Muhammad Ali is often credited for his intellect in the ring and ability to use psychological warfare to beat opponents before the first bell ever rang. Sonny Liston was reportedly convinced that Ali was certifiably insane and this unnerved Sonny prior to their fight.

The psychological attack aspect interests me, and on my opinion Bernard Hopkins has managed to take this tactic to a new level. I love watching Hop manipulate the opponent prior to and during his fights. Remember his throwing of the flag, tossing rice and beans as a last meal, and comments of an old school street fight prior to his domination of Tito. Everyone. Including an enraged Tito, was looking for Hop to come out swinging and make it an ugly mugging. Then the bell rang and Hop jabbed and circled and you could see the look if confusion in Titos face.

In the rematch vs Pascal, Hop talked excessively about Pascal running out of gas and not being able to fight hard for 12 rounds. You could see that mess with Pascals mind and he seemed to exhaust himself from worrying so much about exhausting himself.

Where I see Hop taking it to the next level, is that he doesn't just reserve the mind games for the opponent. He uses them on officials also. He made a huge stink about the ref for the Tito fight and called I to question his ability to officiate a Hop fight in an unbiased manner. Hop often uses these tactics when he wants a little "leeway" with the rules. It often works for him, as the ref tends to go easier on Hop and let some of his borderline infractions go without even a warning.

Additionally, prior to the Pascal rematch Hop was very vocal about the judges getting their draw wrong, and how they missed out on being a part of a historical event. This helped with the rematch in that those judges didn't want to be called out publicly or miss out on being a part if history and rewarded Hop with pretty much every close round.

Floyd Mayweather recently showed similar intelligence by harping on Maidanas rougher tactics. This led to Kenny Bayless being overly officious in the rematch which prevented Maidana from using the tactics that worked so well for him in the first fight. Thoughts?