By Allan Fox: IBF light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (54-6-2, 3 KO’s) has a goal of becoming the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world, and for him to do that he’s going to need to defeat WBA champion Beibut Shumenov (14-1, 9 KO’s) on April 19th in the first part of his journey. The Hopkins-Shumenov fight will be taking place on Showtime from the DC Armory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA.

Compared to the other parts that Hopkins needs to accomplish in unifying the division, this is the easy part. The 49-year-old Hopkins would then need to defeat WBO champion Sergey Kovalev and WBC champion Adonis Stevenson. Hopkins has already said that he feels that the Kovalev fight is the easier fight compared to Stevenson. But that remains to be seen. It’s quite possible that Kovalev could pick Stevenson off before Hopkins even gets a chance to fight him, so it might not matter what Hopkins believes in his head.

“He [Shumenov] has something I need to be the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world. He’s in the way of that. This fight is about my legacy. I unified the middleweight division and now my goal is to unify the light heavyweight division.”

The chances of Hopkins unifying the entire division are less than zero. He’s not going to beat Stevenson or Kovalev, and there are major questions whether he can even beat a limited fighter like Shumenov. Hopkins is still the same fighter that Chad Dawson defeated in April 2012. the only difference is that Hopkins has had two easy record-padding fights against Tavoris Cloud and Karo Murat in his last two fights. Those opponents thats are well below that of Stevenson and Kovalev. Shumenov would likely beat those guys as well.

Hopkins will be 50 next January, and it’s doubtful that he’ll have fought either Stevenson or Kovalev by then. I think it’ll be a case of Hopkins blaming the fights not happening on them fighting for HBO and him Showtime. That won’t stop Hopkins name dropping their names every now and then, but I don’t expect him to face either one of them. His fight against Shumenov will likely be as far as Hopkins goes in unifying the light heavyweight titles.