By Aaron Klein: Since defeating Kelly Pavlik last week, the status of Bernard Hopkins has been elevated to almost epic proportions by many boxing writers and fans alike, but honestly, does he really deserve all that acclaim? After all, who did he beat? Pavlik, while a good fighter with a lot of power, is more of a straight ahead power puncher, who fights in a straight line and has zero lateral movement. Anyone with eyes could see that Pavlik had embarrassingly slow hand speed, poor defense and only his right hand and left jab to count on as his main weapons. Unlike the more accomplished boxers that Hopkins has faced in his career, like Roy Jones Jr. and Winky Wright, Pavlik didn’t have the arsenal nor the defense that those fighters had.

With only a right hand to worry about, it was little wonder that Hopkins would easily devise a plan to take that away from Pavlik and beat him. Even without a solid plan, Hopkins had the much better hand speed and size (he’s a natural light heavyweight) in comparison to the slow Pavlik. Don’t get me wrong, I still think Hopkins is a great fighter, perhaps one of the top 10 middleweights of all time, but in no way do I see him as good as people are making him out to be lately.

If you put Hopkins in the ring with Jermain Taylor or Chad Dawson last Saturday night, you would have probably seen Hopkins getting beaten to the punch, badly outworked and trying to clinch his way through the bout like he did against Joe Calzaghe in their fight in April. Hopkins has huge problems against fighters with better hand speed than himself, like the aforementioned Taylor and Dawson.

If either of them were in the ring with Hopkins, I’d suspect that he’d have looked much more mortal than he appeared against Pavlik, and would have been unable to get off his punch slower combinations against the blazing fast hands of Dawson and Taylor. Though Hopkins looked fast in comparison to Pavlik, he’d look like he’s throwing in slow motion against either of them. Hopkins did show a lot of improvement with his ability to throw combinations last Saturday, throwing many more punches than he had in years, but that’s only because he didn’t have to worry about getting hit with fast counter shots from the slow-handed Pavlik.

Believe me, if Hopkins would have been in the ring with Dawson or Taylor, he’d have caught several blinding fast head shots every time he’d try to throw a combinations. As such, he’d revert to his old style of fighting, in which he throws an occasional pot shot followed by an immediate clinch. Hopkins would probably try and turn it into an inside fight, knowing that he would have much of a chance at doing well at long or medium range against the likes of them.

Against Pavlik, Hopkins was able to move into a medium range, close enough where Pavlik was unable to get leverage on his longer punches, but close enough for Hopkins to still be able to get maximum power on his own shots. Once the fight got into the later rounds, Hopkins moved to the inside where he dominated Pavlik at close range. Taylor never allowed Hopkins to do this in their two previous fights, and blasted away at him with fast combinations when he would try to move inside.