All photos by Hogan Photos
It must be weird to be peerless.
Bernard Hopkins is a lover of history. He is an even bigger fan of making history. That’s why, at age 49, he’s about to get back into the ring. But he won’t be in the ring fighting in some Latvian gymnasium on a Thursday morning. No, BHop will be IN THE RING, fighting one of the nastiest, most dangerous, bad ass dudes in the sport.
Hopkins’ career has been an oddity. He lost his first pro bout. He stayed put at middleweight and broke the all-time title defense record while waiting for the stars to come to him. He was avoided like the plague, mainly because he was so damn difficult to defeat. He was a surly prick, pissing on promoters and other fighters because he felt like it. He did things his way, dammit.
Oh, and he was about as aesthetically pleasing to watch as Kevin Smith receiving a rectal exam. Or Kevin Smith’s last five movies.
But the man kept fighting, and talking. Sometimes he talked more than he fought. Sometimes he talked while he fought. Sometimes, he put on hideous, ghastly, painful-as-a-tack-in-your-scrotum performances. His fights with Jermain Taylor, if you can call them that, are two such examples. He was equally awful against Joe Calzaghe and the rematch with Roy Jones’ corpse.
But there have been times in these later years when he’s looked damn good. He absolutely destroyed Kelly Pavlik, and he toyed and humiliated then-Light Heavyweight champion Antonio Tarver. He took Winky Wright apart. He slapped Jean Pascal around. After an ugly loss to Chad Dawson, he engaged in an absolute firefight with Karo Murat.
That was a thoroughly entertaining bout in which Hopkins stood and traded toe-to-toe, much to our surprise, and got the better of every exchange. After that, Hopkins took on Beibut Shumenov, and despite what an apparently blind and drunk Gustavo Padilla thought, Hopkins beat Shumenov easily.
Hopkins could continue to fight guys who hover near the top ten of the division and nobody would blame him. He could argue that he’s still doing something at his age that nobody else could do–beat solid competition. But Hopkins just can’t do that. He’d lose his mind to boredom. Hopkins, who played the angry card for the majority of his 147 year career, always needs something to stoke the fire.
In the early days, it was about respect. In the later years, it was about history. Now? It’s about his place on the all-time list. He could take on a guy like Isaac Chilemba, and he’d probably win easily. But he’ll beat guys like Chilemba and Shumenov when he’s 73. That won’t do it for him. He wants a young lion. A beast.
He found one.
After Adonis Stevenson punched his way to the top, he just-as-quickly tap danced his way to the sidelines. Instead of a major fight, he’ll get to fight a Russian that nobody has heard of while the guys he was supposed to fight, fight each other instead. Sometimes, the easy road leads to a dead end.
If there was no Gennady Golovkin, Sergey Kovalev would be considered the scariest dude in boxing. He punches with wrecking-ball power. He hasn’t heard the final bell in four years. He’s a big, ridiculously strong fighter who is at the absolute peak of his powers, and of the division. And on November 8, Bernard will try to summon another lecture in Boxing 101.
Now, as nasty as Kovalev is, let’s be clear– he has never, ever been in the ring with anyone even remotely as talented as Hopkins. Hopkins is an all-time great, a man whose name you can throw in with any of the top names from 160-175 and not look like a fool. But he’s an all-time-great who is nearly 50-years-old.
A 50-year-old anything shouldn’t be able to stay in the ring with a guy like Kovalev for a few minutes, let alone an entire fight. It’s a testament to Hopkins’ freakish (otherworldly?) abilities that this is essentially a pick-em fight.
But how can Hopkins pull it off?
Sergey Kovalev is not Kato Murat, so standing in the pocket and trading will send Hopkins straight to the intensive care unit. The conventional thinking is that Hopkins will make this thing another god-awful bout, where he lands a sneaky right hand and then mauls Kovalev for the next 45 seconds or so.
And while he may need to do that, there is another tactic we might see him employ–call it the Pavlik Lesson. While Kovalev is bigger and hits even harder than Pavlik did, there are similarities there. Kovalev is no master boxer. He’s there to be hit. The problem is that the guys he’s faced have usually suffered internal bleeding before they could fire back.
