By Allan Fox: IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard “The Alien” Hopkins (54-6-2, 32 KO’s) turns 49 today and he’s still fighting at a high level. It’s difficult to believe that a person as old as Hopkins is able to hold down one of the world titles. But more impressive than that is he’s got a goal of unifying all of the 175 lb. titles by his 50th birthday next year.
That would be a huge accomplishment for Hopkins if he could pull it off. For Hopkins to do that, he’ll need to beat WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, WBA champ Beibut Shumenov and WBO champ Sergey Kovalev in his next three fights. Hopkins will be looking to accomplish the first part of that task in April against Shumenov, if he can negotiate the fight with him. The much harder part will be for Hopkins to beat Stevenson and Kovalev.
Those two fighters are very powerful, and not the type that you can make a mistake with. Hopkins would be at a big disadvantage against either of them because they punch much harder than him. For Hopkins to beat them, he would need to slip their shots for 12 rounds, and hope that he can land enough shots to impress the judges. Hopkins couldn’t count on knocking either of them out, because he hasn’t stopped one of his opponents since 2004. That means that he would need to outwork Stevenson and Kovalev for him to beat them. That’ll be a tough task for Hopkins because he doesn’t throw a lot of punches in his fights.
It might be a wiser thing for Hopkins to avoid those two fighters and be content with beating Shumenov if he can. Just beating Shumenov would be enough to help Hopkins’ legacy and make him even more of a legend. But if he goes one step too far and takes on either Kovalev or Stevenson, it might be a similar outcome as when a past his prime Sugar Ray Leonard took on in 1991 and gave him a sound beating. That was a fight that Leonard shouldn’t have taken at that point in his career.
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