By Scott Gilfoid: This Saturday night unbeaten super middleweight Joe Calzaghe (44-0, 32 KOs) will meet up with ring great Bernard Hopkins (48-4-1, 32 KOs) at the Thomas & Mack Center, in Las Vegas, Nevada. For the most part, many of the boxing experts have been predicting that the 36 year-old Calzaghe will be able to overwhelm Hopkins with his 1000 punch per bout output, which on the surface, is a total that Hopkins can never come close to matching even in the prime of his career. Yes, and of course they’d be right about Hopkins not being able to match that kind of output with his own punches.
Strange, I’ve never seen the fight going this way. But then, maybe I’m a little more familiar with Hopkins style of fighting than many of the so-called ring experts. I think for most of the boxing experts, they can’t get away from thinking in terms of Calzaghe’s offensive style of fighting, forgetting altogether how Hopkins typical fights. Quite simply, Hopkins has never been in a bout in which he allowed a faster opponent to dominate him from the outside with flurries like Calzaghe hopes to use on him on Saturday night. On the whole, Hopkins adapts his style against speedy types like Calzaghe, taking the fight to the inside and choosing to stay there, where he grits it out with his expert infighting.
This is something that Calzaghe, even though to faster fighter, will have no answer for. He’a already proven against super middleweight Sakio Bika that he isn’t skilled at inside fighting, and has a tremendous amount of problems when pressured steadily by a well-schooled fighter. Hopkins, I assure you, will keep directly on top of Calzaghe for ever second of the fight, smothering his offense and forcing him to fight at close range, an area that Calzaghe is much less skilled at. Once Hopkins has Calzaghe’s speed advantage negated, he will batter him with elbows, forearms, head butts, and, of course, uppercuts and hooks to the head.
I see this as a gloomy, grim bout for Calzaghe, even though I think he’ll have his moments in the fight, due to his youth an unorthodox punching style of fighting. At least, that is my feeling about it. I think people need to completely forget about Calzaghe’s high volume punch output and think in terms of a slow, inside fight where both fighters well take turns trading for 12-rounds. But still, let me assure you that you will find it a thoroughly worthwhile fight, an exciting look at an old ring veteran plying his trade against a European fighter totally unaccustomed to the inside style of fighting.
It’s unfortunate that Clazaghe doesn’t seem to understand how the fight will be taking place, for he seems to be training for an outside batter, one which he plans on using his speed to outland the slower Hopkins. Facts must be faced, Hopkins isn’t nearly as fast as Calzaghe, nor is he someone that can match his punch output. This hardly needs to be pointed out to Hopkins, who won’t even try to fight that way against Calzaghe.
Hopkins instead will stay on him, much like he always has against fighters like Felix Trinidad, Antonio Tarver and Winky Wright, and force them to have to deal with the fight on his terms. That, I’m afraid, is something that Calzaghe won’t have an answer for. He won’t have a plan B when he finds that he can’t use his speed and punch output to win the fight.
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