Ranking the 10 Best Wins of Bernard Hopkins' Career

Bernard Hopkins’ legacy has been secure for over a decade, but the 49-year-old unified light heavyweight champion continues to fight Father Time and accumulate world titles and high-profile wins long after the point when all other prizefighters hung up the gloves.

Hopkins will face Russian power puncher Sergey Kovalev to unify three-fourths of the 175-pound title on Nov. 8 in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in what could be his most dangerous challenge to date.

But Hopkins has made a career out of defying the odds and beating fighters that appeared, at least on paper, to be too young, strong or good for him.

Before he steps through the ropes for his latest assault on the boxing record books, we take a look back at his already Hall of Fame career and rank his best wins.

These are the 10 best victories of Bernard Hopkins all-time-great career.

Honorable Mention: Carl Daniels

Beating Carl Daniels isn’t the type of victory that would rate on this list in and of itself, but it’s one of the most historically significant victories of Hopkins’ illustrious career.

Carlos Monzon, the late Argentine legend and Hall of Famer, finished his career with an astonishing record of 87-3-9, which included a middleweight title reign lasting nearly seven years.

Monzon accumulated a then-record 14 consecutive defenses of his middleweight title, taking a unanimous decision from Rodrigo Valdez in his final fight before retiring as champion.

After emerging from Don King’s Middleweight Championship series as undisputed champion, Hopkins had matched Monzon’s mark and needed just one more successful defense to hold the record on his own.

He got that in his next fight against Daniels, a solid if unspectacular former junior middleweight titlist, in his home state of Pennsylvania.

Hopkins dominated the fight from the outset, winning every single round before the Daniels’ corner saw enough and pulled the plug after Round 10, handing Hopkins his 15th consecutive defense and the record.

It was the first of what turned out to be many historic achievements for the rugged fighter from Philadelphia.

10. William Joppy

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Hopkins' win over William Joppy probably came a year or later than many fans would’ve hoped, but it remains a significant and impressive performance over an opponent still in the top 10 of his division.

Joppy—like Hopkins—was a long-reigning middleweight titlist heading into the Middleweight Championship Series to crown an undisputed champion, and he was considered a dark-horse contender to emerge with the crown.

But, unfortunately for him, he ran into Felix Trinidad in the opening round and was blasted out by the Puerto Rican legend in Round 5.

Joppy won two fights in a row after the defeat, impressively taking a decision from the previously unbeaten Howard Eastman to regain a share—albeit a meaningless one since Hopkins was the true champion—of the middleweight title and set up a showdown with Hopkins.

Hopkins took him to the woodshed in the fight, winning 11 rounds on two of the official scorecards and 10 on the third, leaving Joppy’s face a grotesque swollen mask by the time the final bell rang to end the wipeout.

The victory reemphasized—not that there was any doubt—that Hopkins was the man to beat at middleweight. It also extended his historic run atop the division, making Joppy his—at the time—record 17th consecutive title defense.

9. Tavoris Cloud

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Hopkins broke his own record as the oldest man to win a world championship by dominating Tavoris Cloud to lift the IBF Light Heavyweight Championship on March 9, 2013, at the Barclays Center.

Cloud doesn’t look like anything resembling a potent challenge today—he’s dropped two straight by knockout since losing to Hopkins—but he entered the fight undefeated with 19 of his 24 wins coming inside the distance.

He had a reputation as a thunderous puncher, and there were more than a few observers who wondered how Hopkins would deal with that power if he got caught clean.

But that didn’t happen.

Hopkins confounded Cloud in the majority of rounds, using all the tricks in the book—both legal and illegal—to frustrate, beat up, demoralize and cut his foe.

The cuts—one in Round 6 and another in Round 12—were both the result of accidental headbutts, but they weren’t the story of the fight.

The story was Hopkins, then fighting at the tender age of 48, forcing another foe to fight his pace, his fight and his way.

It was an "imposing of your will" type of fight, and Cloud had no clue what to do with the old master.

8. Keith Holmes

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Everyone knows that Hopkins, Trinidad and Joppy participated in the middleweight tournament, but the forgotten man is then-WBC champion Keith Holmes.

Holmes was a tricky southpaw fighter with good power, and he was not an easy guy to fight.

Most people remember Hopkins’ performance in the finals, but to get there he needed to take Holmes’ belt, and that wasn’t supposed to be an easy task.

But he sure made it look like one.

Hopkins took a round or two to get his feet wet in the fight, but he took over from Round 3 onward, attacking Holmes to the body with big shots that zapped his power and will to press the fight.

Holmes spent more of the fight complaining about low blows—many of which, in fairness to Hopkins, were the result of his trunks being high—than he did fighting.

Hopkins, who isn’t really known for big power, rocked him several times in the fight and coasted to a unanimous-decision win and a trip to the finals and the defining fight of his life.

