Hopkins Hoping For Rematches With Jones and Calzaghe

By Boxing News - 11/07/2008 - Comments

Image: Hopkins Hoping For Rematches With Jones and CalzagheBy Sean McDaniel: Light heavyweight Bernard Hopkins’ chances for a rematch between both Roy Jones Jr. and Joe Calzaghe seem remote at best at this point. Hopkins, 43, is counting on the winner of Saturday’s super bout between Jones and Calzaghe to give him a rematch. However, neither Jones nor Calzaghe, win or lose, appear to have any interest in giving Hopkins another shot at a fight. Jones defeated Hopkins by a close unanimous decision in May 1993 for the vacant IBF middleweight title, while Calzaghe defeated Hopkins by a 12-round split decision in April.

Both fights were extremely close and left a bad taste of needed revenge in Hopkins’ mouth. However, in the case of Calzaghe, Hopkins has had no luck in getting him to show any interest in giving him a rematch. Calzaghe appears fed up with boxing, tired of fighting after a long 15 year professional career that has saw him hold onto his WBO super middleweight crown for 10 years without a defeat.

While the fans would be interested in seeing Calzaghe fight Hopkins again, he feels that the rematch is entirely unnecessary since he beat Hopkins last time out. Calzaghe, 36, rarely gives rematches to opponents, and due to the dullness of his prior fight with Hopkins, which included many clinches, holding, wrestling and other stalling type tactics, Calzaghe seems less than eager to have to repeat this fight in a rematch.

A Hopkins fight with Jones, it seems, is probably even more remote. Calzaghe has a rematch clause in his contract with Jones, just in case that Roy gets lucky and pulls off an upset. So instead of Jones proceeding to a potential fight with Hopkins, Jones would instead be facing Calzaghe again in another fight. Even without the rematch clause, Jones has no desire in fighting Hopkins again.

According to Jones, he already beat Hopkins once before, so why should he waste his time and fight him again? Jones may be afraid of Hopkins, but he may not see the value in fighting him again given the fact that he’s already beaten him once before. As such, Hopkins may have to look elsewhere for opponents rather than against Calzaghe or Jones.

Neither of them appear in the slightest bit interested in fighting him again, and he seems to be hitting his head up against a wall by waiting and hoping that one of them will look his way. More than likely, if Hopkins wants a big name, he’s going to have to take a big risk by fighting one of the top light heavyweights like Chad Dawson or super middleweight Mikkel Kessler rather than Jones or Calzaghe.

Hopkins might find the going much tougher against Dawson and Kessler than he did in his recent fight against Kelly Pavlik, who as it turned out, was too small, too slender and too slow for Hopkins. In the case of Kessler and Dawson, both of them are around the same size as Hopkins and much more highly skilled than Pavlik.



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