By Aaron Klein: Undefeated super middleweight Joe Calzaghe (44-0, 32 KOs) will be making his first appearance fighting in the United States on Saturday night when he takes on light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins (48-4-1, 32 KOs) at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada. This excitement for this fight has been building up for three months now and most of the comments from both fighters are getting a little stale by now, with both of them merely repeating the same old phrases that they’ve been saying for months. Hopkins, now 43, the master of psychological warfare, has made most of the more interesting comments, yet none of them have seemed to have the same effect on Calzaghe as they did in previous pre-fight trash talking with fighters like Antonio Tarver and Felix Trinidad, who seemed uncomfortable at times with Hopkins verbal attacks.
Calzaghe, however, seems to understand what Hopkins is attempting to do, knowing that he’s counting on it getting to Calzaghe and maybe throwing him off his game a bit. However, Calzaghe is a different fighter than Winky Wright, Tarver and Trinidad, in that he hasn’t learned to lose yet, while at the same time he has been the absolutely best fighter in the super middleweight division for a decade now.
Hopkins, for his part, although a champion for about as long, was never considered with the same awe as Calzaghe, probably because of Hopkins’ prior loss to Roy Jones Jr. in 1994. Jones would later abandon the division, moving up to light heavyweight himself, where he dominated the division like he had previously in the middleweight division.
Though Calzaghe will no doubt have the large American crowd rooting against him this Saturday night in Las Vegas, I don’t see it having any effect on how he fights against Hopkins.
There’s been speculation that Calzaghe, who has fought virtually all his fights in Wales, will be at a loss when he suddenly finds people cheering for Hopkins rather than himself, and will get flustered enough to be thrown off his game. However, I don’t see that happening, although I do think it will have a minor effect in the first couple of rounds before Calzaghe settles down and figures Hopkins out. Once that happens, Hopkins is going to have a lot of problems with Calzaghe’s fast flurries and constant punch output.
At this stage in his career, Hopkins is more of a three punch combination, then get away type fighter, and isn’t capable of fighting at a sustained rate like Calzaghe traditionally does. Mostly, Hopkins jumps in and throws combinations and either clinches afterwards or moves quickly to the outside for safety. Against Jermain Taylor, a tall middleweight with handspeed similar to Calzaghe’s, Hopkins would get nailed as he was coming in and take punishment on the inside. In the early rounds of the fight, Taylor’s speed and flurries kept Hopkins well under control.
It was only later when Taylor tired out, as he often does late in his fights, that Hopkins was able to get into the fight and make it close. With Calzaghe, though, he never tires in his fights and is capable of throwing 80-100 punches every rounds from the first until the twelfth. This is going to be a major obstacle for Hopkins, who fights best when his opponent has a low, deliberate style of fighting, like a Winky Wright or a Trinidad. Hopkins doesn’t do well against fast combinations or a fighter that fights at a steady workrate like Cazlaghe.
Look for the fight to be competitive for the first two rounds, while Calzaghe studies Hopkins to check out his style, but once the fight gets to the third round, it’s going to be a one-sided fight similar to Calzaghe’s bout with super middleweight Jeff Lacy in March 2006. I see this fight as destroying Hopkins, who will sustain a tremendous beating in the course of the fight. Afterwards, I’m guessing that Hopkins will fall back to his age, using it as an excuse for his defeat to Calzaghe.
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