Jones-Hopkins: Why is Bernard wasting his time with this fight?
January 25th, 2010
By Chris Williams: After Roy Jones Jr. was wiped out by Danny Green in a 1st round slaughter on December 2nd, any reason to watch a bout between Jones and 45-year-old Bernard Hopkins (50-5-1, 32 KO’s) effectively went down the drain with that defeat. However, instead of moving on and taking a fight with a top light heavyweight such as Chad Dawson, Hopkins has decided to take the fight with Jones anyway rather than a more appealing option of a younger fighter.
I can somewhat see why Hopkins might want to fight Jones. After all, Jones, 41, defeated Hopkins by a 12 round decision 17 years ago in 1993 while fighting with only one hand. Jones injured his right hand early in the fight and was forced to fight Hopkins using only his left. It didn’t matter.
Even using one hand, Jones was too good for Hopkins. Now, 17 years later, Jones’ skills and his ability to take punishment has badly deteriorated. It may give Hopkins a sense of satisfaction if he can beat Jones after all these years, but it’s got to be bitter sweet given how Jones has aged badly and is no longer the same fighter he once was.
If Hopkins wanted to try and prove anything, the time to do it was 17 years ago, not now. And I don’t know that a fight against Jones will give Hopkins a better payday than he would get against a more qualified fighter like Dawson.
I think that fight would do well on pay-per-view, because boxing fans have been eager to see Hopkins fight Dawson for years. But for some reason, Hopkins hasn’t wanted to fight Chad. It’s too bad, because that would be a really appealing fight right now compared to a Jones-Hopkins fight.
In an article by William Detloff at Ringtv, Hopkins says “It really is important I stay busy more than it is about fighting any particular person, especially Roy Jones Jr. It’s not like I would turn down any other fight that was meaningful to fight Roy Jones Jr. So it’s not like it’s an obsession. It’s just something I’m left with.” That’s kind of odd. Besides Dawson, Hopkins could go after Lucian Bute, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Carl Froch, Tomasz Adamek, Green, Arthur Abraham or Mikkel Kessler. Anyone of these fighters would be much better options for Hopkins fight now compared to a fight against the recently destroyed Jones, you would think.
Tags: 23 Responses to “Jones-Hopkins: Why is Bernard wasting his time with this fight?”
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Jones by decision
Whatever the outcome, this should be both of these guys’ last fight.
BHOP should have left Roy alone and moved up and took out Danny Green for the Cruiserweight title and then moved up to Heavyweight and fought one of the champions for the title. If he had of won those titles he could have retired as the All Time Great…..
They need to put this junk on ESPN for free and not PPV. Nobody is gonna pay to see this garbage. This fight is 10yrs too late…..
It’s all about the Benjamins!……..oh and a little personal score that B’hop wants to settle.
i would prefere to see hopkins/jones than any of them fights i mean whats hopkins now 45/46 jones 41 its like a perfect fight for the age jones wasnt badly beaten by green it just looked liek a lucky punch that put him down hit him on back of the head more or less it wasnt as bad as taver or johnson knockout all the fights you named him fighting are all busy for the next 3 eyars apart from bute whos super middle n dawson whos going to fight pascal wich i would easy rather see the adamek boxing at heavyweight
and i dotn think green would be a that good of a fight ehs nto exactly a big name even though he beat jones people said he should have beat jones anyways so hopkins/jones 2 hard realy hopkins fell asleep in the calzageh fight but turned back the clock with pavlik jones fell asleep after 1st 3 rounds with calzaghe but looked like he had it all with lacy hes just looking gun shy latly sge still has the power to take people out he just prefere not to like an idiot
HERE HERE well said
for those ppl that are saying that Bhop will beat Jones cause he did better against Calzaghe just NONSENSE plain and simple…come on guys STYLES MAKE FIGHTS you know that….its like saying that margorito would beat Mosley cause he beat cotto and we all know what happened there dont we???
the bottom line is something you always have to remember…
STYLES MAKE FIGHTS.
