Does Hopkins Have Enough Left to Beat Froch?

By Sean McDaniel: As reported earlier today by boxing scribe Dan Rafael, Bernard Hopkins is looking at a possible fight with WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch in July. As the story goes, it seems that Froch’s promoter Mick Hennessy is also interested in his fighter taking on Hopkins, 44, probably knowing that if the bout could be arranged, Froch would make a literal killing in big money against Hopkins. Before this bout was mentioned, Hopkins’ had been rumored to be interested in a fight with 36-year-old Felix Trinidad.

Thankfully, Hopkins didn’t go forward with that fight because it would have been an awful one, especially if it turned out to be the last one of Hopkins’ career. A fight against Froch, though, would be a very good one and better than Hopkins’ other recent potential opponent in Tomasz Adamek.

If Hopkins and Froch do end up fighting, it would be asking a lot of Hopkins to pull off another huge win like the one he accomplished in his last fight, a 12-round unanimous decision over WBC/WBO middleweight champion Kelly Pavlik on October 18, 2008.

Hopkins fought the perfect fight to get the win, never giving the younger 27-year-old Pavlik a chance to get in more than one shot at a time due to Hopkins’ movement and quick hands. In a way, Hopkins fought exactly how I see Manny Pacquiao fighting this Saturday night against Ricky Hatton.

Hopkins circled Pavlik, raining jabs on Pavlik, and jumping in and out of range to land fast shots. Hopkins will need to be able to do the same thing that he did with Pavlik with the sturdier Froch who is stronger than Pavlik but not quite as fast.

The difference between Froch and Pavlik is that Froch moves much better than Pavlik, and is capable of chasing down Hopkins and forcing him to fight on his terms.

This isn’t going to be a fight in which Hopkins is facing the one-paced plodding Pavlik, because Froch compensates for his slow hand speed by moving quickly with his feet to chase down his opponents and hit them with hooks and straight shots.

As we saw in Froch’s last fight, a 12th round TKO over Jermain Taylor on April 25th, Froch gets hit quite often while on the way in. But, Froch showed that he doesn’t seem to really care how hard he gets punched in the face, he’s going to keep pressuring his opponent in order to land his heavy shots.

Eventually, with the huge amount of pressure that Froch put on Taylor, he finally melted in the 12th round and was dropped and then taken out with a flurry of shots. Froch hasn’t received much credit for the knockout win, though, as many people attribute his victory to Taylor tiring out on his own accord.

However, I think that’s less than fair to Froch, because it ignores his part in making Taylor expend his energy by keeping the pressure on him for three minutes of every round, not letting up on him until finally knocking Taylor down in the 12th and then taking him out.

Hopkins may have been able to beat the one-dimensional Pavlik in his last fight, but Hopkins wasn’t nearly so impressive in losing a 12-round split decision to Joe Calzaghe a year ago in April. In that fight, Hopkins wore down under the pressure that Calzaghe put on him and resorted to all kind of tricks – going down often for low blow and clinching continuously – to try and buy him some time.

In the end Calzaghe ended up outworking Hopkins and getting the victory. Froch has a great chance of doing the same thing with his heavy pressure. It won’t matter that he’s not as fast as Calzaghe or Hopkins, because Froch’s great chin and his heavy pressure will have the effect of draining Hopkins and causing him to take a battering in the 2nd half of the fight.

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