Quote Originally Posted by ThomasTabin
Perhaps so with Moore, but with hopkins you will have a fighter who will not stand in front of you. This means that you will not be able to use combination punching. He will always be just outside of your range removing the prospect of beating him through a high punch output. In other words a high punch output cant be effective if he isn't there to be hit with it.
You're right there, I should have thought about that aspect of it. So swarming is out of the question because Hopkins avoids exchanges and doesn't like to lead. A guy like Trinidad becomes frozen because he can't create any opportunities by just following him.

Anyways let's say we're staying out of his range, circling to our left trying to make Hopkins commit/lead. Like you said he's usually feinting, picking his shots and staying out of range. This is frustrating just thinking about it, but how do we get him to throw anything?

If I just jab or punch because there's nothing else I can think of, he'll just step out of the way. If I give him a target for bait, I'm still not sure I can counter him because of trouble I'd have with his feints. It's hard to time a punch when you're not sure what's coming.

The plan would be to get him to come to us. This is tricky because this would mean we'd have to beat him at his own game. My best bet would be like you said, to capitalise on any let-up in his circling, stay away from him and see if I can feint or draw him in so I can be in range. Hopefully at that point I'll have opened him enough to hit him before he clinches or moves away.

On another note, how do you work these stratagems into shadowboxing. Say you're shadowboxing a guy like Pernell Whitaker, or Bernard Hopkins for matter. Would you approach it the same way you would if you were fighting them. I guess then I'd work on circling, feinting and drawing them in. I'd have to watch their fights again so I can see what other tendencies they have so I can also prepare for them.

Anyways this is good stuff to mull over. I appreciate it, I'd like to see more of this kind of stuff.