By Michael Lieberman: With Joe Calzaghe now showing little interest in getting in the ring with undefeated WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik (34-0, 30 KOs) after his total destruction of Calzaghe’s fellow countryman Gary Lockett in a 3rd round TKO in June, Pavlik has now turned his attention to recent Calzaghe opponent Bernard Hopkins (48-5-1, 32 KOs), who he hopes to take out in an impressive fashion taking Hopkins out so that there’s no question in people’s minds who the better fighter is between them. This is especially important after Calzaghe failed to prove that he is better than Hopkins, and had to struggle to get a 12-round split decision victory in April.

Even more embarrassing for Calzaghe, however, was the fact that he was knocked down by the 43 year-old Hopkins in the 1st round and took punishment for the rest of the way in earning a controversial victory. Pavlik, a knockout artist with enormous power in each hand, is looking to be the first fighter to take Hopkins out, which if he can accomplish this feat with all the clinching and wrestling that Hopkins will likely do, will be something quite extraordinary. At the same time, it will bring heat on Calzaghe by showing how the two fighters did against a common opponent, namely Hopkins.

With an impressive enough performance against Hopkins, Calzaghe may feel obligated to fight Pavlik, whom he has said is still unproven as a fighter, despite the fact that Pavlik has twice beaten Jermain Taylor, a fighter that would likely just as easily defeat all of Calzaghe’s prior opponents in his career if he were matched up with them. Indeed, if Calzaghe still felt that Pavlik was unworthy after knocking out Hopkins, it would make Calzaghe look more than a little silly in my estimation of him, likely forcing him to come up with another excuse why he doesn’t need to fight him.

To be sure, Hopkins, no matter what his age is, will be fighting tooth and nail to try and prevent from being knocked out. There’s no question that Pavlik, the much younger fighter at 26 and the one with the much better offense, is going to defeat Hopkins; The real question is whether it will be by a one-sided decision or by knockout. If Pavlik has to settle for a decision, it may be a big let-down for him, because he wants to win the fight impressively and there’s no better way to win than taking out the old dog and putting him down, as Pavlik’s trainer Jack Loew recently said at a promotional tour in Pavlik’s home town of Youngstown, Ohio.

Hopkins, a former middleweight champion of 10 years, isn’t the same fighter he once was and in his recent fight against Calzaghe, he seemed to need extra breaks to rest his aging body. Calzaghe, not much of a puncher to speak of, didn’t apply nearly as much pressure as Pavlik is going to be doing against Hopkins. Hence, Hopkins was allowed to hang around in the fight and make it much closer than it would likely have been if Calzaghe had forced Hopkins to fight three minutes of every round.

This is precisely what Pavlik is going to do with Hopkins, burying him with bombs and making him expend a great amount of energy from his old 43 year-old body. With the combination of huge shots being rained down on him and the steady pressure that’s being applied, Hopkins will likely find himself submitting at some point in the fight. I’d like to think that he won’t take a knee like Miguel Cotto did on two occasions, because that seemed really off-putting to me, but given his advanced age, a knee would be a fitting end for the fine boxing career of Hopkins.

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