De La Hoya: Hopkins will KO Dawson

By Boxing News - 04/28/2012 - Comments

Image: De La Hoya: Hopkins will KO DawsonBy Dan Ambrose: Oscar De La Hoya is picking his former conqueror Bernard Hopkins to score a knockout over “Bad” Chad Dawson tonight at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

De La Hoya said on his twitter “I’ve got Hopkins by knockout tomorrow on HBO Goldenboy boxing.”

Interesting but not too realistic. You got to like De La Hoya for going out on the limb with non-logical prediction. It doesn’t make sense because Hopkins hasn’t scored a knockout since he took De La Hoya himself out with a body shot eight years ago in September 2004. That’s a serious, serious dry spell between knockouts, isn’t it? Before that, Hopkins hadn’t stopped anyone since 2002.

Let’s face it, Hopkins’ power was never really big to begin with, but when he moved up to the light heavyweight division from 160, he didn’t carry what power he had with him, because he Hopkins hasn’t scored one KO since moving up in weight through nine fights at 175lbs.

It’s just not going to happen whether De La Hoya wishes it would happen or not. He obviously would be better off if it did, because Hopkins is going to have a really tough time trying to beat an expert boxer like Dawson by a decision. It would be next to impossible for Hopkins to come out ahead by a decision against a master boxer like Dawson, because he’s got all the advantages in this fight in terms of speed, power, size and skills. Hopkins only has his inside fighting skills and those are like toys he won’t be able to play with against Dawson because he won’t let him.

If anyone gets knocked out in this fight, it’ll be Hopkins because he’s been hitting the deck for one reason another with injuries or due to shorts that land below the belt. He could make the mistake of hitting the canvas in this fight and not get the benefit of the doubt by having the referee score it as a foul. In that case, the fight will get stopped and Dawson will be given a knockout win. Unfortunately, I can see that happening with the way that Hopkins is constantly going down.



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