Hopkins is extremely difficult to catch cleanly, and he’s brilliant at smothering his opponent until he’s got nothing left to give. For whatever reason, fighters become extremely gun shy around Bernard. Mostly, it’s because he gives them angles they can’t connect from. With Pavlik, Hopkins led him around the ring on a leash and ran him into whatever he felt like throwing.
While it seems hard to believe that Hopkins would be able to do that against this beast, it’s not unfathomable. It’s not hard to imagine a frustrated Kovalev chasing something that isn’t there while eating counter shots all night long.
But… Hopkins is really, really old. And despite what he’d have us believe, he is human. I think. And there have been instances where we’ve seen the aging process happen before our eyes. He was absolutely gassed against Calzaghe, who is one of the only fighters who didn’t throw out the game plan entirely against BHop. He was never really in the fight with pre-knockout Chad Dawson, who cares as little about looking good as Hopkins does. Dawson simply outboxed him. And he was knocked down and hurt repeatedly early on in his first fight with Jean Pascal, who hits pretty hard but is nowhere near the banger Kovalev is.
So it’s not like he’s been invincible. There have been cracks in the armor. It really comes down to the question, how cracked is it?
A few years ago, this is absolute schoolage for Hopkins, who is simply a better fighter. But Kovalev is going to have to pressure the hell out of the old fella. He has to pressure him for three minutes of every round until he wears out. Hopkins threw out fighting three minutes of each round years ago. Hopkins’ trick is that he imposes his will almost immediately, and he forces the opponent to fight his fight. He doesn’t have to fight the entire round when the guy in front of him is frozen in his tracks.
This writer is actually leaning toward the old man in the fight. I shouldn’t be. We should be lamenting that this is a joke of a fight, that a hopelessly outmatched and dangerously aged fighter is about to get dump trucked by a monstrous puncher in his prime.
But this is Bernard Fucking Hopkins. So we aren’t doing that. We’re pretty much split down the middle when picking this bout. And win or lose, the absurdity of that realization is all the proof you need when contemplating the historic consequences of this fight.
If Hopkins falls short, if Kovalev is able to deck him, Hopkins won’t lose any of the luster on his brilliant career. He’ll have taken one last shot at greatness before calling it a day and strolling into the Hall Of Fame.
Most boxers never get to take that last shot at glory, having already faded far out of the picture, their relevance long gone. They’re usually left fighting in dimly lit, poorly attended, barely-sanctioned bouts while pundits crack jokes about their delusions. Hopkins has nothing to worry about. His legacy was secured long ago, and it won’t change, even with a loss. At the very least, he’ll be able to say that he was in the position to take this shot.
But what if he wins?
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Some Random Notes From Around The Boxing World:
On the ESPN Boxing homepage, they are currently pondering whether or not Chris Algieri’s nutritionist background GIVES HIM THE EDGE OVER MANNY PACQUIAO. No, the avocado diet is not going to help.
Martin Murray won his fight this past weekend and secured himself a fight with Gennady Golovkin. Yay? It’s a weird way to celebrate a win isn’t it? To then place yourself in absolute mortal danger. Murray is a tough fella, but they should go ahead and book an O.R. room now.
Vanes Martirosyan is on the Gatti List. Weird things happen in boxing.
I’d like to see more of “The Axe Man” ASAP.
December has shaped up to be a stacked month, but David Lemieux vs. Gabriel Rosado is going to be an absolute blood bath. Cannot wait for that fight.
So this is what it’s come to, eh Showtime? Your headlining bout for this Saturday night is Andrzej Fonfara vs. Doudou Ngumbu. Bravo.
Can somebody upload a video of Arthur Mercante Jr., Jack Reiss and Lawrence Cole refereeing fights set to the theme song from The Three Stooges?
Try to pick who is the worst of the three. Cole is usually asleep by Round 3, but Reiss gets points for originality. He’s constantly trying to find new ways to butcher a fight. Mercante has been laying pretty low since trying to murder Yuri Foreman a few years ago.
But incompetence doesn’t just disappear. It just gets hidden on lower profile fights for awhile. Come back, Artie!
