Well, There Go Those Fair-Weather Fans Again...

Bernard Hopkins pulled off a genuine hat trick, as I hope everyone reading this article knows, and beat middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik in their catchweight bout. The armchair experts who crowned Pavlik as the best thing ever are already saying he was crap. Fans who adored Pavlik are now saying he was exposed brutally and was never any good, while the people who doubted before are coming out with vicious bile now.

This appears to be the mindset of modern boxing. Every fighter is either the greatest pound for pound ever, or a disappointing failure who fooled us all. Archie Moore's old saw 'Show me an undefeated fighter, and I'll show you a fighter who never fought anyone,' appears to have once again fallen by the wayside in favor of the notion that only bad fighters ever lose. Whether it's a Mayweather fan saying 'Yeah, but Sugar Ray Robinson /lost/ all those fights' or a writer who thought Jeff Lacy was the second coming of Bob Foster and now derides his limitations, the idea that defeat equates with disgrace appears stronger than ever in many circles of boxing fans.

I'm still a Pavlik fan, I think he can still clean out the middleweight division. I think he can move up again in a few years and do much better. But clearly, Bernard Hopkins was better than him the night they fought. People who were predicting Pavlik's easy win because Hopkins was so far gone are now claiming Hopkins' win over Pavlik as proof that this is an inferior era, because no one would possibly succeed at Hopkins' age in a greater era.

Errrm, excuse me. What about Bob Fitzsimmons? Archie Moore? Tiger Flowers? Jersey Joe Walcott? Joe Brown? Not every man on that list was successful at Hopkins' literal age, but every one of them was a man who fought at a high level well past the usual age. For that matter, add Nate Campbell and Joel Casamayor to the list. George Foreman comes to mind too.

Hopkins is an amazing freak, a man who is simply too smart to ever be counted out of a fight. He knows his business. If he wants to stop calling himself 'the Executioner' and start calling himself 'Old Bones', 'The Professor', or 'The Old Mongoose', I don't think Joe Brown, Azumah Nelson, or Archie Moore would have much to complain about.