If you hit the black portion of the plate enough, the strike zone mysteriously begins to expand. Hopkins was also deft at placing shots on the hip and thighs away from the view of Smoger. Hey, whatever works, I guess. But you just get the feeling that even if he were to win this tourney, there would still be the naysayers. Some would say Hopkins was a dirty fighter.
Modern fighters are always underrated, and the fighters of the past are overrated.
Yeah, I said it. Yeah, I know that's blasphemous, but look at the films. They look rather primitive to me. Hopkins seems to be a victim of revisionist history. I have a back issue of The Ring magazine from 1980, which asked if the great Roberto Duran was one of the great 135 pounders that ever lived.