Trinidad Wants Bouts With Pavlik and Hopkins

By Manuel Perez: In an article by Jaime Torres Torres at El Neuvodia, former welterweight and light middleweight champion Felix Trinidad (42-3, 35 KOs) is interested in a fight with WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik and getting a rematch with Bernard Hopkins, saying ” “Hopkins beat me, but he never wanted to give me a chance at revenge. Pavlik could fight with me in the 165 pounds. But they are boxers who fear being beaten.”

Trinidad, 36, takes confidence from the fact that older fighters like Shane Mosley, Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. are still fighting effectively, and feels that if they can do it, so can he at his advanced age. Trinidad is four years younger than Jones and eight years younger than Hopkins, both of whom are still very much active fighters.

Trinidad last fought a year ago against Jones in January, losing by a 12-round unanimous decision in a fight where Trinidad was dropped twice in the fight. Still, it wasn’t a bad performance from him given that he hadn’t fought in close to three years since being beaten by Winky Wright in 2005. Trinidad looked slightly chubby and ring rusty at times, but for the most part, his power was still very much in evidence in the fight.

A natural welterweight, Trinidad might be a little over his head in facing a young, powerful middleweight like Pavlik, who would likely put a lot of pressure on the older Trinidad and force him to exchange with big shuts. Trinidad was never much of a mover even in his prime, so one would expect that he wouldn’t be able to bring the assets that Hopkins brought to the table against Pavlik –namely movement and hand speed.

However, Trinidad can still punch very hard and with his powerful left hook, he might be able to give Pavlik some problems if he can land enough. Certainly, Pavlik will make it easy for him to land because Kelly will be coming at him the whole time trying to knock him out like he does with all his opponents.

A rematch with Hopkins would seem like a bad idea for Trinidad, because Bernard is still fighting a very high level and might end up being a style nightmare for the rusty Trinidad to deal with. To be sure, I think Trinidad could give Hopkins some problem if Bernard tried to trade shots with him in the first half of the right but Hopkins probably won’t do that.

He’s too smart to try and slug it out with Trinidad and would be wary of the old fox’s power in the early going. Hopkins would probably use his jab on Trinidad until late in the fight and then open up with power shots to try and take him out late like he did with his previous 12th round TKO over Trinidad eight years ago in September 2001.

Though I think Hopkins might possibly be interested in fighting Trinidad if there were no other options out there for him, I tend to doubt that he will because Hopkins would be better served going after someone younger like Jermain Taylor, Chad Dawson and Mikkel Kessler. Hopkins is still fighting too well to take at this point to waste what little time he has left in a fight against Trinidad.

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