, and I think he even frustrated and confused Hopkins at times, he deffinitely accomplished a lot more in there than most of B-Hops opponents have, that he did this at a weight so foreign to him and at this stage of his career is also impresive.
Who said he's "campaigning" at Light Heavy.. He had one fight at 175 and beat the guy considered the best at that weight. He fought Winky at the 170 catch weight and has now only called out Joe Calzaghe who is 168... I think Bernard is campaigning for the best possible fight within a weight range that makes sense for him.
Agreed. I think Nard has a pretty good sense of who he has a chance of beating at this stage of his career. He also knows which fights will bring the most money. Why would Hopkins take on younger hungrier fighters when he can bring home a bigger payday against established names that will also be eaiser fights for him?
True, but my problem with that is people considering Bernard to be THE light heavyweight champion. I don't believe that to be true, but light heavyweight lineage is for another discussion. More germane to this topic is the fact that The Ring and its supporters claim this man to be the Light Heavyweight king, when in fact he seemingly has no interest in defending that honor. As for this topic - I pretty much agree with everything Z said in his earlier detailed post. I picked Wink, with a prediction solely based on workrate, and was proven to be dead wrong. But that said, all I really got out of the fight was that Wink has no business at 168-175. Plenty to do at middleweight, and even as proud as he is, he has to be kicking himself in the ass for not taking the Taylor rematch, especially considering how awful Jermain's looked in his last two against much smaller fighters.
It's pretty obvious why 2 of the judges put Hopkins so far ahead. All those times Hopkins punched Winky on the arms when Winky was blocking shots? They counted those. All those times Hopkins was holding Wright and punching him at the same time? They counted those.