7. Glen Johnson

Glen Johnson wasn’t always a gate-keeper.

The Jamaican-born Road Warrior was once a pretty hot prospect, entering his challenge of Hopkins for the IBF Middleweight Championship in 1997 with a perfect 32-0 record with 22 knockouts.

Johnson would eventually move on to capture a world title at light heavyweight and knock out Roy Jones Jr., but on this night, he was taken to school.

And it wasn’t pretty.

Hopkins hurt Johnson early in the fight, and each successive round took on a familiar feel.

The Executioner found a home for his uppercuts whenever he decided to throw them, pounding on Johnson, who remained in a defensive posture and causing significant swelling to his right eye.

Without ever dropping Johnson, Hopkins unleashed hell in Round 11, letting his hands go to the head and body with mean intentions and prompting the referee to intercede and halt the contest.

It was the first time Johnson was stopped in his career, and remarkably, it took 17 years and 43 fights for it to happen again.

6. Oscar De La Hoya

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Oscar De La Hoya might just be the biggest name on Hopkins’ resume, but he doesn’t rate higher on the list because he wasn’t a true middleweight.

The Golden Boy struggled to a gift decision and a gift world title against Felix Sturm in his previous fight—a bout that many to this day feel he lost—and he was a significant underdog coming into his challenge for the real middleweight crown.

In fairness, however, De La Hoya definitely exceeded expectations.

He fought Hopkins on close, but not quite even, tactical terms through the first eight rounds, trailing badly on two cards and narrowly ahead on the third when the fight came to its sudden conclusion.

Hopkins was clearly in command, but De La Hoya looked better than he did against Sturm.

For whatever that’s worth.

At the beginning of Round 9, Hopkins began to open up in an attempt to make things more uncomfortable for De La Hoya.

Around the midway point of the round he landed a vicious left hook to the liver that crumpled the Golden Boy to the mat in obvious pain. He attempted to rise from the canvas, but he couldn’t beat the count.

It was the first time that De La Hoya was stopped in his legendary career.

And now he promotes Hopkins, who’s also a partner in his company, Golden Boy Promotions.

5. Winky Wright

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Winky Wright was one of those fighters who you only faced if you absolutely had no choice.

Or if you wanted to be made to look silly be a superb technical and defense-oriented fighter.

Hopkins dropped his middleweight championship and a rematch to Jermain Taylor—both decisions were hotly disputed—and Wright was saddled with a draw—bogus to these eyes—in his challenge of the newly crowned champion.

Wright’s best days came at 154 pounds, so the move to light heavyweight for a crack at Hopkins, who had promised to retire after winning the light heavyweight title in his previous fight, seemed like a bit of a bridge too far.

And, on paper, a fight between two defensive tacticians seemed destined to produce a boring, hard-to-score affair that wouldn’t generate much in the way of excitement.

Conventional wisdom isn’t always wrong, but it definitely was in this case.

Hopkins and Wright engaged in a bout that befit their styles, and many of the rounds were entertaining and close.

The fight, like so many Hopkins’ affairs, was full of fouls, with Wright frequently complaining to referee Robert Byrd about his foe’s use of his head.

It was close down the stretch, but remarkably it was the younger Wright, and not Hopkins, nearly seven years his elder, who was the fresher fighter coming to the close.

Hopkins wobbled Wright in the final round and did enough work in the second half to take a decision that might have been a little wider than the action in the ring would indicate.

Should it have been closer? 

Probably, but the right guy got his hand raised.

4. Jean Pascal

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It took him two bites at the apple, but Hopkins eventually got his man in a two-fight series with Jean Pascal to become the oldest world champion in boxing history.

He’s since broken that mark, several times, but it remains a significant accomplishment.

Pascal had won the title—the historically significant lineal title—from Chad Dawson, to date the last man to beat Hopkins. He seemed too young, fast and powerful for the aging legend.

That wisdom seemed on point in the early going of their first bout.

Hopkins was dropped by Pascal in the opening frame—questionable—and again in Round 3—clear—opening a pretty sizable gap on the scorecards.

Knowing that he was well behind, and fighting on the road to boot, Hopkins drastically upped his pace for the remainder of the fight.

Pascal seemed to tire around the midway point, and the old master took command, earning a controversial majority draw that many felt should've gone his way.

In the rematch, Hopkins was even better.

He took the fight to Pascal, exchanging power shots with the younger champion in a performance that seemed to defy reason.

Fighting on the road again, Hopkins left little doubt this time, capturing a narrow decision to become—at the time—the oldest man to win a world title.

The accomplishment was made even more impressive, given that the title Hopkins captured was the legitimate crown in his division and not just an alphabet belt.

3. Kelly Pavlik

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Kelly Pavlik was supposed to be the bridge too far for Hopkins.