Now that it’s been announced that Haye and Ruiz are fighting on the same date as this fight, I’m wondering if Golden Boy is going to attempt a split-site PPV? I know that Haye and Ruiz would have to fight at a strange hour in order to make this happen, but IMO neither fight is exciting/strong enough to do well on PPV alone. Out of these four fighters, Jones is the only one that Golden Boy does not have any promotional rights to.
maybe we can have delahoya vs. trinadad 2 on the under card !! lol….
there’s a lot of money in b-hop vs rjj.
that’s why the fight’s happening.
btw…to the writer of this article: rjj may be a worse boxer now than he was when he beat b-hop…but b-hop is probably better now than he was then. b-hop back then was so green it’s untrue…he wasn’t truly world class until 7 years after that fight. don’t go acting like roy jones jr beat the best bernard hopkins. b-hop circa 2000 whoops any version of rjj. in fact…a fight now is as true an indication of how good they both are as that fight was.
B-Hop would easily beat RJJ. I think that this is his way of avoiding the top fighters in his division. To be honest, he hasn’t fought any of the top or even decent fighters in his weight class. Bernard should fight Adamek, or Chad Dawson, who is the fighter that beat Adamek. However, since Hopkins is now over the hill at the age of 45, he should either retire after the Jones fight or fight a legitimate fighter in his weight class before retiring. But either way he should be considered a hall of fame boxer.
I predict Hopkins to win quite easy. B-Hop put on a much better showing against Calzaghe then Jones did and Hopkins won his last fight against the dangerous and undefeated Pavlik. In the last fight for Jones he got knocked out in round 1.
It is strange Hopkins not fighting one of the many younger guys out there, especailly after the Pavlik win.
..so taylor doesnt mean that much 2 him.
the loss to jones in 93 is the only 1 bhop really accepted.
Yeah its defiantly pers0nal 4 b0th 0f them. they d0nt like each 0ther. but i d0nt want t0 c this th0 i mean after b h0p beats r0y hes g0nna call 0ut tayl0r next avenge th0se l0sses t00.
Larry
They owe the public a good fight with good opposition if they expect the public to pay top dollar to watch them fight on PPV. Don’t worry about what they have done for boxing, worry about what boxing have done for them.(made them rich, famous etc)
jones will win this fight easy.Hopkins had no chance against green he has even told that to his management green and adamek are the best in this division. americans are so over rated.americans have been cheated of watching good boxers who refuse to fight in america untill the end of there career just like joe calzace did now danny green is doing the same thing. hopkins would have made more money fighting green than jones but he refuses to fight green because he thinks jones will be easier than green, but jones will win every round.americans have to have it there way or they want fight. there is so many good boxers around the world who would beat most big name american boxers but never get the chance because they no if thy lose they will make no money.JONES TO WIN EASY HOPKINS SHOULD HAVE SHOWN SOME HEART AND TOOK ON GREEN.
They have both done so much for boxing i think they diserve to fight who ever they want at there age. and they don’t owe anybody anything
B-Hop knows he dosen’t have a chance against Ademak, Dawson, Green and co. Green had offered hopkins 15x more money than bhops last fight. B-hop knows he can’t cut it with anyone else bar an over the hill jones
@Vince : Got to agree with you its obviously personal.
@Chris Williams : I also struggle to see the sense in this choice for B-Hop. Apparently the ‘talks’ with Bute,Adamek and Greene fell through.It really does seem that B-Hop would do anything to fight Jones. Which leads me to thinking that this fight is much more personal than he says it is. Wouldn’t it have been interesting if they included B-Hop in the Super Six? Then the executioner would have some serious guys in the ring with him. No excuses about age, B-Hop thinks he is good enough to fight at his age so then he can fight some real opposition right? The other question i have is: What is Jones thinking? Could it be that the once great Roy Jones has lost the fighter within and left us with only the shadow of a fading boxer? At this point it looks like B-hop wants revenge, nothing more…and he wants it so bad he is willing to forget about any real challengers.
That’s the easiest fight for him. He doesn’t want to fight Chad Dawson because he’s too young and strong. He doesn’t want to fight Danny Green because of what he did to Roy. Roy is the safest fight for him at this stage.
It would have been nice to see BHOP get down to 168 and get into that Super 6 tournament and take Jermain Taylor’s spot…
Why fight Jones?
It’s not business, it personal