The undisputed middleweight champion of the world entered the fight—which was actually contested at light heavyweight—with a perfect 34-0 mark and on the back of consecutive victories over Taylor, who had twice bested Hopkins in ugly fights.

Instead, Hopkins made Pavlik look like an amateur, absolutely dominating the lineal middleweight champion for a wide unanimous-decision victory that further solidified his legacy.

Hopkins, ever the resourceful, used good movement and counters to neutralize Pavlik’s big right hand. And that’s something that has become the hallmark of Hopkins’s career.

He doesn’t exploit your weaknesses like some fighters do.

He exploits your strengths, taking them away from you and forcing you to compete outside of your comfort zone and without your best weapon.

Pavlik learned that the hard way.

Hopkins was quicker to the punch despite being 17 years older than his foe on fight night.

He landed on Pavlik early and often, engaged when he wanted to, countered when he needed to and generally beat up the younger man over 12 one-sided rounds.

After the fight, Hopkins called it the best performance of his career.

That much is up for debate, but it was an absolute clinic in the shadow of the Atlantic City Boardwalk, where he'll return to face Kovalev in November.

2. Antonio Tarver

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Having dropped back-to-back disputed decisions to Taylor, losing his middleweight title and snapping his record streak of 20-consecutive defenses, Hopkins decided that his time at 160 pounds was over.

But his career certainly wasn’t.

Hopkins signed on for what he promised would be the final fight of his career, challenging the dangerous and universally recognized light heavyweight champion, Antonio Tarver, at Boardwalk Hall on June 10, 2006.

Tarver was surging at the time, having become the first man to legitimately defeat Roy Jones Jr.—who can forget his emphatic second-round knockout of the pound-for-pound king?—and taking a wide decision in their rubber match to win the series.

Fighting two divisions above his natural weight class, few gave Hopkins much of a chance, and if you asked him, that was exactly how he liked it.

Hopkins put forth a master class against Tarver.

There was absolutely nothing close about the fight.

Tarver was dropped in Round 5, found precisely zero avenues to attack Hopkins and had his right eye swollen shut by the time the final bell rang.

Hopkins seemed to be playing games with Tarver—who also lost a $250,000 bet that he would knock Hopkins out within five rounds, sending the money to his foe’s charity—capturing a near-shutout unanimous decision and the legitimate light heavyweight championship.

The win allowed Hopkins to do something his idol Sugar Ray Robinson had never done.

Robinson, then reigning middleweight champion, moved up to challenge Joey Maxim for the light heavyweight crown at Yankee Stadium in 1952, but he was forced to retire on his stool from heat exhaustion when ahead after 13 rounds.

1. Felix Trinidad

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It was an opus.

A virtuoso performance.

In a fight that he was never supposed to win, and that the powers that be prayed he’d lose, Hopkins turned in what—to date—is easily the best and most important performance of his career.

Don King’s Middleweight Championship Series was conceived as a method of finally achieving an undisputed champion at 160 pounds. Nobody had held the distinction since Marvelous Marvin Hagler, and the tournament was designed to fix that problem.

In reality, however, the tournament operated under a thin veneer.

Felix Trinidad was the draw, and the undefeated Puerto Rican star was supposed to take his next step toward greatness by becoming the undisputed middleweight champion.

Everyone else was just in the way.

Somebody forgot to drop that memo in Hopkins’ mailbox, but he got the message loud and clear—he wasn’t supposed to win.

“That was the script [losing to Trinidad]. Even the statue that I have in my home in Delaware now that has my name on it, even the statue was premeditated. Signed, sealed and delivered with his [Trinidad’s] name on it. I seen it. I couldn’t get it until a week later. How profound is that?” Hopkins asked.

“Can you imagine? How do you print up shirts, congratulations you're the champion. I know they do it ahead of time, but they got the second shirt that might be the other team. They didn’t even have a second trophy for me in 2001, the Sugar Ray Robinson Trophy, just in case. It was a testimony to the disrespect of Bernard Hopkins' ability to show that I belong.”

But Hopkins did show he belonged.

In a fight postponed by and eventually taking place in the long shadow of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City, just blocks from where the events took place, Hopkins battered, outboxed and laid a beating on Trinidad in a fight that launched his career at the age of 36.

By the final round, and after 11 rounds of boxing clinic, the result was academic.

Trinidad was a beaten, battered man, but Hopkins wasn’t done yet.

He wanted to close the show.

And close it he did, dropping Trinidad with a short right hand in the center of the ring with just under a minute gone in the final stanza.

Tito beat the count, barely, but his corner, knowing they were impossibly behind, stepped in to halt the contest.

Hopkins, laying on his back in the center of the ring with his hands raised in the air, had become a star, and he proved the naysayers wrong, something he’s been doing ever since.

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand by the writer.